Yes, I do understand that Politico is essentially a GOP bulletin board and they are the primary culprits in pushing this garbage, but I mean, this is ridiculous. Politico titled this "Terrorism on Obama's Watch?"

Now, look, we all know that the GOP will politicize ANYTHING for their own benefit.

But they call the Ft Hood shootings "TERRORISM"?? Really?? An Army Major shoots-up fellow soldiers and this is terrorism?

Why? Because the killer is Muslim? If this is terrorism, then who ordered the actions? Why didn't he kill himself? How is he scaring or "terrorizing" by shooting other Army soldiers?

So, why is this not "terrorism"? Anti-abortion crazies threaten, shoot, kill, bomb and "terrorize" Americans trying to get counseling and abortions, which is a legal, protected procedure in this country.

How about this guy? He is a big follower of Glenn Beck & killed some folks.

Hmmm .... so what's the difference? RIGHT ... white guys who are right-wing loons. That must automatically exclude them from being branded terrorists.

So I've got it now: to Republicans, Terrorist = Muslim. Do I have this right?

Check this out ... Here is a quote from Politico's Mike Allen today from ABC News:

"What this pointed to is the fact there is a real distrust out in the country of this president," Politico's Allen said. "That it's not a 50-50 country. That it's not an Obama nation and that's what we saw bubbling up this summer with health care as the catalyst."

Politico is probably the most easily distracted news source of the Net when it comes to falling for Republican talking points and tactics. But that is really totally over the top.

Regardless of the horrible August that Obama & the Dems had and in spite of the largest most powerful news organization (News Corp) determined to bring him down, Obama stil holds a 50+ % approval throughout the country.

Taking those numbers, one must completely ignore national polling and instead do what the rest of the MSM has done these past few weeks: fall for the Republican gimick of being loud & obnoxious and then have these DC insider beltway pundits try to convince us that means that MOST Americans do not approve of Obama.

That is incredibly dishonest and a disservice for the 4th estate.

 

Since the furor over Van Jones that was ginned-up last week by Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck was sooooo important that Politico feels the need to make the entire concept of czars a BIG deal, I thought I would continue my thoughts from my previous posting on the czar hypocrisy where we see media outlets like Politico dutifully transcribing GOP talking points to try to nail the Obama WH.

Naturally, there was NO outrage by Republicans during the Bush years where there were actually MORE czars and most were not people who were confirmed by the Senate. Click this link to see the List of U.S. executive branch czars in our country's history.

But in typical GOP 2009 fashion, here is Cantor  throwing a hissy fit over czars. Naturally, Cantor and the GOP leadership found nooooo problem with things like czars, deficits or bank bailouts under a Republican president.

We have a serious problem with the media in this country today. And Politico's egregiously incorrect stories are simply repeating falsehoods from GOP talking points memos (more czars than ever before & not confirmed by the Senate).

That is a lazy excuse for "journalism" and very dangerous.

 

So now the newest right-wing freakout is over Van Jones and all presidential "czars". Of course, Van Jones was right: Republicans are "a-holes".

But that aside, behold our country's useless press and Republican national party:

Here is Politico's "list of Obama czars", half of which were actually approved by the Senate. But Politico decides to leave that little tidbit out of the story.

And here is an example of GOP freakout over Obama czars.

And here is the reality of the Constitution-busting powers Bush gave to his czars WITHOUT approval from Congress.

And one more goody from Politico: Obama had WAAAAY more czars than Bush.

In actually, czars NOT confirmed by the Senate by Obama is 20, compared to 24 by Bush.

Idiots and sloppy, sloppy reporting.

So I was wondering what is really behind the right-wing freak-out over Obama speaking to kids about staying in school.

One interesting tidbit is that their conservative hero & savior, Saint Ronald Reagan, did the exact same thing. And Reagan's speech WAS political. In typical Karl Rove fashion, the right wing nuttery just assumes that a Democratic president will do the same thing.

Now, just as is the case for the healthcare debacle and "death panels", much of the fault of this bubbling up into a national stories lies at the feet of our MSM, subservient to the Right Wing.

It doesn't take very much research to realize that the GOP & conservatives have jumped the shark here. Yet it is treated like a straight news story RIGHT NOW on Politico.com, Yahoo! News & Google News.

This is shameful.

It makes the Republicans seem like they are tying to shield their children from a black man with power that they happen to hate.

So keep your kids from school that day. I would like to now request that my kids do not every have to site anywhere near yours in school, lest they dare pick-up any of your crazy germs ...

Now that today's American media outsources fact checking to 3rd parties and uses clearly misleading information to create TMZ style conflict and he said/she said reporting, we find ourselves in a situation where the MSM is the enabler by not challenging the GOP or their conservative messengers. No push back AT ALL except by Jon Stewart and evening hosts of MSNBC. That's it.

Media Matters for America has some very good postings on this today including this one that highlights some of this nonsense perpetrated by Politico here.

Bottom line for the MSM is this: they simply allow the GOP and their conservative allies to push clearly misleading and false information and pose their nonsense back to the general public and Dems, thereby giving it credence and the "possibility" of being true.

Add to that, the fear that the MSM has at debunking conservative talking points because of the bullying tactics of Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, et. al. and they now end up outsourcing correcting these myths to PoliticiFact or FactCheck.org. What, the press does not have fact checkers or reporters that can think for themselves any longer?

Look, the hatred of Obama in right-wing circles (militias, if you will) started back at the Palin rallies in 2008 with shouts of "terrorist", "kill him", "Hitler", "soclialist", etc. And they are the same people waving the exact same banners against healthcare.

These people do not understand the actual debate because our media does not know how to handle a complex issue without focusing on simple drama and conflict.

No matter what the issue or the law being discussed, these same tea baggers will come out with YouTube and Fox News clips with the same anti-Obama message and signs.

It is the responsibility of the media to understand this and call it out.

Regardless of whether the MSM or the press have effectively pointed out the corporate funding or the RNC backing of the Tea Parties and the town hall mobs, there one simple succinct point to come back to: the protestors are loud & obnoxious because they are in the minority.

These are people that are not used to being in this position. Since 1980, the conservative movement has either owned the Congress or the WH or both, but never completely out of power like now.

They have watched liberals villify their heroes like Bush & Palin and are getting their revenge.

And most appropriate & important for the health care "debate" and "protests": polls show that most people want health care reform. They do not like Obama's handling of it very much and they do not want to add to the budget deficit. But there are 50M uninsured and people do see the need for change.

They are loud & obnoxious because they are now the minority, do not know how to act in this role and are being fed lies about govt takeover, socialism, euthenasia, nazis, so on and so on.

The fact of being in the minority is the pertinent point and I, for one, have a deep sense of sorrow and sympathy for these people. They must feel very, very scared and lonely right now with a president that does not chest-thump about patriotism, Christianity and eliminating taxes every day ...

OMG! The president DARED to ask a question of a blogger 2nd! OMG! That came right in between the AP & Reuters! Oh, the humanity!

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0609/Obama_calls_on_HuffPost_for_Iran_question.html

Read that blog posting above from Politico's Michael Calderone if you enjoy getting a good old fashioned belly laugh at the expense of our country's "media elite".

Read about how offended they are that the president dare to break protocol and ask a question of a HuffPo blogger between the AP & Reuters. Oh, I can hardly even think about the horror!

So they try to make this into a story to slam Obama. They "conspired" to ask a question about Iran! And from Nico Pitney, of all people!

Riiiiight ... And what else would the U.S.'s leading blogger about Iran ask about????

This is too funny ... or is too sad, that is, the state of our country's self-indulgent media?

They can dish it, but they can't take it!

Prodded on by super-sensitive drama queen Sarah Palin, conservatives are gunning for Dave Letterman.

That's right. They'll defend their leading cheerleader, Rush Limbaugh, oracle of conservative ideals.

And whenever he make mysognistic comments or hateful rhetoric (basically, any day of the week), then he is excused as being an "entertainer".

But when the jokes are pointed at them ... UH-OH! They can't take a joke!

John McCain is not out defending his buddy Dave and, as well, where were the right-wing joke police when Lettermen had a segment about Sonia Sotamayor where he played on Latino stereotypes?

Ohh.... right ... the faux outrage is ALWAYS with a political purpose for Republicans ...

Remember the faux outrage over a report that the Bush admin actually started which simply assessed the level of right-wing violence and terrorism activity?

Guess what ... it took less than 5 months for a Dem to be in office for the righ-wing lunatic fringe to strike.

Will McCain and McConnell now admit that they were wrong and DHS was correct in assessing these groups as dangerous, incited by hate radio and ready to strike?

Obama is getting killed by these leaks and the Bush burrowed weasels.

This single paragraph from the NYT article that DNI Blair wrote in a PRIVATE INTERNAL MEMO is the main story behind this:

"Admiral Blair's private memo was provided by a critic of Mr. Obama's policy. His assessment could bolster Bush administration veterans who argue that the interrogations were an important tool in the battle against al Qaeda."

Obama and Emanuel better wise up to this. The DHS leak last week about the right-wing extremists was leaked most probably by a Bush burrowed employee, who sent it to a right-wing blogger.

I deal with capital project budgets all day long, every day. So I find this particularly fascinating ... Ever since BO became POTUS, economics and budgets have moved to center stage in press stories.

And it has shown a glaring weakness in our incredibly uneducated mainstream media: they do not understand economics and budgets.

Take a look at this. This is a video from today's WH press conference that the AP, Tapper and Drudge are flogging today. Also be sure to take note of the AP reporter's snark: she asks a question about $100M in across the board dept cost savings as miniscule compared to the $1.3T deficit. Of course, Gibbs was laughing at her ridiculous question, not the deficit. But, hey, that was AWESOME gotcha "journalism" at its best!

They are very, very proud of it. Tapper is holding up on his blog as another example of how he is looking out for the people with his own brand of micro-level statement-parsing GOTCHA journalism.

The problem here is that budgets and basic economics are outside of the realm of understanding of Jake and the AP reporter. Teleprompters, handshakes, POTUS dog and bowing? No problem. The MSM has that covered.

So what is the big problem here? What Obama has done has across each dept for across the board cuts in COSTS. He's asking for short-term 90 day $100M in savings to be identified. These are operational and expense savings, not long-term capital INVESTMENTS that have return on those investments.

When you write a budget, you do not enforce limits in expense by cutting capital investments!! This is budgeting 101. You would think the press would have to have this sort of basic comprehension before even being allowed into the press room and to be allowed to ask a question of the WH.

Now, have a look here. This kind of drive-by shooting journalism earns you a headline link from Matt Drudge. Congrats, AP! But while you demean yourself by snarking at $100M in cost savings you have forgotten, once again, basics of budgets: there is no valid or comprehensible comparison of operational costs vs. a 5 or 10 year budget PLAN. Fox News picked up on this story and all flogged that $100M is 1/35,000 of the overall budget plan. Way to go, Einsteins!

This is embarrasing. But when you get noticed by Fox News & Drudge, then you will become the company you keep.

Yup, there goes that crazy LIBRUL media again! This is from NBC and made for headline Drudge crumbs today.

NBC & CNS are making hey with the fact that the WH asked for their own backdrop instead of the crucifix at Georgetown during Obama's speech.

This is the coverage today: did the WH cover up Jesus??

Good grief. Everyone wants to be Matt Drudge!

Whatever happened to actually covering DETAILED ANALYSIS of the actual CONTENT of the president's speech?

I am so sick of this inane coverage of useless gossip and TMZ-style reporting of teleprompters, GOP off-the-charts quotes and Drudge-style misrepresentations of facts. 

There was more in-depth research on Bo the new president's dog than the truth behind the stimulus, budget or Gitmo! It's all GOP talking points and lazy reporting EVERYWHERE!

ABC News helps the GOP and Pawlenty make stuff up about Obama admin middle class taxes: here.

The GOP voted AGAINST middle class tax cuts that were in the stimulus bill. And the mainstream media continue to just simply reguritate GOP talking points.

Everyone making under $250k/year is already seeing more income in their paychecks thanks to the middle class tax cuts. But Republicans ALL voted against it. Now they try to say that Obama is taxing TOO MUCH because there are no middle class tax cuts in the budget??

What a complete crock. And ABC News and the MSM allow them to get away with more lies like this. There are NO tax increases in this budget.

But will there be FACTUAL coverage of taxes and the budget? Certainly not. The GOP is allowed to fill the coverage with noise and loose "facts".

There is also NO small business tax and the tax INCREASE is simply allowing the damaging Bush wealthy class tax gifts to expire in 2011 to go BACK to the 2001 level of 39% from 36%.

The media coverage of TAXES and this BUDGET has been abysmal.

This weekend should prove to us that here in 2009, the MSM and our leaders do not care at all about gun violence. Seems like we have all given up and believe the NRA won the battle and we should all carry guns, without background checks, everywhere including national parks, churches, stores, airplanes, etc etc.

This is, of course, the NRA's dream come true. A national of wild west gun toters. Screw the liberal police. It's every man for themselves!

The shooter in Pittsburgh this weekend said he was desperate because he believed Obama was going to take his guns away. Sound familiar? That is EXACTLY the marketing campaign literature from the NRA and GOP to incite this sort of violence and gin-up hatred so as to garner a few more votes for the Repubs.

And the press? The press doesn't care. It is more important to find out what Michelle Obama is wearing or waht new gaffe they can drum-up during an Obama speech.

So who is going to hold the NRA, Fox News (Beck, in particular) and the GOP accountable? No one, I AM SURE. Everyone is affraid of the NRA.

Certainly not TPM. I see NO mention of gun violence or these false misleading ads and literature that come from the NRA and Repubs. Instead, we get Josh Marshall's obsession with Geithner and Summers.