Tag: obama

Your Liberal Media

Gene Lyons absolutely nails the seemingly insane FoxNEWS defense brigade that has materialized in the larger MSM (in response to the Obama administration’s shocking charge that FoxNEWS is little more than the communications arm of the far-right, fringe element of the GOP):

the reality is that celebrity journalists rarely, if ever, get hurt for abusing Democrats. Mistreat a name-brand Republican, however, and …

Well, remember “60 Minutes’” Dan Rather?

Democrats complain; Republicans get even.

Hence “mainstream” political journalists, who cower like beaten dogs for fear of ending up on Fox boss (and Nixon alumnus) Roger Ailes’ own enemies list, haven’t had to fear the Obama White House. Last week’s collective cringe makes it abundantly clear how badly they’d like to keep it that way.

It really is as simple as that. In response to a hopelessly biased hit-piece Democrats may lodge a polite complaint, Republicans harvest your job(s), then move on to destroy your reputation, then move on to your children’s activities, then try to turn you out of your house, then force you to kill and eat your dog. Dan Rather is but one example of the phenomenon, but a powerful one. Lost in the Rather nonsense was the fact that not one of the principles in the affair denied the content of the (possibly forged) memo. Some doubted its authenticity, in terms of it being the actual memo; none doubted that “such a memo” existed.

But, more to the point, the media at large has so internalized the myth of the Liberal Media that they immediately retire to the fainting couch at the slightest whiff of a complaint. They fancy themselves as social liberals, you see. They have a gay friend. Whatever. However, in reality, these celebrity journalists are quite the fiscal conservatives. They own several houses and make multi-million dollar salaries. They make all the right noises, mind you; Tim Russert was just a good-old-boy from Buffalo, as he endlessly reminded us, at least while not summering on Nantucket.

Media Matters and others have begun, begun, to turn the tide here. What was missing for the better part of a decade was any sense of “screaming” from the left. These folks still bristle at the “coarse” language of the internets and just don’t get any technology that happened post-TV: so it’s going to take a while. But, sooner or later and no matter what, this lost generation of self-absorbed Reaganite millionaires in control of our discourse will die or retire. One can only hope that whatever follows serves the industry and the nation in a better, more balanced way.

(via jimray)

Nixonian: A Love Story

Let’s review a few items of interests re: the W. Bush Administration:

  1. Paying Armstrong Williams, Michael McManus, and Maggie Gallagher and others for favorable opinions about WH policies or to attack opponents of the WH.
  2. Planting Jeff Gannon to lob softball questions.
  3. Used reporters to out a CIA agent, then sat by and watched reporters go to jail to protect their sources.
  4. Fed reporters misinformation about WMD (with malice aforethought, mind you) on Iraq, then used those reporters stories as corroborating evidence of the existence of WMD in Iraq.
  5. Waged a coordinated campaign against NBC.
  6. The Pentagon Pundit program, which sold the war by planting former military officers on networks.
  7. Staged mock press conferences with FEMA employees pretending to be reporters.
  8. Told America and, specifically, journalists to “watch what they say and what they do.”

But, indeed, Obama’s administration calling out FoxNEWS as a glorified communications wing for the GOP is a yet another example of the President’s outlandish, Nixonian lawlessness. Truly unprecedented.

Call me when FoxNEWS turns over three hours of their vaunted “news time” in the mornings to a former Democratic representative. Likewise when msnbc hires anyone who is remotely like Glenn Beck for their “editorial” hours (which are loosely 7-10pm EST for both FoxNEWS and msnbc).

(Top 8 topics largely via Balloon Juice; links a free value-add for you, the Lemkin reader)

[…] you know, I’m busy and Nancy [Pelosi is] busy with our mop cleaning up somebody else’s mess — we don’t want somebody sitting back saying, you’re not holding the mop the right way. (Applause.) Why don’t you grab a mop, why don’t you help clean up. (Applause.) You’re not mopping fast enough. (Laughter.) That’s a socialist mop. (Laughter and applause.) Grab a mop – let’s get to work.

Barack Obama

I will accept this award as a call to action – a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century and a renewed call for the GOP to confront the challenges of the 20th.

–Barack Obama, slightly revised and extended…

[T]he unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world […] became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it’s a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was ‘normal history’ rather than dark aberration.

Josh Marshall, nailing it.

Explain that to me

Barack Obama reports, you decide:

“I was up at the G20 – just a little aside – I was up at the G20, and some of you saw those big flags and all the world leaders come in and Michelle and I are shaking hands with them,” the president said. “One of the leaders – I won’t mention who it was – he comes up to me. We take the picture, we go behind.

"He says, ‘Barack, explain to me this health care debate.’

"He says, ‘We don’t understand it. You’re trying to make sure everybody has health care and they’re putting a Hitler mustache on you – I don’t – that doesn’t make sense to me. Explain that to me.’”

via Jack Tapper

Observe and Report

Bob Somerby:

… whatever a person may think of Van Jones, he simply wasn’t a major White House player. Glenn Beck ran a largely crackpot crusade against Jones, often disinforming millions of viewers in the process. Jones “went to prison and became a communist,” Beck would constantly say. (That clip comes from his August 4 show.) Cracker, please! That’s “apocalyptic” junk. And guess what? When millions of people get disinformed in such ways, that might qualify as news too!

The Post didn’t report that disinformation—the process by which millions of people were told that Obama had an important “czar” who “went to prison” and “became a communist.” But it didn’t occur to Alexander to ask why the Post was silent about that. We’d say there are two likely reasons:

First, Alexander has absorbed a Republican point of view about whose outlook dominates Washington.

Second, there is no countervailing Democratic point of view! There is no narrative which might have made Alexander think twice before he joined a famous old band. For decades now, conservatives have spread the idea that liberal notions dominate Washington.

The notion was silly by the mid-1990s, of course. But when have Democrats spoken?

Well, Bob, when so-called Democrats with daily access to microphones do speak, they all too often recite internalized GOP talking points. Let’s take just one set of recent examples centered around attempts to remake and refine the United States’ Afghan policy going forward. Here we have (the normally quite good) Mara Liasson, when asked if Bush administration policies have anything to do with Afghanistan as Obama found it:

[Obama] owns the war in Afghanistan

Indeed, Obama did start and then ignore said war in Afghanistan for the better part of a decade. Whatever domestic and military issues that remain to be solved there are totally his fault, and have nothing to do with anything that went before. And, just to let you in on the news of the future, success in Afghanistan (should it come): total NeoCon victory, and was all Bush the whole way, largely despite Obama, and certainly not because of any new policies. Failure, or simply staying mired in the present quagmire, well that was because Obama failed to execute W’s brilliant strategeries.

Now let’s take Juan Williams on the same subject:

[Afghanistan] becomes President Obama’s war in such a way that people would say he has gone back, he has become a war president, and how ironic for a man who ran against the war.

You see, Juan, the problem here is: Obama ran “against” the conduct of the war in Iraq. If anything, he was arguing from day one for a more aggressive, more involved stance in Afghanistan. And he’s repeatedly, repeatedly said that Iraq was a “distraction” from the hunt for al Qaeda and action against the Taliban remnants. You might recall, these are the two groups responsible for the attacks of 9/11. Too bad none of that material was in the GOP’s talking points memorandum for the day.

Like Clockwork

Obama directs FCC to adopt “Net Neutrality” (and write any new or revised regulations accordingly). This policy is a 180 from the Bush administration position that can be boiled down to “whatever the big companies want, the big companies get,” and these changes would, without a doubt, foster the sorts of innovations and game-changing uses that people tend to use the word “internet time” as a synonym for (e.g. rapid advance over short time periods and the ubiquitous availability of seemingly all human knowledge to relatively simple front-end tools on computers, and nowadays, mobile devices of all shapes and forms).

Naturally, today’s GOP, ever a friend to the Established Interests is categorically agin it. Kay Bailey Hutchison says:

I am deeply concerned by the direction the FCC appears to be heading.

Indeed, just take a look at these troubling developments:

new network neutrality rules that would require carriers to deliver broadband in a nondiscriminatory manner and to disclose their network management policies. Genachowski also said the FCC would explore the question of whether to extend network neutrality rules to mobile carriers.

[…]

“This means they cannot block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks, or pick winners by favoring some content or applications over others in the connection to subscribers’ homes,” [FCC chairman Julius] Genachowski said in an address before the Brookings Institute Sept. 21. “Nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider. The Internet must continue to allow users to decide what content and applications succeed.”

How can innovation possibly succeed in an environment that encourages open competition and a level playing field? It’s unpossible. The only way forward: Hutchison feels the monopolistic providers of net access as of today “should be unencumbered by consumer protections and basic Internet freedoms.” Indeed they should.Who could possibly want any of those things. According to the GOP, freedom is overrated anyway.

Net neutrality: clearly another example of Obama’s rampant Socialist, command-and-control agenda. By forcing the internet to remain open and free, unchained by secret access rules or “preferred” website providers and tiered service, he’s pursuing the Socialist takeover of said internet by lots of small, innovative, ideas-based companies that leverage terrifying Socialistic Free-Market principles at the expense of the moneyed interests and the various, ossified, copper-wire owning players of today. Why, that’s categorically un-American! Jon Ensign, in a remarkable bit of double-speak, clearly agrees:

In this struggling economy, any industry that is able to thrive should be allowed to do so without meddlesome government interference that could stifle innovation,“ Ensign said in a statement. "We must avoid burdensome government regulations that micromanage private businesses or that limit the ability of companies to provide what their customers want. The Internet has flourished in large part because of a lack of government interference; I see no need to change that now.

Truly, truly remarkable. No other word for it. By writing regulation that permanently opens the internet to competition from all comers, and any size company, by guaranteeing this access for both consumers and businesses we are, in fact "micromanag[ing] private business” and “limit[ing] the ability of companies to provide what their customers want.” Because we know what customers want, now and forever. So long as customers want tiered internet access, and a Comcast-approved network, that is. And, since that’s all they’re offered in most markets through built-in, city-wide monopolies, that must be what they want. Right? Right?