Tonight is the Most Important Speech of Obama’s Career!

98 comments on “Tonight is the Most Important Speech of Obama’s Career!”

1. He’s in a tough situation regarding Afghanistan, and I don’t envy him. He’s getting it from all sides.

   Ain’t being president grand?

   1. Reminds me of the old saying:

      “No one who WANTS to be president should be allowed to hold the position.”

2. Yeah, every time he speaks even the people who support him say that it “could be the most important speech of his Presidency.” I mainly notice the “could be” which gives them the wiggle room to not be exactly wrong if it isn’t, preserving their ability to say it again next time.
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   This will probably wear off soon. It’s easy enough to say that about his first major strategy speech about Afghanistan If he gets to the point where he’s giving his third major strategy speech about Afghanistan then nobody will expect much. Same thing with health care reform and other issues.
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   It depresses me to think this will probably last long enough for there to be several more speeches like this. From what I’ve heard, the plan includes 30,000 more troops deployed gradually over the next year. To me that doesn’t sound like a temporary surge, it sounds like an escalation for the long haul.

3. Based on my experience watching movies with African-American presidents, he will surprise us all by announcing that a meteor is about to hit the Earth. For this I’m missing Charlie Brown?

   1. Just come over to our place and watch my multiple Charlie Brown DVD’s and (yeah, I still have) tapes.

4. “8:01: This is described as a formal address, and yet he’s not wearing a tux.”

   http://instantrimshot.com/

5. .
   Yeah, this is a tough one to deal with. This is the war we should have stuck with and been fighting instead of getting distracted by the folly of the Iraq invasion. This is the place where we should have been sending troops and support to instead of Iraq. This is, after all, the the country that was the home of operations, the closest thing you could call a home country for a terrorist group, for the Taliban after the 9/11 attack.
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   But six years of neglect and mismanagement have really taken their toll on the situation. Yeah, this is the war that Obama touted as the “right” war and the one we should have been fighting when he was running for office, but the situation is as big a mess in its own way as Iraq was.
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   He’s going to be walking a very fine line tonight to balance the needs of dealing with terrorist around the world, dealing with an American population that’s tired of the wars in the Middle East and dealing with a political opposition party that will likely portray anything short of announcing pulling out all US troops to clear the way for nuclear carpet bombing as being weak on terror and half hearted in fighting this war.
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   I actually feel kinda sorry for Obama here. He’s not in over his head as badly as his critics said he would be, but he’s made enough missteps and slip ups that his inexperience and inability to deal with certain matters has been displayed and then magnified to ridicules levels by some in the press. But this is easily the biggest possibility of stumbling that he has been saddled with. He has to give an almost insanely perfect speech tonight or the critics on all sides are going to rip him apart over this one.

6. I know it makes sense to start off by talking about 9/11 when talking about this topic, but it still gives me bad flashbacks to Bush speeches.

7. .
   Well, they’re going to ding him on that one tomorrow. He started out by praising Islam. The Right won’t let that one go by without crying “appeaser” every third word.

   1. I’m more offended for Muslims over that sort of thing, like they are such fragile minded crazies that you have to keep shoveling assurances their way or they will set their hair on fire and start making that “Not Without My Daughter” yodeling sound. When someone busts up a Klan rally I don’t expect them to spend the first few minutes praising the many cultural achievements of drunken yokels (Banjo playing! World record goiters!).
      .
      But that’s why it’s an altogether good thing I’m not president, I guess.
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      Boy he’s sure taking a long time to get to the part with the meteor.

   2. .
      True, but I think the comment was there more for the critics on the American Left who banged the “Bush’s Crusade” or “Bush’s Holy War” drum way too hard for way too long than it was for the Muslims themselves.

8. .
   He has to, Jason. He has to remind people what they felt that day and why we all agreed that war in Afghanistan was needed. If not… He’s basically asking the American people to just keep fighting the mismanaged and, frankly, somewhat bogus war they tired of under Bush.

   1. It’s mostly that I’m still annoyed with Bush for overusing and misusing the reference so much that it grates on my ears even when it actually is appropriate.

      1. .
         Yeah, I have that problem as well. That’s why I think this really is the hardest balancing act he has had to deal with so far. He has to underscore certain points and truths about the matter, but he cannot come of as sounding like Bush. Not easy when Bush and crew wrapped themselves in 9/11 references in every war speech. He also can’t come off like he’s attacking Bush over the mismanagement of the war even though the facts of what happened have to be addressed at least insofar as being able to say that the mismanagement of the last six years is over with.
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         Very tricky dance and no one is going to be really happy with his speech come the morning.

      2. Bush had nothing on Giuliani – i loved the description of a standard Giuliani senence as “Subject, verb and 9/11″…

9. .
   “Yes, that would be the GOP and Fox News.”
   .
   There’s a difference?

   1. Strange as it seems, FOX News seems to be more to the right these days. They’re turning into the little kid that stands behind the GOP on the playground and says, “Are you gonna take that? You can let him get away with that, I guess, if you wanna look like a wuss.”

      1. MSNBC leans left and CNN stays in the middle.
         I’m tired of all this talk of FOX NEWS THIS and FOX NEWS THAT. Don’t watch it.
         MSNBC caters to liberal points of view. Just watch that instead.

         Joe V.

      2. The point is, Joe, that Faux Noise isn’t a real news organization, it’s a mouthpiece for the extreme right.

10. PAD: 8:25: We could really use some soaring rhetoric. I mean, some of this should be pep talk. We need a “Braveheart” moment.
    .
    That would definitely feel nice right now, but there’s a trade off. The more gung ho, never-say-die he is about it, the harder it will be to pull out. He’s trying to walk the line between saying “we must win this war” and “we’re definitely coming home before too long, no matter what.” We definitely don’t need another “Bring ’em on” moment.

11. .
    “8:25: We could really use some soaring rhetoric. I mean, some of this should be pep talk. We need a “Braveheart” moment.”
    .
    Yeah, well… I said last year that he had a lot of charisma but his skills a speaker were a bit overrated. He works too hard to seem thoughtful, cerebral and calm while forgetting that sometimes emotion and passion go farther than any of those things. He needs to realize that you don’t sway opinions by talking to people like he’s a teacher and we’re his class.

    1. On the other side, there are people waiting to pounce if his speech has too much emotion. Any speech from him that doesn’t have a ton of details gets attacked as fluff.
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       Personally, I like this style. Start off with the policy stuff and then finish on a more inspirational touch.

       1. .
          True, but they’ll say that no matter what. He laid out a lot of facts and figures rather quickly. He could have, and maybe should have, gone for a stronger impact emotionally a little earlier.

       2. Yeah, I can see that.
          .
          This kind of speech overwhelms me, to some degree. I can’t imagine what’d I’d say if I was in his place, so I don’t really feel like I have a good grasp of what the right thing to say is.
          .
          As others have pointed out, Obama must have been a little crazy to have wanted to be President right now.

12. “Let me be clear.” Because…what? He’s been unclear until now?
    .
    That’s a standard Obama line, along with “As we have said all along”. As with most politicians, those lines are, in order, said right before making a vague promise and right before reversing a previous position.

13. .
    Just flipped over to Fox for a few minutes. O’Reilly interviewing Rove for his thoughts on the speech. Anyone with even a shred of intellectual honesty would have wanted to smack the stupid out of Rove over some of his statements. So, of course, O’Reilly loved them.

14. .
    Well, that didn’t take long. Moveon.org is already slamming Obama over this since he’s not pulling the troops out fast enough while Fox picks apart his actions for not being strong enough.

15. As opposed to Bush who basically makes it sound as if God is sitting on his shoulder feeding him the words.
    .
    The difference between a president and a preacher. Which might explain why I could never stand listening to a Bush speech.

16. And now, on to Scrubs.

    They seem to be doing everything they can to say, “Yes, it’s different, but we’re going to ease you into it.”

17. I don’t know if that was a speech that very many are going to find much to love over. It seemed a bit small potatoes after the big build up. Peter was right about needing a bit more uplift. It came far too little far too late and the cadets weren’t impressed (already we have some nimrods attacking the cadets–Christ Mathews called West Point “an enemy camp” for the president. Jesus. Heaven help Obama from some of his supporters.)
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    I do think though that maybe it wasn’t the best choice for a venue, not because the cadets hate their Commander in Chief but just because Obama feeds off a crowd’s adulation and, conversely, always seems needlessly stern and a bit gloomy when said adulation is not there. He reminds me of a college professor who is very very disappointed in the results of the last test.

18. Tonight we watched Obama address the cadets of West Point and, over their shoulder, the American people. I kept asking myself: if I were in the audience did I hear anything worth risking my life for?

    There is a lot in Afghanistan worth risking one’s life for, but Obama sure didn’t summon it.

    In that way, he was frustratingly similar to Bush. He failed, in my opinion, to adequately convey to the American people WHY the sacrifice of American lives and treasure will be worth it or convince them that we will win eventually. This is what frustrated me with Bush, though he was far stronger on the latter point.

    Watching President Obama address the nation, those on the right probably recognized the incongruity of sending additional troops on a difficult mission and setting, at the same time, a very short timetable for their withdrawal. The right doubtless wondered why the Taliban won’t just wait Obama out and move in after he leaves.

    But the political cost of this speech will not come on the right. Obama will get the support of everyone who won’t ever vote for him. But it is with his base on the left that he will be in trouble.

    His volunteers, his backers, his donors have to have watched that speech and asked themselves “why did we win the election?” Obama sounded just like Bush. More articulate, perhaps, but substantively precisely the same.

    1. In response to your last paragraph, Jerome, there were SOME of us who were saying that “Obama sounded just like Bush” all through the Democratic primary campaign. Unfortunately, there were too many who were fooled by Obama’s “charisma” to pay much attention to who was behind the curtain. (I’d also remind people that Obama, as a Senator, was in charge of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs, a position which also entailed oversight of NATO’s operations in a somewhat obscure country called Afghanistan. During his tenure as the Subcommittee Chair, he essentially did nothing.)

19. This is embarassing. I didn’t know there was a televised speech tonight. I’ve only been watching the news occasionally lately. (But don’t worry, it’s just a periodic phase I go through. I’ll go a few months to a year or so of ignoring the news, and then I gradually start watching it more and more until I pay close attention every day for the next few years.
    I didn’t turn the TV on until it was time for Scrubs. It wasn’t until later tonight that I came on here and discovered there’d been a speech. From what I read here, though, I’m not sure I missed much.
    So are you going to tell us your opinion of Scrubs? I’m still trying to decide myself. It still feels scrubsy, even when it’s dealing with new characters.
    I missed a great deal of the first episode, unfortunately. The sound kept blinking out for some reason.

    1. The speech can be found on some of the news sites, but yeah, it won’t really tell much if you’re already up on the news.

       Scrubs will be on Hulu tomorrow, I believe.

       I’m not PAD, but I’ll talk about Scrubs. I thought it felt scrubsy, too. Except there was a little more of JD than I thought there would be, and I don’t think that’s such a great thing. In the last few years the character has basically developed into having a serious mode and a silly mode and very little in between. Tonight was pretty much entirely silly. I’m actually a little more interested in new girl (Lucy, I think) than in JD, since right now it feels like his story has pretty much been told.

20. Joseph W,
    His decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, an odd move for a peace candidate, his failure to close Guantanamo, our continued military presence in Iraq, and his failure to act on liberal priorities like gays in the military and immigration reform, are all sapping his support from those who voted for him.

    For those who constantly brought up Vietnam when it came to Bush’s war efforts, the task of backing a corrupt regime summons the most unpleasant of comparisons.

    Obama looked out of place giving a speech he didn’t believe in. It is becoming apparent his heart is not in the fight. That redistributing wealth is his main priority and that he doesn’t much care about Iraq, Afghanistan or being the Commander-In-Chief at all. he doesn’t seem to have interest in that.
    He seemed like he was reading a communiqué tonight. His focus on pulling out, even as he was going in, reminded one of Bill Clinton defining what the meaning of ‘is’ is.

    This speech will inflame the left and that is the real threat to Obama’s base.

    Even in the health care debate, the under 30 voters are learning that they are targeted — just like the elderly — for special punishment in Obama’s health care bill. When they realize that they must spend $15,000 on average per family for health insurance or face a fine of 2.5% of their income or go to prison, the bill loses its appeal. And, when they find out how shallow the subsidies are (only after they spend 8% of their paychecks if their household income is $45,000 a year and 12% if it is $65,000), they begin to turn off both the bill and the president for whom they were once so enthusiastic.

    1. His decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, an odd move for a peace candidate…
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       Obama’s campaign platform included the de-escalation of the war in Iraq and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. So, no, it’s not odd at all.
       .
       When they realize that they must spend $15,000 on average per family for health insurance…
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       I don’t have time to check your facts right now, and will have to do so later. I’ll simply point out that most families are spending more than that now under the current system, unless of course they qualify for Medicaid.

       1. Really? Most people pay more than 1200 a month just for health insurance? that’s way more than I would have thought and wayyyyy more than I’ve ever had to pay in my life–but I realize I may have just lucked out. Neither Cargill or working for the states of Kansas and North Carolina ever took a bite that bad. I think the last time I had to insure my whole family (1 wife, 3 kids and myself) it cost around $300 a month. That was a few years ago.

       2. Really? Most people pay more than 1200 a month just for health insurance? that’s way more than I would have thought and wayyyyy more than I’ve ever had to pay in my life–but I realize I may have just lucked out.
          .
          Before Marvel signed me on as an exclusive, I was paying well in excess of $1200 for family coverage, yes.
          .
          PAD

       3. .
          “Neither Cargill or working for the states of Kansas and North Carolina ever took a bite that bad. I think the last time I had to insure my whole family (1 wife, 3 kids and myself) it cost around $300 a month. That was a few years ago.”
          .
          Bill, you’re talking about employer supplied insurance coverage. People having to buy their own insurance can easily pay $1500 and upwards a month. About a year and a half ago they were talking about changing our coverage (they fortunately decided not to) to something that no one really liked. Jenn and I started looking up personal insurance options that we could possibly take on our own.
          .
          Holy…
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          Mother…
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          of…
          .
          God…
          .
          To have insurance that covered Jenn, Ian and myself with something even close to the level of coverage we were getting through my job would have cost us somewhere around $1700 a month at best. And that really wasn’t a good coverage plan. We were also told by some carriers that, owing to Jenn’s pre-existing seizure condition, we would either not be given coverage or we would be booted up the cost scale by an additional third or more despite the fact that Jenn has had her problem under control and not had a seizure in almost 15 years.
          .
          That combined with Jenn’s long struggle to get insurance before we were married is what makes her, a person who normally doesn’t like talking politics or being an activist, almost militantly in Obama’s camp when it comes to health care reform.

       4. Really? Most people pay more than 1200 a month just for health insurance?

          They do — or their employers do. Moreover, employers, particularly private-sector employers, are forcing employees to pick up an ever-increasing share of the tab. This is why I am constantly astonished when people state that they are opposed to health care reform because they don’t want to lose what they’ve got. How in the world can people be so ignorant in the information age? (It’s a rhetorical question, and there’s no need to answer it.) The private sector will take away what you have anyway. It’s already happening!

       5. Ok, but when you say that “they do or their employers do” that’s not quite the same. Don’t most people get their health insurance through their employers? So actually most people aren’t paying 15K a year fro health insurance, unless you think that the companies would be giving them that money paid in wages if they canceled the coverage.
          .
          I’m still amazed at how much you are talking about. Checking online here I could still get health insurance for myself, a spouse and 2 kids for anywhere from 300-600 a month, depending on the deductible and copay. As is, I get my own insurance for free, being a state employee–it doesn’t cover everything 100% but I would not expect it to. And I realize that people with pre-existing conditions have a much tougher time.
          .
          So is it that the same insurance I have here would cost that many times more if I lived in New York? (and why would that be?)
          .
          This does make some sense of something PAD said a while back when McCain proposed something like a $300 a month subsidy for health insurance and PAD stated that that would be of little help. That puzzled me since it would have paid for my plan under the most expensive conditions I ever had do do. Is this a regional thing?

       6. Yeah… Now actually study the fine print found in those “300-600 a month” policies that cover a family of four. By the time you get through covering what they won’t cover… Well… Most people would be just a s well of not getting those policies and just sticking the money in the bank.
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          “Ok, but when you say that “they do or their employers do” that’s not quite the same. Don’t most people get their health insurance through their employers? So actually most people aren’t paying 15K a year fro health insurance, unless you think that the companies would be giving them that money paid in wages if they canceled the coverage.”
          .
          I don’t believe he was saying that it is the same thing. It is however an interesting point about the hidden costs of health care though. Most people assume that good coverage is only going to cost you a few hundred a month because that’s what they see taken out of their paychecks. Most people don’t realize how much their employer is picking up for each full time employee that they carry. And realistically, especially in this economy, some employers are struggling almost as much with the costs of the insurance coverage they carry for their employees as their employees would be struggling if the full burden fell upon their shoulders.
          .
          The costs of insurance in most areas is insane.

       7. I don’t even make $15,000 in a year. I don’t even make $10,000.

       8. So actually most people aren’t paying 15K a year fro health insurance, unless you think that the companies would be giving them that money paid in wages if they canceled the coverage.
          .
          No, I don’t think that at all. What I know is that: a) employers are increasingly pushing the costs of this coverage onto their employees and simultaneously switching to plans that cover less and less; and b) small businesses in particular are struggling with the costs of health care coverage, which is of great concern in an economy struggling to begin creating jobs again.
          .
          I’m still amazed at how much you are talking about. Checking online here I could still get health insurance for myself, a spouse and 2 kids for anywhere from 300-600 a month, depending on the deductible and copay.
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          Bill, ditto what Jerry said. What the plans do or don’t cover, and what the deductible and copays are makes a HUGE difference. Check out the details of those plans. I suspect that the cheapest plans are only good if you plan on not having any medical needs.

       9. Don’t most people get their health insurance through their employers?

          Most insured people get insurance through their employers. Most people whose employers don’t offer insurance, either because they are small business or part time or what have you simply don’t have insurance because they can’t afford it.

          So, a young parent in college working a part time job at Wal-mart and another part time job at McDonalds making about $30K a year and is just trying to keep food on the table and a roof over his family’s heads has to choose between half of his income going to medical insurance or being able to meet the expenses that he has every month.

          Most of these people simply hope that they don’t get seriously sick, or fall down any stairs, or get into an auto accident. And, if they do then they go to the ER and get billed thousands of dollars that they can’t even hope to pay.

          These are the people for whom I want a public option.

          Theno

       10. I pay $400 a month for family coverage thru my employer. No where near $1,500 a month.

           Joe V.

       11. I pay $400 a month for family coverage thru my employer. No where near $1,500 a month.
           .
           I’m sure you do. And if your employer ever fires you and your only choice to continue your coverage is via COBRA, you’ll find your costs tripling practically overnight. Let’s hope you don’t have the opportunity to learn I’m right.
           .
           PAD

21. Reading around the Internet no one right or left seems 100% happy with this speech. Some more some less. But this is no doubt a hard subject for Obama. One thing to say that Afghanistan is the good war as senator running for president quite another to be the president sending those troops into a war zone. So in trying to balance politics and nations defense I think it found the grey and somewhat uninteresting middle ground. In baseball he is bunting the runner to second rather than trying to hit the home run.

    Putting aside the timing and delays coming to this point I give Obama credit for standing beside his campaign promises. Now we will see if he is Bush in Iraq or Nixon in Vietnam. Might be long after he leaves office before we have a clear answer.

22. Thing is, his calls for unity may be too little too late. Obama had enormous support when he was elected, both at home and especially abroad. But in his 12 months since election, many of those supporters have been disappointed with both his actions and inactions. Pleading for global unity with the US again, is appealing to the believers-turned-cynics.

    1. Actually, appealing to unity is his best move. Every time he does it he highlights that he’s been willing to work with Republicans while they’ve done nothing but cross their arms and glare back. Polls always show him getting a little boost in bipartisanship ratings when he does that, even from Republican voters.

       1. and Ironically this is an issue where Obama is likely to get more Republican votes in congress than Democratic. Early 2010 primary rhetoric suggests that democratic primary voters are going to be very unhappy with any Democrat that votes to send troops.

23. “Actually, appealing to unity is his best move. Every time he does it he highlights that he’s been willing to work with Republicans while they’ve done nothing but cross their arms and glare back.”

    How has Obama “been willing to work with Republicans” other than talking about it? To working with Red Kennedy on No Child Left Behind to signing campaign finance reform legislation, which the Right loathes to this day, Bush showed he was willing to cross the aisle to get things done, sometimes to his own detriment.
    Even if his agenda is so vastly different, that he can’t do the same, a real “all to unity” would be to give Bush and McCain credit for turning Iraq around with “the surge” or SOMETHING like that.
    But no, he wants to blame all the bad on the “mess he inherited” while ignoring the good he inherited. While many politicians do the same, it is especially disenchanting to see it from one whose very campaign was based on “hope and change”.

    1. “But no, he wants to blame all the bad on the “mess he inherited” while ignoring the good he inherited.”

       Other than probably not finding any stained sheets in the Lincoln Bedroom, I fail to see what possible “good he inherited” Obama ever got from that corporate freeloader Bush, Jr. The USA will likely still be suffering from #43’s near-complete ineptitude for YEARS after Obama’s 2nd term ends.

    2. How has Obama “been willing to work with Republicans” other than talking about it? To working with Red Kennedy on No Child Left Behind to signing campaign finance reform legislation, which the Right loathes to this day, Bush showed he was willing to cross the aisle to get things done, sometimes to his own detriment.
       .
       He’s making the offer. Republicans have not made a legitimate attempt to work with Obama (as Kennedy did with Bush); rather, they oppose him and Democratic initiatives almost as a reflex. (Consider not only the G.O.P.’s tooth-and-nail opposition to even the most uncontroversial and routine of appointments, but the fact that since they lost their majority in the Senate, the Republicans have threatened to filibuster and forced votes for cloture a record number of times, grinding legislative activity to a crawl. Curiously, I hear no reports of “obstructionist Republicans” in the liberal media.)
       .
       And in the end, Kennedy (righly) felt “betrayed” by Bush when W. and his party did not budget for NCLB the funding it required.

       Even if his agenda is so vastly different, that he can’t do the same, a real “all to unity” would be to give Bush and McCain credit for turning Iraq around with “the surge” or SOMETHING like that.
       But no, he wants to blame all the bad on the “mess he inherited” while ignoring the good he inherited. While many politicians do the same, it is especially disenchanting to see it from one whose very campaign was based on “hope and change”.
       .
       The entire point of the Surge was to create breathing room to allow the Iraqi government to coalesce into something that would survive and endure the withdrawal of American forces. That hasn’t happened. Tactically, the Surge is a success but it’s a failure where it really matters.
       .
       But it’s a shame that W. didn’t follow your suggestion: We really could have done without the Bush administration’s constant aspersions to the Clinton years — that’s especially disenchanting to see it from one who campaigned as “a uniter, not a divider”.

       1. .
          “Republicans have not made a legitimate attempt to work with Obama (as Kennedy did with Bush); rather, they oppose him and Democratic initiatives almost as a reflex.”
          .
          Yeah, just look at the health care hassles from earlier this year. The Democrats did make concessions in a number of drafts and put things in the drafts that Republicans said they wanted in the thing or they wouldn’t vote for it. After delaying the process thusly they voted part line against the thing.
          .
          One of the three Republican senators working on a bipartisan health care bill was talking out of both sides of his mouth for a good long while before getting caught on video doing so. Chuck Grassley was “working to pass” a bipartisan bill while telling his constituents that the bill had to be stopped and that if it passed the government would “pull the plug on grandma.”
          .
          (On a hypocrisy note…) It was hilarious how many elected Republicans were outright saying that the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to kill old people, ration health care so that more and more people would die each year and counsel people to end their lives who then declared that it was just beyond the pale for Alan Grayson to say that the Republican plan was, “Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.”
          .
          It was especially hilarious after Republican Whip Eric Cantor held a town hall where he actually told a woman that if her already sick relative (dying of stomach tumors) got really sick and couldn’t handle her medical bills she could always seek out government programs (that she didn’t qualify for) or turn to charitable organizations. That answer kinda did come across as don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.

24. KET,
    “Other than probably not finding any stained sheets in the Lincoln Bedroom, I fail to see what possible “good he inherited” Obama ever got from that corporate freeloader Bush, Jr. The USA will likely still be suffering from #43’s near-complete ineptitude for YEARS after Obama’s 2nd term ends”

    Because you choose not to. Hear abot Iraq lately? No. And it’s because Bush – prodded by people like McCain finally chose the best straategy to let us win. But Obama can’t mention that, because if he mentioned he inherited that success, it wull drive the anti-war, antii-military, anti-Bush crowd nuts. And if he takes credit for it, then he will have to take responsibility for the economic hole he is digging us deeper into. So he says nothing – and a complicit media – even Fox, which has focused most of their energies toward criticizing health care, lets him get away with doing so.

    1. That is such a delusional statement.

    2. .
       “Because you choose not to. Hear abot Iraq lately?”
       .
       Why, yes. Just last week in fact. CNN and MSNBC were discussing how Iraq’s civilian death toll in November was the lowest since war began. Yeah, I know. MSNBC discussing positive news about Iraq. Must completely fly in the face of what you want th world to look like, but reality is what it is.
       .
       Oh, MSNBC last month was also covering the fact that Hillary Clinton was confident that Iraq’s election will happen even if the date “might slip by some period of time”. She even called it a “milestone on the journey that the Iraqis will taking on a full and comprehensive democracy.”
       .
       And, yes, they covered the number of US troops who have been killed each month for months now.
       .
       So, yeah, in the real world we’re actually still hearing about Iraq.

    3. Hear abot Iraq lately? No. And it’s because Bush – prodded by people like McCain finally chose the best straategy to let us win.
       .
       Define “winning.” The Iraqi government still isn’t standing on its own two feet, and Iraqis, Americans, and others are still being killed in factional violence. Doesn’t seem like much of a victory to me.

25. “So, yeah, in the real world we’re actually still hearing about Iraq.”
    Well, I’m GLAD. Very GLAD. I want our troops to do well and I don’t care who reports that, just that it is.
    But the “reality is what it is” and “real world” comments are a bit condescending, especially since nowhere do you state the Big Three (not really anymore, but it’s shorthand) reported anything of significance and I seem to recall headline like “Four U.S. Soldiers Killed” every day in the paper and on news reports every day when Bush was in charge.
    And forget about health care for a moment, which has taken up so much time, effort, focus and political capital of this Administration, jhas Obama mentioned “success” in Iraq as often as he has talked about closing down Gitmo or denounced torture? Or at all? You know, positive, strong commander-in-chief moments? If the answer is yes to any of these I would be happy to see the stats or view a link. But I won’t hold my breath.

    1. “But I won’t hold my breath.”

       Oh, please do.

    2. .
       Jerome, he’s spoken a number of times about Iraq since coming into office, including during his surprise trip there, and he’s spoken each time about how the troops are doing their jobs beyond all expectations and how the work they’re doing is nearing the successful completion that involves turning all responsibilities over to a stable and capable Iraqi authority.
       .
       He’s spoken about success a number of times now. Has he been doing the hallow Bush rhetoric of just saying that we’re going to win, winning is defined by getting the job done, getting the job done is defined by success in Iraq and success in Iraq is defined by winning? No. He’s actually acted like a commander in chief and a statesman rather than a male cheerleader.
       .
       Obvious that’s a bit too subtle for you to understand.
       .
       “But the “reality is what it is” and “real world” comments are a bit condescending,”
       .
       Well, when you’re spending time on Planets Beck and Fox you have to occasionally be reminded that there is in fact a real world out here that has some staggeringly noticeable differences in it. Besides, it’s actually less condescending by far than someone telling others that your version of what they belief is what they actually believe as opposed to, you know, what they actually said they believe.
       .
       But that could just be me.

26. “But I won’t hold my breath.”

    Oh, please do.

    I absolutely KNEW someone was going to have a snide remark when I said that and if I had to bet money on it I would have put it on you, Alan. Thanks for not letting me down by actually having something thoughtful to say.

    Jerry,
    “Well, when you’re spending time on Planets Beck and Fox you have to occasionally be reminded that there is in fact a real world out here that has some staggeringly noticeable differences in it.”

    Here we go with the broad strokes. Yes, I get some news and opinion from Beck and Fox. I also get it from a variety of other sources, from “USA Today” to “The New York Daily News” to “The New York Post”. Believe it or not, sometimes I get a point of view or info I hadn’t thought of before. Even in The Post, believe it or not.
    Take Ralph Peters, one of their military writers. He writes for the Post, so he must just bash Obama, right? Not so much.
    For example, regarding the Afghanistan issue, he said in a recent column that although he had written many times that he thought Obama’s delay in making a decision on troop levels was unforgivable, what he found even more appalling is that the generals didn’t give him a wide variety of options. Instead, they gave him a variation on the same option, which was an increase in troop levels. They didn’t give him the viability of options like what would happen if we reduced troop levels and concentrated them in certain areas and what the cost/benefit of that would be versus more troops. Basically, Obama was given options of an increase of different levels and that’s it.
    Peters said that even if they don’t respect the man, the generals need to respect the office. And that he felt they didn’t do so in this case. And that they should be ashamed.
    I found the column enlightening. Even though it was printed in the Post, I don’t see how anyone could see it as just bashing Obama. It had insight and made me think. Which all good columns/stories should do, even if I don’t agree with all of them.

    1. Glad I didn’t let you down. You always let me down. Never once a positive thought, idea, or response.

    2. .
       “Here we go with the broad strokes. Yes, I get some news and opinion from Beck and Fox. I also get it from a variety of other sources, from “USA Today” to “The New York Daily News” to “The New York Post”.”
       .
       Could have fooled me. That’s not sarcastically said. That’s honestly surprising. I read and watch a lot of news from a lot of sources. When at work I listen to mostly CNN and Fox News on my XM. Well, except for Friday nights. Friday nights belong to Fangoria Radio.
       .
       I point that out because, as someone who gets their news from a lot of sources and checks the original sources when time allows when there is conflicting reports, I simply find it surprising as hëll that someone who says they also do would claim, as you did before, that people are tuning into someone like Beck for “the full story” in the news.
       .
       Any evening I listen to his Fox show where he covers something that I know anything about his comments and “truths” come off as half truths with bits missing that would point to a direction he doesn’t want his story to go, spin, out of context quotations and information, statements that are errors at best and lies at worst and some of the dumbest conspiracy garbage I’ve heard since Lyndon Larouche and the Moonies. The people I know who think that Beck is as you described? People who pretty much watch only Fox and won’t have anything to do with that evil, nasty, liberal MSM.
       .
       So, yeah, between your comments about Beck and your determination to discount others’ statements about their on beliefs and the reasons for those beliefs and your statements about Palin not long ago fail the fact check test but pass the Fox News talking points test… I’m honestly surprised.

27. Jerry Chandler,
    Re: Beck

    You are making it out to seem like I said he was the fount of all knowledge. I never said anything close. The point I was trying toi make is that he – and Fox News – in general seem to be asking questions others aren’t. If you want to argue that Obama hasn’t recived more favorable treatment than any other candidate but especially President in his first year, more than Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush then we’ll simply agree to disagree. But if you do believe that the media haven’t even come close to giving the man a tough interview or press conference yet – which I and many others do – then people who at least ask Who? What? When? Where? and Why? are quite refreshing and appealing. I would LOVE for the Sunday morning shows to have guests on and/or ask questions that completely debunk the ACORN story, Van Jones, etc. The fact that they completely ignore them gives the appearance to many that the MSM is coddling the President.
    And the fact that people from Janeane Garofalo to Chris Matthews to Jimmy Carter attribute any dissent of Obama to racism also pìššëš me off and strikes me as being a bit racist itself.
    Here’s a perfect example of what I’d like see more of. I’m currently doing a project on Al Franken. There is a YouTube clip of him confronting a crowd of Town Hall protestors on health care. Sounds like an explosion waiting to happen, right? But instead of being rude and condescending, Franken listened to them and gave very intelligent responses. The crowd, which started off as angry, listened and respected him back. He didn’t convert everyone and they didn’t change his mind, but it was obvious if you look at it they both learned from each other.
    This was a ten minute clip. And it’s possible I may have missed the news that day – or that week if I was on tight deadline – but I don’t remember seeing this “confrontation” played at length anywhere. Fox likely didn’t play it because it actually makes Franken look statesmanlike and the rest of the media probably didn’t play it because the TownHallers did not come across as rude, loud, uneducated lunatics. It’s a shame, because BOTH parties came off well and that seemingly isn’t considered newsworthy these days.

    1. If you want to argue that Obama hasn’t recived more favorable treatment than any other candidate but especially President in his first year, more than Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush then we’ll simply agree to disagree.
       .
       Can’t speak for Jerry, but I can’t simply “agree to disagree” with you here. This is why:
       .
       http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/09/16/analyst-blames-gravity-for-obamas-mainly-bad-press-now/

       1. I still get that nagging in the back of my head that the GOP set McCain up to lose the election because they knew the next president couldn’t fix the economy in 4 years, and they figured let Obama win, let the economy continue to collapse under him, then just about anybody they toss up against him in 2012 could win on the “Look how much worse things have gotten under my Democratic opposition!” and get a huge boost in votes by voters eager for any kind of “change” from the status quo.

          The media loved Obama because he wasn’t Bush, but they failed to recognize that no one could fix America’s problem quickly. When Obama took office and things didn’t get better immediately, the honeymoon was over.

          Just like the short-sighted corporations than shut down American plants and sent the jobs to pennies-per-hour sweat shops overseas to get their instant profits, now they’re shaking their heads because no one has a job and can afford to buy their products…

          There are no “Quick fixes”, and that’s what the media (and the America people) have forgotten, thanks to our business sector “leaders” who look no farther than “this quarter’s profit report”.

       2. Bladestar observed:
          .
          “Just like the short-sighted corporations than shut down American plants and sent the jobs to pennies-per-hour sweat shops overseas to get their instant profits, now they’re shaking their heads because no one has a job and can afford to buy their products…”
          .
          Very astute observation.

       3. Throughout the first eight months of his term, analysts say his coverage overall is still slightly more positive than negative, by 53 percent to 47 percent, compared to former President George W. Bush’s 64 percent negative coverage and 36 percent positive coverage between January 20 and September 10, 2001.
          .
          It doesn’t talk about Carter, Reagan, or Bush 1 but doesn’t that sentence support the idea that Obama has received more favorable treatment than Bush 2?

       4. It doesn’t talk about Carter, Reagan, or Bush 1 but doesn’t that sentence support the idea that Obama has received more favorable treatment than Bush 2?
          .
          And then came 9/11, at which point negative coverage of Bush not only disappeared, but it became downright unpatriotic to criticize him.
          .
          If, God forbid, there was a terrorist assault on American soil, would the pundits fall in line behind Obama as they did behind Bush? Or would they be declaring that it was all his fault?
          .
          PAD

       5. .
          Declaring that it was all his fault. No question about it.

    2. .
       “then people who at least ask Who? What? When? Where? and Why? are quite refreshing and appealing.”
       .
       I would agree with that if it were not for two points.
       .
       (1) There are a number of others outside of Fox News asking those questions.
       .
       (2) Those questions are meaningless when the questioner is creating bogus facts to pose the questions against. And, especially since Obama took office, that’s what a number of the personalities on Fox News, including on the news portions of the programming, are doing.
       .
       ACORN? Yeah, it would be nice if Beck and the others at Fox News could even get the simple aspects of the story correct. For one thing, despite what every single person on Fox News says, neither ACORN nor anyone employed by ACORN have done anything defined as voter fraud. Voter fraud is when individuals cast ballots despite knowing that they are ineligible to vote, in an attempt to defraud the election system. What occurred by the people that ACORN hired was registration fraud. That is, individuals filled out voter registration forms fraudulently. But, of course, Fox News personalities are not going to report that accurately because “Voter Fraud” implies that ACORN had been behind numerous false votes that were cast for Obama in the election. This is the idea that they play up whenever they mention how ACORN helped “steal” the presidential election or helped “steal” a smaller election that a Republican “should have” won.
       .
       It’s also laughable to even imply that much of this registration fraud could have even become successful voter fraud given that the names on some of the fraudulent forms were those of popular cartoon characters. Somehow, I don’t think that “Mickey Mouse” is having a lot of luck voting.
       .
       Another fact that only gets scant mention of “Full Story” givers Fox News, except by the occasional guest who is more often than not talked/shouted over, is that ACORN reported the registration fraud themselves. ACORN was, by federal election law, required to turn over each and every registration form that they collected. They could not simply throw away forms that they didn’t like or they would have violated federal law. What they were not required to do however was go through the forms they collected, audit them themselves, separate the ones that they thought looked suspicious and tip off the officials that they were turning them over to that those registration forms were fraudulent. This is however exactly what they did. The majority of the registration fraud cases connected to ACORN employees were connected to fraud that ACORN pointed out to the proper authorities.
       .
       Kinda takes the sting out of the whole idea of ACORN as an organization trying to reshape the political landscape and steal elections. So, of course, Fox News ignores that fact whenever possible, even when a guest in a prior segment or show tries to point that out, to give their viewers the “full story” on ACORN and paint the picture that ACORN as an organization set out to steal the 2008 and 2009 elections and had ACORN minions voting multiple times under such hard to detect names as Mickey Mouse, Bart Simpson and Daffy Duck.
       .
       On the “Voter Fraud” story a lot of other news agencies looked at it, decided that there wasn’t a whole lot of there there, pointed out the facts and moved on. It’s honestly ridicules that Fox News has distorted this story to the level it has.
       .
       Take the politics away from this a moment and shift it to another subject that is not hypothetical in the least. Do you consider Walmart, Best Buy, Target, K-Mart and Sears to be criminal organizations that are, from the top down, guided by a policy of theft? Well, if you apply the Fox News ACORN standard you are.
       .
       I have friends who work at each of those companies and I years ago worked for K-Mart. Some of them work for loss prevention. Two officers I work with now worked at two of those companies in their loss prevention departments. Each and every one of them have stated that employee theft is a year round issue and the guys who work at/worked at Sears and Best Buy have flat out stated that there were certain times of the year when the employee theft was a bigger financial drain on their local stores’ profits than the theft by customers and I can say the same for the K-Marts I worked in and around. Each of those organizations hired people from the local community, and in periods such as the holiday season hired a lot of additional part-time help, to work for them. In all cases they hired a few bad eggs who would rather take illegal shortcuts to get extra cash/what they want than to do the job honestly and get paid what they agreed to getting paid. Those employees were caught and turned over to the local authorities to be prosecuted. I have never in my life seen a large group of people who looked at those scenarios and declared that Walmart, Best Buy, Target, K-Mart, Sears or another large organization was in fact criminal organization that, based on the bad employees that they themselves caught and turned over to the authorities, should be prosecuted for theft as a company as a whole. Well, at least not until I watched Fox News.
       .
       So you’re stuck in the position of admitting that the Fox News “full story” on ACORN and the drum they still bang on about voter fraud and stolen elections connected to ACORN is so much partisan spin and garbage or you better be consistent and start to protest the fact that the evil, liberal, just part-of-the-story MSM is not demanding investigations into organizations like Walmart, Best Buy, Target, K-Mart and Sears for their years of theft and illegal activities.
       .
       Van Jones? Saw coverage in places other than Fox News. Saw coverage on all three major networks and on the other cable channels. They all covered that he had some less than great moments in his past, but they also showed that some of the Fox News generated garbage over some of his past comments were the result of ending quotes a sentence or two early or starting them a sentence or two late. You know, kinda like what Fox News just got busted for doing again by cropping the quote they used.
       .
       Comedy Central Scoops Network News on Climate-Gate Scandal
       .
       http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,578990,00.html
       .
       ABC didn’t cover it. CBS didn’t either. And NBC apparently wouldn’t go near it.
       .
       The network news broadcasts have ignored a growing scandal over evidence of a potential climate cover-up — and now they’ve even been scooped by the fake news at Comedy Central.
       .
       “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” produced its “reporting” on Climate-gate Tuesday night, when Stewart quipped, “Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh, oh, the irony!”
       .
       Wow. Even Jon Stewart is on the side of the Fox News pundits. They even showed the video of Jon saying this on several of their programs over the last two days. Too bad they lied and lived up to their critics description of “Fixed news” yet again.
       .
       Jon’s full quote.
       .
       [Stewart sarcasm on] “Oh for f**k’s sake! Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. OH. OH the irony. The iro—ny. [Stewart sarcasm off] Actually, the real story isn’t quite that sensational.”
       ……
       “Now, does it disprove global warming? No, of course not.”
       .
       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgPUpIBWGp8
       .
       Wow. They left a bit there. they also included captions on Fox News clips showing Jon saying their cropped quote that described him as now being or joining the climate change deniers and describing how he was attacking Al Gore. But you can see by just a quick look at Jon’s full statement that he didn’t quite say what they portray him as having said and that he is not agreeing with the climate change deniers.
       .
       Guess they’ll be blaming this one on the same screw up that caused their recent footage of the Fox Promoted rallies to get spliced with footage of older rallies to back the Fox News story of their being way more people there than official sources and other media outlets were saying there was.
       .
       Jerome: “And the fact that people from Janeane Garofalo to Chris Matthews to Jimmy Carter attribute any dissent of Obama to racism also pìššëš me off and strikes me as being a bit racist itself.”
       .
       Okay, that is, to be charitable, a severe exaggeration. Mathews and Carter have attributed some, and in MHO occasionally too much, criticism to racism. Both, especially Mathews, have also stated that there is legitimate policy criticisms that can be leveled at Obama. Off those three only Garofalo has stated that all criticism of Obama is based on his race and the racism of the critics. And Keith Olbermann should have been taken to task in a major way for letting that one fly by and greeting it only with a light chuckle.
       .
       And, again, when the people at and in charge of a lot of these protest rallies to stop carrying signs that show Obama as an African witch doctor, read “Go Back to Kenya” or “go Back to Africa” or include other images or wording that depends only on Obama’s race they might have an easier time of not getting lumped in with the extreme idiots. Yeah, that may be a little harder to do with larger rallies, but some of the rallies with smaller groups still have a lot of those things in the mix. Of course, it’s especially hard to get rid of that garbage when one of the people circulating some of that imagery is Dr. David McKalip, founder of the anti-reform group Doctors For Patient Freedom and a regular Tea Bag Party participant. Oops.
       .
       And the Fox News “Full Story” as they ask “Who? What? When? Where? and Why?” since the speech that was the original topic of this thread has been equally laughable.
       .
       Jerome: “Here’s a perfect example of what I’d like see more of. I’m currently doing a project on Al Franken. There is a YouTube clip of him confronting a crowd of Town Hall protestors on health care. Sounds like an explosion waiting to happen, right? But instead of being rude and condescending, Franken listened to them and gave very intelligent responses. The crowd, which started off as angry, listened and respected him back. He didn’t convert everyone and they didn’t change his mind, but it was obvious if you look at it they both learned from each other.
       .

       This was a ten minute clip. And it’s possible I may have missed the news that day – or that week if I was on tight deadline – but I don’t remember seeing this “confrontation” played at length anywhere.”
       .
       I did. I saw it on CNN and MSNBC that week. The networks’ nightly news casts didn’t really cover it that I saw though. MSNBC was actually the first place I saw the thing and they played the clip as an example of how these town halls could go right and be good things when both sides actually discussed the matters at hand. Even Keith Olbermann, Keith freakin’ Olbermann, used it to discuss how there were reasonable and open minded people in both sides of the debate.
       .
       So, yeah, got covered.

       1. Excellent post, Jerry. Pretty much proves that Faux Noise are a bunch of fauxing liars. Anyone who believes them is pretty much on the lower end of the evolutionary scale, and soon doomed to extinction.

       2. .
          Don’t complement me too fast, Alan. you might not like me in other discussions down the road.
          .
          I’m dissecting Fox News here because Jerome brought them up as a whole for his “full story” comments and also cited documented liar Sean Hannity and professional mental case Glenn Beck as a part of that discussion. Should the discussion go in another direction in another thread I can guarantee that you would likely find my comments on, say, MSNBC less to your liking.
          .
          Why do you think I stresses “Keith Olbermann, Keith freakin’ Olbermann” bit the way I did? MSNBC has quite a few distortion issues itself. Olbermann, as amusing as he can sometimes be, won’t hesitate to spin something just mildly innocuous into a dámņìņg piece against the Right. For all of Olbermann’s bluster about Beck using Nazi analogies and comparing Obama to Hitler and the Nazis; Olbermann did the same thing when Bush was in office. And even if Beck and Hannity rarely have a serious representative of the other side on these days or simply talk over them when they do… That’s still head and shoulders over Olbermann. He never has the other side on. All of his guests are there to be his echo chamber.
          .
          Maddow is (surprisingly) better about that stuff, but she still has her own issues as well. And given that MSNBC’s primetime lineup is basically those two all night long…
          .
          MSNBC is also the channel that had the most hosts and guests who, during that asinine monkey cartoon flap, insisted that the only interpretations was racist and/or that the monkey was Obama and the cartoon called for his assassination. MSNBC was also the cable news channel that ran with some off the unproven/early Bush rumors as fast as they could get them on the air.
          .
          It’s also the news channel that went very much for Obama and spun anything Hillary did in the worst light possible.
          .
          I know for a fact that many poster here have praised Olbermann often and right up through the early part of this year. Olbermann is no where near the snake oil salesman that Hannity is and no one at MSNBC is anything close to the batshit crazy lunatic that Beck is, but you can’t really cast too many stones at Fox when you praise MSNBC and its primetime coverage/anchors.

       3. And this is post demonstrates why Jerry’s opinions matter more than most.

28. Bill Myers,
    “Can’t speak for Jerry, but I can’t simply “agree to disagree” with you here. This is why:”

    Bill, the link you provide shows Obama has received harsher coverage than in his First 100 Days. However, the end of it sort of proves my point that he has received far preferable treatment than his predecessors – or at least Bush 43.

29. Could it be that maybe he’s gotten preferable treatment because maybe, just maybe, he hasn’t done any of the things that would lead to the harsher treatment George W Bush received?

    1. Journalists should not give “preferential treatment” to a candidate or politician regardless of whether they happen to agree with them. Edward r Murrow would look at these clowns and weep.
       .
       I’m not talking about the hardworking journalists in the increasingly smaller markets where you still have to spend more time investigating a story, as opposed to just looking over what others have discovered and then making a grand conclusion of what the public should think about it. Punditry has its place. It’s a pity though that the pundits are now the face of journalism.
       .
       I don’t want ANY politician to get preferential treatment, even if I agree with them. Good grief, why would anyone?

       1. .
          Bill, I don’t think that Sean was advocating preferential treatment as much as he was not wording his response very well. I’d tend to give him the benefit of the doubt since he has expressed quite the opposite POV any number of times before.
          .
          Either way though, I do agree with you that no one in the news end of the news media should be giving a POTUS anything remotely like preferential treatment no matter the political stripe of the reporter or the POTUS. But I would like to see the parameters of that study and the details as to what it includes and what defined “positive” and “negative” coverage.
          .
          There were a number of stories right after Bush took office, as just one example, that covered the controversy of the Supreme Court ruling. Were these counted as “negative coverage” of Bush? Also, did they count editorial articles as news? The ratio of left of center editorial writers and syndicated columnists was a bit higher in the late 90’s and early 00’s than now if several news studies are to be believed.
          .
          Further, going back to the “what defined “positive” and “negative” coverage” point, I would be interested to see if the coverage of Bush by conservative leaning individuals who complained that he wasn’t being conservative enough got counted as “negative” coverage of Bush. While I have seen left of center news personalities discussing how Obama has not been going left enough, it is not quite as critical or angry as some of the right leaning personalities who were complaining that Bush wasn’t going hard right enough or going hard right as fast as they wanted him to.
          .
          I may be a bit nit picky here, but I’m also this way with studies that favor the left. I’ve been a skeptic about these things parameters ever since one news organization did a study on pro-wrestling during the pop culture boom of the late 90’s. The report stated that, amongst other things, there were some ridicules figure like 100+ sexual acts performed by the wrestlers per hour of television viewed. Now, as much as even I would admit that they were upping the titillation factor with the Diva’s and a few storylines were a bit less than tasteful, I found that number a little wild. It turned out that part of the parameters that defined sexual contact in the study was prolonged contact of exposed skin between two people and motions that could be defined as fondling, caressing or stroking another person.
          .
          Kinda guaranteed the study would be skewed. I’ve since found a number of news studies on lots of topics that are similarly flawed whether it was intentional or not.

       2. .
          Uhm…
          .
          “… there was some ridiculous figure…”
          .
          Curse you, Firefox… You fail me again!

       3. Hey, it can’t help you if you use a perfectly good word in the wrong way!
          .
          I agree that it pays to be suspicious of these studies–for one thing, it may count two widely disparate statements as equally critical. “Bush is a blood drinking monster.” gets the same score as “Obama is too willing to work with Republicans.”
          .
          Where I would part from some of my conservative friends is in thinking that this will help Obama very much in the future–some of the pundits have embarrassed themselves. Anytime Chris Wallace praises Obama you have to wonder if he’s getting a tingle down his leg. Conversely, if Wallace actually finds fault with Obama it suddenly seems much more significant than it should.
          .
          The mainstream media still hasn’t caught on that we are in a new world of information and their role as the gatekeepers has diminished to almost nothing. Ignoring stories just allows them to fester and become greater than they would otherwise have.

       4. .
          I think you mean Chris Matthews with the leg thing.
          .
          Now… You’re probably using that line as a bit of a joke, but I’ve really come to hate that reference. A lot if people use it to paint a picture of bias and, frankly, that line wasn’t and isn’t anything of the kind. In the full context of the discussion he had it in, the evening’s discussions and events and his career it was just a comment about Obama’s combination of charisma and his ability to play off of a crowd while giving a speech.
          .
          Matthews is a life long political junkie. He gets a little too excited about some things political. One of the things he sometimes gets goofy over is seeing anyone new or newish come onto the scene that has that “it” factor or watching an old master work their magic. I’ve seen him speak in much the same way about Reagan’s abilities to command an audience. Several times, even before his death, Matthews talked about Reagan’s abilities in a kind of awestruck reverence.
          .
          To throw that around as proof of Matthews’ bias or as MSNBC’s bias for the left is as annoyingly stupid as, just to completely confuse everyone here, my least favorite Beck criticism quote.
          .
          I hate it when people bring up his fantasizing about how he could kill Michael Moore. Olbermann and Randi Rhodes both like to bring it up every so often when adding up Beck’s moments of insanity or his “calls for violence” against Democrats. Thing is, I was listening to Beck the morning he said that. He wasn’t saying anything of the kind. He was questioning the point of those stupid little “What Would Jesus Do” bands and did his shtick were he had his internal monologue debating murdering Moore before deciding that, hey, he can’t do that because of his WWJD wrist band. He was kinda making fun of those silly wrist bands.
          .
          Same thing here. Neither quote has been reported or used by other people who have an ax to grind and both quotes kinda bug the šhìŧ out of me when otherwise honest people use them as a serious criticism of either guy.

30. Jerry,
    “So, yeah, got covered.”
    Well, I’m glad.

31. Jerry Chandler,
    Jerome: “And the fact that people from Janeane Garofalo to Chris Matthews to Jimmy Carter attribute any dissent of Obama to racism also pìššëš me off and strikes me as being a bit racist itself.”
    .
    Okay, that is, to be charitable, a severe exaggeration. Mathews and Carter have attributed some, and in MHO occasionally too much, criticism to racism. Both, especially Mathews, have also stated that there is legitimate policy criticisms that can be leveled at Obama. Off those three only Garofalo has stated that all criticism of Obama is based on his race and the racism of the critics. And Keith Olbermann should have been taken to task in a major way for letting that one fly by and greeting it only with a light chuckle.
    .
    Okay. I don’t watch Matthews much. But the one time I did in the past few months, he asked four pundits if he thought race was the dominant factor in criticism of Obama. Only one said yes, and he responded, “I’m with you.”
    And unless you have exculpatory footage I didn’t see, his “report” on people lining up to buy Palin’s book, were blatant race-baiting.
    After his colleague noted it was a “very white” crowd, Matthews reiterated her point, called the group “monochromatic – not that there’s anything wrong with that!” and said “there seems to be some sort of tribal thing going on”.
    Can you imagine if, say, Hannity, had talked about a predominantly black crowd lining up at a book signing for Obama being “monochromatic”? And said tere seems to be some sort of tribal thing going on”? He would likely be out of a job today.

    1. .
       Can’t say that I saw either of those. I did find the Palin book signing video online (you slightly mangled the quote and that did make it harder to find) but haven’t been able to watch it yet. Sorry, but I’m watching the live stream of Monster Madhouse. One must have his priorities in order here…
       .
       All joking aside, I don’t watch Matthews as much as I did years ago. He has become seemingly more bitter and partisan of late and he is prone to going to the extreme in the last few years in ways that the Matthews of old never would. While it does sadden me a bit that he would sink that low of late, it somehow doesn’t surprise me the way it might once have done.

       1. Right, right, Mathews not Wallace….shows how much I pay attention to the talking heads these days.
          .
          Look, I don’t think Mathews actually gets a tingle in his leg every time Obama speaks and if he does it’s of more concern to Mrs Mathews than it is to me. My point though is that such outbursts have limited his effectiveness. Can you imagine Edward R Murrow ever uttering something so fatuous? A smart journalists would have kept that to himself. The fact that he didn’t tells us something about either Mathews, the state of journalism, or both.
          .
          And it encourages people to say equally gobsmackingly stupid things–like when Newsweek editor Evan Thomas was on Mathews’ show and said of Obama “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”
          .
          Mathews response- “What are you smoking? Jesus, don’t you know we’re on the air?”
          .
          No, actually he said “Yeah.”
          .
          Not to pick on Mr Thomas, who has enough trouble (Has ever a magazine faded as fast as Newsweek?) but you do the crime you do the time and stupid statements will follow you. That’s why they’re stupid.

       2. .
          That’s another thing that he’s started doing more and more these days. there are times when I’m not sure he’s more than half listening to what’s being said to him and he just does the “Yeah” and “Right” thing while people are speaking. It comes off sounding bad and looking bad.
          .
          Keep on mind that I’m not saying that he didn’t agree with Thomas here. He may well have. I’ve just seen him phoning it in a lot more often lately while setting up his next segment or trying to get the video that he wants on into the conversation.
          ….
          ….
          EVAN THOMAS: Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn’t felt that way in recent years. So Obama’s had, really, a different task We’re seen too often as the bad guys. And he – he has a very different job from – Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We’re not just parochial, we’re not just chauvinistic, we’re not just provincial. We stand for something – I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God. He’s-
          .
          MATTHEWS: Yeah.
          .
          EVAN THOMAS: He’s going to bring all different sides together. It’s a very different-
          .
          MATTHEWS: Can he – well, here’s Ronald Reagan. Let’s take a look, a little Friday night nostalgia. Here he is speaking about peace and reconciliation at Normandy back 25 years ago. Let’s listen.
          .
          RONALD REAGAN: But we try always to be prepared for peace, prepared to deter aggression, prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms, and, yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union so together we can lessen the risks of war now and forever.
          .
          MATTHEWS: Let’s talk about the difference. He was talking about the evil empire, trying to reconcile with the people of Russia and the Soviet Union, but not the country. Barack Obama the other day was saying, yesterday, that we don’t have an enemy out there per se. We have people who choose extremism, but Islam’s not our enemy. That’s not the evil empire.
          .
          EVAN THOMAS: But Reagan did it with a very – for the first term it was a clenched fist. I mean, we ramped up the cold war before we ramped it down. We built up our military. We – all of this D-day stuff was about war. That was about fighting.
          .
          MATTHEWS: Right.
          .
          EVAN THOMAS: Reconciliation only after the fighting. That’s not – Obama’s not doing that. Obama – we’ve had our fighting. Obama is trying to sort of tamper everything down. He doesn’t even use the word terror. He uses extremism. He’s all about let us reason together. I think he has a much tougher job, frankly, because-
          .
          MATTHEWS: What’s his shtick? Reagan had the United States arms race, winning the arms race. And we had the threat of high frontier, we were going to beat the Soviets at technology.
          .
          EVAN THOMAS: I don’t think he has – his shtick is he’s the teacher. He’s the teacher. He is going to say, ‘now, children, stop fighting and quarreling with each other.’ And he has a kind of a moral authority that he – he can – he can do that-
          .
          MATTHEWS: If there’s a world election between him and Osama Bin Laden, he’s running a good campaign.
          ….
          ….
          I have no idea from that exchange if he was paying attention or not. I’ve seen him of late do the one word bit with people he completely disagrees with and make a point that really does come off like he wasn’t listening to half of what the other person was saying.
          .
          Hëll, if I wanted to watch discussions like that I would just video tape my wife trying to talk to me while I’m watching a UFC PPV.

       3. You should be careful about that. You yell “YES!” as Seth Petruzelli single handedly destroys his own promotion along with the myth of Kimbo Slice…and you end up two weeks later with the ugliest curtains in God’s green earth hanging in your living room.

       4. .
          Actually it was Henderson VS Bisping and we ended up with a ton of stuff for the house that I don’t remember ever talking about getting.

    2. .
       There is one thing with your comments above that still don’t work.
       .
       “And the fact that people from Janeane Garofalo to Chris Matthews to Jimmy Carter attribute any dissent of Obama to racism also pìššëš me off and strikes me as being a bit racist itself.”
       .
       As dumb as Matthews’ “I’m with you.” comment was, that doesn’t change the fact that he has said in a number of conversations with guests that some criticism of Obama and of Obama’s policies is legitimate and not based on racism. This is, after all, the same guy who was critical of Obama’s economic decisions back in February and described the flustered looking Obama by saying, “He seems like Barney Fife to me.”
       .
       He’s been critical of Obama. He’s had guests who were critical of Obama that he did not label as racists or claim that their criticisms of Obama were based on Obama’s skin color.
       .
       I wish that you could supply a source or an exact quote. I do remember some exchanges close to what you describe, but much of the comments focused on specific events and specific things in those event as such as what they discussed here.
       .
       http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32895753/ns/msnbc_tv-hardball_with_chris_matthews/
       .
       “MATTHEWS: Well, let‘s quote some of the signs. These clowns that bring these signs out—and they have a right to, free speech. They have a point of view. Kathleen, here‘s the point of view. “The zoo has an African, and the White House has a lying African,” “Undocumented worker,” with a picture of the president there —by the way, which is the logical conclusion of these people who say he wasn‘t born here. He wasn‘t sworn in as an American, so I guess he‘s here illegally, he ought to be deported, according to their logic.”
       …
       …
       MATTHEWS: So the idea that Barack Obama gets 10 percent of the white vote in Alabama, 11 percent of the white vote in Mississippi, 14 Louisiana, and the rest of the country, he gets 43 percent, doesn‘t that tell you? And by the way, this birther nonsense, that he wasn‘t born here…
       .
       PARKER: Right.
       .
       MATTHEWS: … is a Southern thing. In the North, 93 percent of people say he was born here and know it.
       .
       PARKER: Yes. I‘m not going to defend ignorance.
       .
       MATTHEWS: So why are Southerners saying he wasn‘t born in America if it‘s not an ethnic thing?
       .
       PARKER: I agree with you. I…
       .
       MATTHEWS: Why are they saying it?
       .
       .
       And so on. I can’t find the exchange (and I’ve been looking on and off since you posted the above) you’re referring to and there is no blanket statement by Matthews that I’ve been able to find where he, as you say he did, attributes any dissent of Obama to racism. I can’t even find conservative blogs that back that claim. Well, I can, but they neither give a full quote or source anything.
       .
       If you can provide proof that Matthews has said that any “dissent” or criticism of Obama (rather than just specific examples or protests) is due to racism please do so. Until then, you claim that he did so is, to be extremely charitable, a severe exaggeration.

32. Matthews does seem to be much more bitter anymore and absolutely obsessed with race, I don’t know what happened. He and his brother Jim are from near Philly and he used to be such a happier, more optimistic guy – or at least he gave that imprssion in a successful manner.

33. Jerry Chandler,
    When I was referring to ACORN, I meant media coverage – or lack thereof, of the videos showing the actors portraying a pimp and a prostitute and claiming to want to smuggle underage girls for their “sex business” and ACORN members actually assisting them.

    1. .
       Okay….
       .
       So the coverage of that on ABC, MSNBC, CNN and NBC that I saw don’t count?
       .
       There may well have been even more coverage then they ultimately did have had certain events not taken place as well. CNN for example actually had James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles set to come on their shows and talk about it, but they (O’Keefe & Giles) decided that they weren’t going to come on and pulled on no show on CNN. That was right after a part of their story (their claim that they were never turned away from so much as one ACORN office) ran into a little snag by the release of police reports from Philadelphia and San Diego showing that other ACORN offices had in fact turned them away and made reports to the authorities. Moreover, it turned out that there was also evidence that that they had been turned down in LA as well.
       .
       Fox News – September 13, 2009 – Eric Shawn: “Were there some that refused your offers, that actually did not — were not willing to cooperate?”
       .
       O’KEEFE: “No — in none of the facil — [laughs] none of the facilities kicked us out. That’s a lie.”
       .
       Oops.
       .
       Moreover, it turned out that there was also evidence that that they had been turned down in LA as well.
       .
       Oh, and I did like the spin that “Full Story” Fox News added to the story after these facts started coming out. After ducking out of appearances on other networks one of the filmmakers was asked by that bastion of honesty Hannity about the rumors in the MSM that they had been turned out and not helped repeatedly at various ACORN offices. Of course they denied these “rumors” so all was good in Fox News land. Well, for a little while at least.
       .
       I’m honestly not sure what you want out of this one, Jerome. Story got covered by networks other than Fox News, some aspects of the filmmakers’ and the Fox News version of events turned out to be lies, ACORN fired the two part time employees who didn’t turn the idiots away for violating policy and then the story went away.
       .
       The story was covered from the beginning by the other networks, Jerome. I know the various Fox News personalities like to keep telling their viewers that no one else is covering these things, but it, like a lot of stuff they’ve promoted in the last year, just isn’t true.

34. Jerry,
    I’ll see if I can find the quote – though I hope you’ll agree the comments he made during Palin’s book signing were and are indefensible.
    In the meantime, I just came across this from Ted Rall about Obama’s speech:
    “”It was a disaster. Like Bush, he didn’t have anything new to say–just more of the same. There’s no end in sight, no point to the carnage to come, and still no reason to be in Afghanistan. Obama reminds me of Nazi Germany. Here’s how: Even at the bitter end, the Germans were using trains they needed to transport troops to the front for the Holocaust instead. It was pure insanity! The U.S. is dead broke, possibly on the way out, just like the USSR–and we’re expanding an optional war? What the hëll is wrong with Obama? What the hëll is wrong with us for putting up with him?”

    1. .
       Oh yeah, I did find his book signing transcript while looking for the other one. Even in full context that one comes off as asinine. It also comes off as partisan gamesmanship and hypocrisy.
       .
       It’s a little partisan gamesmanship because, gee, the last time I looked at voter breakdowns for last years election (or any other) you had a lot more whites than blacks voting Republican. When you look at the demographic breakdown of the hard Right core of the party you have even less blacks identifying themselves as Republican/conservative voters. So, really, who the hëll does he think is going to be lining up for her book?
       .
       It’s also doubly hypocritical in that he hasn’t taken pains to make that observation about other book signings or appearances by political figures. Go back and find some video footage of some of the Clintons’ stops for their books. Just because of where they sometimes were the footage was of mostly white crowds. He’s also never made that type of observation about any of Sharpton’s appearances that weren’t related to an active protest. If the point isn’t worth mentioning or is in fact meaningless there, then it’s pretty dámņëd reasonable to assume that it isn’t worth mentioning or is in fact meaningless here.
       .
       It’s also a meaningless observation given that Palin is such a polarizing political figure. You are not going to get a true sampling of the Republican Party’s demographics by pointing to her fans at a book signing any more than you would get a true sampling of the Democratic Party’s demographics by looking at the crowds that turn up for an equally polarizing figure on the left.
       .
       And even in the context of the conversation they were having it looked liked an unhealthy fixation on race at best and a desperate attempt to create a racial issue that wasn’t contextually there to begin with.
       .
       Look, I’m not going to defend the one side against the other here when there’s nothing to defend, Jerome. I’m not going to declare that the Left is as pure as the driven snow and the Right is full of evil people. My only thing here is that I grew tired a long time ago of fake news, generated outrage, political hackery by “news” organizations and people using partial quotes and their own description of events to paint pictures that don’t quite match up to reality.
       .
       I also like to see what things look like when you boil them down to just the facts.
       .
       Both of the Fox News generated ACORN “scandals” aren’t worth the coverage that Fox News has given them and they’re certainly not the stories that Fox News is desperately trying to spin them into.
       .
       Fox News personalities can breathlessly recount the voter registration charges files against ACORN employees as some sort of dámņìņg evidence all they want. It’s pretty dámņëd meaningless when the simple facts are that ACORN themselves flagged the suspect registration forms themselves and fingered the people who did it.
       .
       They can drool all over themselves all they want about the videos you mentioned, but the simple fact is that the people who took the videos lied about the details of the events, they actually ran across more ACORN employees who refused to help them and even called the police than they did idiots who played along with them and that ACORN terminated the employees for violating policy.
       .
       As a side note – I also found that story troubling for a different reason. As much as I wanted to smack the stupid out of the employee when I read about the subject, I started to actually wonder if she might have been just screwing with the people when I saw the videos.
       .
       Here’s two collage age white kids walking into the place dressed like an 80’s hair band groupie and the worst stereotype of a black pimp from a 70’s blacksploitation flick talking about pimps, prostitutes, the sex trade, hiding income and wanting to do it all real quiet like because the Vanilla Ice Huggy Bear wants to run for office in the near future. Yeah…
       .
       Combine that with the fact that one of the ACORN employees in the thing almost looks like she’s laughing while talking half the time and the fact that when challenged about the edits in their film, some of which fall right in the middle of sentences or remove sentences from what’s being said, the filmmakers said that they would release the full, original and unedited versions of the tapes. Strangely, they haven’t even kept that promise to Fox News.
       .
       Very stupid actions on the part of the employee either way here, but equally stupid actions by the filmmakers as well.
       .
       I also think that the “climategate” scandal (can we please retire the stupidity of gluing “gate” onto everything) is being overplayed by Fox News. I agree that the scientists who were involved in anything related to trying to suppress data, keep data from getting out in FOI requests or throwing away baseline data should lose their jobs and be denied any future work on the matter that is in any way related to grants or data connected to government funded work. I agree that any and every piece of work with their name on it should be checked, rechecked and checked again.
       .
       But the simple facts of the thing are that they are a small handful amongst the thousands of scientists doing this work. Apply the Fox News logic to something that you’re not politically or ideologically inclined to agree with them about and see how fast the logic falls apart. Ever read a news story about a ring of crooked cops getting busted before? Under the Fox News logic used here that would mean that all cops are crooked. Ever read about some corporate bean counters in a major company getting busted for cooking the books? By Fox News logic that would mean that every bean counter in that company (or even everywhere) is crooked and keeping two sets of books. Ever read about a Republican Congressman getting busted for illegal activities or getting caught cruising the mens room for some action? Well, under Fox News logic…
       .
       I think Fox News as whole damages its own cause here when both their pundits and their “serious” news reporters take other things from the emails out of context or deliberately and repeatedly misquote lines to tailor them to the story they want to tell. There is a legitimate story here. It’s just that many at Fox News can’t seem to help themselves when it comes to adding their own special “facts” to the story or spinning other people’s quotes out of context to lie about what they said ala the Daily Show clip.
       .
       But you know what? That kind of dissection of a story on my part isn’t limited to looking like I’m defending the left. And, yeah, I pointed out that your claims about what Matthews said were exaggerations at best, but I’ve done the same in the other direction.
       .
       Up above when talking to Bill Mulligan I mentioned a Beck “quote” that I dislike because a number of people on the left could condemn Beck quite powerfully just using the many things he has actually said and done. There’s no need to crop a quote and misrepresent what he actually said to add fuel to the fire. And you’ve gotta know by now that I think Beck is a scumbag, but you don’t do that and try to pass it off as the truth.
       .
       I have my issues with Palin, but some of my contributions to discussions on this blog about her have been the providing of links to debunk some of the claims being made against her in a thread and by the more liberal members of the media.
       .
       When a number of MSNBC commentators were overplaying the Cheney hunting accident and the same was going on here; I looked at the facts, sorted the facts from the early reported rumors, looked at the matter as rationally as I could and stated here and elsewhere that the matter was being overdone and overplayed and there really was no there there.
       .
       God nows you can’t think I’m a fan of Don Rumsfeld, but I’ve defended him on certain matters based on the facts of the matter VS the spin and VS my first inclination to want to believe the worst of him.
       .
       While I disagreed with some of the attacks on Cindy Sheehan by the Right and really found the Conservative media reported lies about her distasteful; I was one of the people who, even on this blog, said she was a bit nuts and that her demands that Bush meet with her were garbage with no leg to stand on and that her antics were ridiculous.
       .
       Hëll, I flat can’t stand Bill O’Reilly. The man is an ášš who uses his show to do nothing more than attack and smear people way too often. Well, when people here were attacking him over his stand that the illegal immigrant who was arrested driving drunk, not turned over to immigration and then killed a girl a few months later while driving drunk… Guess who here stood up and said that, yeah, he was an ášš and he was hurting his own cause, but the facts of the matter were pretty much on his side.
       .
       Ðámņ, Jerome, I’ve even defended Bush a few times.
       .
       And while I may slag on people like Beck and Hannity more often than their counterpoints on the left due to their more brazen and egregious manipulations of the truth; the fact of the matter is that I’ve taken people like Randi Rhodes, and Keith Olbermann to task more than a few times as well.
       .
       I don’t care about who is in power and who isn’t. I just want to look at the facts of any story and see what the merits of it are based just on the facts and minus all the spin and wishful thinking of the partisans on either side.
       .
       When I argue things; do I always argue them from a purely neutral position? Well, no, not really. I have my biases too. But I do try to get past them when I’ve jumped in feet first and found myself defending a position that’s not really, honestly defensible.
       .
       There’s a simple trick I do as well these days that I learned years ago but didn’t really start doing regularly until a few years ago. If I’m arguing a position and I suddenly realize that I might be arguing it because I want it to be right rather than it really being right… I flip the scenario. Would I feel as strongly about my argument if it was political person A (who I dislike) rather than political person B (who I like) at the center of the matter. Or I sometimes take the politics completely out of it like I did when discussing the ACORN/Walmart analogy before. Interestingly, even if you thought you agreed with an issue, that sometimes shines a whole other light on the matter and makes you realize that you’re siding with a partisan position of your liking more than you are siding with the actual facts of the matter and the position that they would lead to.
       .
       So think want you want, but I’m not taking political sides here. I’m just dealing with facts.

    2. .
       Oh… And Ted Rall? I said he was a jáçkášš back when he was drawing his Bush/Hitler cartoons and depicting Condi Rice as a mammy who referred to herself as Bush’s “house ņìggá” amongst other such retarded things. Not sure what you want me to see in that passage of his that you cite or what you asking me about it.

35. Exemplifying my point above, the House GOP is refusing to use their assigned cards in order to delay votes.
    .
    How is bipartisanship possible when one side is so clearly and egregiously acting in bad faith?