Media

What Media Bias? Part 195 – Shutdown Edition

Mark Noonan12 Comments

So, we’ve got a poll which shows Obama’s approval rating cratering to 37% – this it the territory last plumbed in Presidential terms by George W Bush towards the end of his term.  With vital information like that in the news, what is the headline?

Poll:  GOP Gets the Blame in Shutdown

To be sure, that isn’t a lie – the GOP is getting a lot of blame for the shutdown.  But, also, we already knew that.  We also know that Congress, as a whole, usually has approval ratings lower an ill-tempered woodchuck which then dies under your front porch.  That isn’t news – what is news is that Obama’s popularity is rapidly declining…which means that in the 5th year of Hope and Change, people are starting to take a long, hard look at the President and not liking what they find.  It is a pity people didn’t wake up this much by September of 2012 (Obama was just this bad all along, after all), but at least they are waking up…and in spite of the GOP losing points during the shutdown, the fact of an unpopular President is the crucial story.

This is because as his popularity ebbs away his own party will start to distance itself from him.  Fewer and fewer, especially in red or purple States, will be willing to go to the mat for him.  More and more red and purple State Democrats will find it advantageous to start coming out in public opposed to the President.  Additionally, Presidential unpopularity has a drag on the party, itself…it dispirits the party base and makes them less enthusiastic about getting out there and doing the work necessary for victory.  Finally, a weakened President emboldens the opposition – they sense he’s on the ropes and so press him all the harder, even if a particular action is technically unpopular.  Bottom line, in Obama’s drooping polls is the prospect of GOP victory in 2014 and 2016 – just as Bush’s drooping polls in 2005 opened the path for Democrat victory in 2006 and 2008 (this, by the way, is an argument in my mind to amend the Constitution so that the Presidency is a one term of six years affair).

But, there’s our MSM – always willing to cover for President.  Its ok – it’ll just make the shocked look on liberals faces more delicious in the long run.

UPDATE:  Obama shut down theater gets even more absurd:

A popular youth sandcastle contest on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach is the latest local victim of the federal government shutdown, event organizers said today.

The Leap 30th Anniversary Sandcastle Contest was planned for Saturday, but the continued standoff in Congress over the federal budget is causing organizers to postpone the event until a later date.

Thousands of people were expected to attend the free event, with more than 20 local schools participating. Leap, a local arts advocacy nonprofit, has held the contest for the past three decades.

The beach has no government personnel, its open year round to the public and it would cost the government nothing to have this event go forward.  It gets shut down because Obama wants us to feel pain.

Deep Liberal Thinking: Its the Fault of Those Damned Teabaggers!

Mark Noonan22 Comments

To be sure, they don’t use words like that – being all super intellectual and mainstream, you see, they don’t go in for vulgarity.  But, that is the sense of Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein when they write this:

A brighter future for politics and policy requires a different Republican Party, one no longer beholden to its hard right and willing to operate within the mainstream of American politics.

Unlike the Democrats who, of course, completely ignore their hard left and are willing to compromise on such things as abortion, right?  I mean, if some people just wanted to have some reasonable, humane restrictions on abortion in the later half of pregnancy, these moderate,  in-the-mainstream Democrats would have no problem with that.  Answer:  Wendy Davis.  The Great Pink Hope of the Democrat party in Texas who stood tall and brave against an attempt to prevent children 8 months in to pregnancy from being ripped limb from limb by abortionists.  Thank goodness for moderate Democrats who operate within the mainstream of American politics.

What, exactly, is the “mainstream of American politics”?  It is that big corporations and big government will get bigger while an insulated Ruling Class of corporate and government bureaucrats live high and mighty off the sweat of average Americans.  Mann and Ornstein are dead on about one thing:

Any degree of success in this arena requires enlisting a small group of Senate Republicans who have tired of the lockstep opposition to Obama and  relish an opportunity to legislate.

Opposition to Obama is “lockstep”, you see?  If you bother to read the article, you’ll understand that the authors think that Obama is the one who reached out to the GOP and tried to govern by compromise.  But then that dratted TEA Party came along and started to muck everything up (unstated sub-text – dog whistle, as it were – “they are racists who just hate”).  Meanwhile, opposition to conservatism is nuanced and willing to compromise…like the way Obama immediately abandoned the birth control mandate when Catholics reasonably pointed out they couldn’t do that without violating their moral beliefs.  But it is true that there is a group of Senate Republicans who do relish the opportunity to legislate and if such legislation works out to just giving more power and wealth to the Ruling Class at the expense of the people, so be it.  After all, its not the people who pass out invitations to the cool parties, nor can the people ensure a well-paid sinecure once the “small group of Senate Republicans” retires.

As I noted in “You Say You Want a Revolution“, below, its an entire class which is united against us.  People like Mann and Ornstein have got their marching orders…provide a patina of intellectual legitimacy for the McCains and Grahams of the GOP to stab the rest of us in the back…go ahead, they say, satisfy your desire to legislate.  Step away from those crazies Rand Paul and Ted Cruz (to Mann and Ornstein, the literal pictures of intolerance…and I mean that; the picture posted at the top of their article is Paul and Cruz).  You’ll get a nice write up in the Washington Post.  You’ll be lauded as a statesman.  President Hillary Clinton will award you a Presidential Medal of Freedom.  We’ll ensure that your memoirs sell in the millions!

Getting rid of these people will be difficult and then easy.  First difficult in finding enough GOPers who will fight – but once we do, we will win and win it all.  And then we just cut off the taxpayer funds for the left and be free of them forever.

Matt and Mark on Blog Talk Radio, Bards Logic Political Talk

Mark Noonan12 Comments

The details of our appearance can be found at Blog Talk Radio’s website.  We’ll be on at 10pm Eastern – please tune in!

UPDATE:  We want to thank Robert Jetter for giving us the opportunity to discuss the book on his show; we had a great time in a free-ranging discussion of the book and its implications and we hope that you’ll take the opportunity to listen at your leisure.

What Media Bias? Part 194

Mark Noonan26 Comments

Geesh:

ABC is defending its decision to edit out an apparently erroneous claim by Michelle Obama in its broadcast of the first lady’s interview on Good Morning America today, saying it made the changes “solely” for the sake of time.

As The Washington Examiner reported this morning, the first lady claimed during an interview with Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts that 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who was killed in Chicago shortly after performing during the President’s Inauguration, was shot because “some kids had some automatic weapons they didn’t need.”

In fact, Chicago Police reported Pendleton was shot by a man who “opened fire with a handgun before fleeing in a waiting car,” according to the Associated Press…

Yeah, for the sake of time.  Now, any time President Bush inadvertently mangled English, the MSM always had plenty of time to show it – over and over and over again.  Now here’s the First Lady making a flat out false statement and all of a sudden, “oh, we’re so pressed for time, can’t even show it once!”.

You believe that, then I’ve got a bridge for sale in Brooklyn…

Dystopia – Part Deux

Cluster64 Comments

A few days ago, Leo wrote an excellent piece on the radical nature of Obama’s worldview and politics, which is, and has been ignored by too many people, chief among them, our supposedly objective media. In fact the liberal media has yet to do their job and vet Obama, ask the difficult questions, or even hold him accountable. Last week, David Gregory attacked Sen. McCain for having the gall to say that there are still unanswered questions surrounding the Benghazi attack. Think about that. A member of the media was actually defending the administration and questioning a Senator who was telling that reporter that there are unanswered questions surrounding the death of a US Ambassador. Shouldn’t the reporter be asking those questions? What has happened to our media? The deference the liberal media has given to Obama is borderline criminal in my opinion. What ever happened to “speaking truth to power”?

The liberal ideological brand of Barack Obama would have us believe that adding layers of government bureaucracies will reduce costs, that increasing someone’s taxes will enhance their chances for prosperity, that restricting personal choices increases ones liberties, that demonizing certain demographics actually unites us, and that apologizing for America’s arrogance strengthens our positions abroad. All of which defy common sense, all of which have failed and failed repeatedly and yet all of which go unreported by our liberal mainstream media. Sadly, the liberal media has abandoned their journalistic integrity in favor of supporting a President that shares their ideology and not enough people yet have discovered that truth.

Case in point is another current political issue that the media is letting the President off the hook on. The sequester. Here’s Obama just last November:

“Already some in Congress are trying to undo these automatic spending cuts. My message to them is simple: No, I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending. There will be no easy off ramps on this one”

Yet just two days ago, after his million dollar vacation in Florida, the President said that the sequester cuts would result in economic calamity and again laid the blame at the feet of the republicans. And not one reporter, not one, in the liberal media has had the presence of mind to report on the fact that Obama supported the cuts just a few months prior. For the most part, we no longer have an honest media and they are as much responsible for the decline of America as Barack Obama is.

What Media Bias? Part 193

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Walter Russel Mead lays it out:

…The news from Afghanistan is grim. With the latest round of deaths, we pass a milestone: 2,000 US combatants have died in what is now the longest war in American history. The milestone has been reached just as the surge in troops has come to an end without achieving the goals of pacifying the country or even launching peace talks with the Taliban. Our Afghan “allies” remain as corrupt and ineffectual as ever, with the added wrinkle that the most dangerous place in Afghanistan for US troops these days seems to be the neighborhood of US-armed and trained Afghan forces, who are shooting and blowing up their nominal allies faster than the Taliban can do it.

This is all bad news and very disturbing, but there is a crumb of comfort to be had. Because these failures happened on President Obama’s watch, the mainstream press isn’t particularly interested in relentless, non-stop scrutiny of the unpleasant news. If George W. Bush were president now, and had ordered the surge and was responsible for the strategic decisions taken and not taken in Afghanistan over the last four years, the mainstream press would be rubbing our noses in his miserable failures and inexcusable blunders 24/7…

And every last one of you reading this – especially your liberals – knows this is true.  You can say all you want that the war started on Bush’s watch; you can say this, that and the other thing to excuse Obama – but you all know darn well that if a Republican were President right now, the stories about the collapse in Afghanistan would lead the news day after day after day.  Just think for a moment what it would be like if McCain had won in 2008 and Obama was just now taking his second shot at the Presidency.  The MSM would never let this pass, not for a second…and we’d have days of news reports marking the 2,000th American death in Afghanistan.

I really do think I have to retire the title of this post – as you can see, its been going on for a long time.  But a more correct title these days would be “What Venal and Corrupt Press?”.  Because this has gone beyond bias.  This is far more than just a willingness to soften the blows for liberals and turn up the heat on conservatives – this is a disgusting failure to do the very basics of journalism:  at least attempt to bring the truth to the people.

Continue reading →

The Audacity Of Corruption

Cluster86 Comments

Pat Caddell is spot on!  –

“I think we’re at the most dangerous time in our political history in terms of the balance of power in the role that the media plays in whether or not we maintain a free democracy or not.”

This is a must read, and Pat is 100% correct. In my opinion the North Korean News Agency is more objective than our media, and without an objective, unbiased, hard hitting media – we have no democracy, or more accurately, a representative republic.

What Media Bias? Part 192

Mark Noonan49 Comments

Though this might be “What Attacks on Mormonism?, Part 1”, depending on how you look at it – from Warner Todd Huston over at Breitbart:

As the race for the White House heats up, Reuters suddenly realized that the massive Mormon Church has a lot of money in its bank accounts. The news service went on to needle the Church, saying if it were a business “wealthy adherents like Mitt Romney would count as its dominant revenue stream.”

Reuters took the if-it-were-a-business theme even farther in its opening paragraphs.

“It would also likely attract corporate gadflies protesting a lack of transparency. They would call for less spending on real estate and more on charitable causes to improve membership growth — the Mormons’ return on investment.”

Of course, a religion is not a “business” proposition. A religion does not operate like a company does, it has far different goals. But assessing a religion wasn’t Reuters’ goal here. Making Mormons out to be “rich” elitists that act suspiciously and are pushing a snobbish presidential candidate on the nation was Reuters’ goal…

This from the same MSM which essentially went all “Reverend Wright, who?” in 2008.  I don’t recall any stories about how Wright’s organization was financed – and that leaves aside anything more than a glance at the fact that Obama attended a racist, anti-American church for 20 years.

One might want to think that there would be only one trip in to the gutter for our Democrats and their lapdog MSM in 2012 – forget it; they’ll troll in every gutter there is.  They will attack Romney because he’s rich.  They’ll attack him because he’s white.  They’ll attack him because he’s Mormon.  They’ll attack him as a war monger and they’ll attack him because he had college and missionary deferments during the Vietnam War.  They will lie.  They will launch whispering campaigns claiming all sorts of horrors about Romney’s past.  They will attack his wife.  They will attack his children.  They will attack his friends.  They will try to intimidate people in the right blogosphere who are favorable to Romney.  This will be the dirtiest political campaign in human history and the MSM will be right there in the trenches with the DNC, doing what they can to help Obama.

So, just get ready for it – it will get nauseating but the payoff will be the crestfallen looks on MSM faces on November 6th.

 

 

Newt Did NOT Agree With Mitt on Health Care

Matt Margolis37 Comments

As far as misleading headlines go in this primary campaign season, this one from ABC News certainly ranks up there as one the most egregious:

Gingrich ’06 Memo: “Agree Entirely With Gov. Romney” on Health Care

Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard links to the actual memo, which reveals, quite clearly, that Newt did not “agree entirely” with Mitt on health care, and certainly did not “love” the Massachusetts health care plan, as was suggested in the story.

It’s unfortunate that the Drudge Report linked to the ABC News story, as if the headline and the claim were legitimate. The only question I have is this, who in the GOP field is ABC News trying to help? Ron Paul?