Thoughts & Commentary on the Obama Administration

[KukriKhan]

Obama authorizes extra 13,000 military personnel to be deployed in Afghanistan.

For what it's worth, those "extra" GI's are mostly ones who've already been to either Iraq or Afghanistan, or both, repeatedly. Like my son. Some of his co-workers are preparing for their 6th year-long deployment in 8 years.

[Xiahou]

It seems like even Gates may be getting fed up with Obama's dithering on Afghanistan.

The Obama administration needs to decide on a war strategy for Afghanistan without waiting for a government there to be widely accepted as legitimate, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday.

Gates' comments put him at odds with top White House and NATO officials who are balking at ordering more troops and other resources to Afghanistan until the disputed election crisis there is resolved.

The Pentagon chief called the Afghan elections — and the larger issues of curbing corruption in its government — "an evolving process."

"We're not just going to sit on our hands, waiting for the outcome of this election and for the emergence of a government in Kabul," he told reporters en route to Tokyo.

Meanwhile, Obama can continue to weigh "public opinion".....

[Sasaki Kojiro]

It really bugs me when they do that "So and so said this today" thing in news articles instead of just directly quoting him.

"We're not just going to sit on our hands, waiting for the outcome of this election and for the emergence of a government in Kabul," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday.

vs

The Obama administration needs to decide on a war strategy for Afghanistan without waiting for a government there to be widely accepted as legitimate, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday.

I know they're trying to start with a catchy line/summary, but they shouldn't. Start with the full quote and then talk about whatever you think the context and significance is.

[Xiahou]

At least they quoted some entire sentences. The worst are when they mix direct quotations along with their own paraphrasing in the same sentence.

For example, the first headline I clicked just now has several examples....

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it will be a "huge challenge" to pull off new balloting without repeating the widespread fraud that caused U.N.-backed investigators to strip Karzai of nearly a third of his votes from the Aug. 20 first-round election.

Karzai, standing alongside Sen. John Kerry and U.N. mission chief Kai Eide, said he welcomed the runoff. He called the decision to hold a second round "legitimate, legal and according to the constitution of Afghanistan."

They use just a sentence fragment and complete the statement with their own paraphrased version of the quote. What's the point of that?

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

It really bugs me when they do that "So and so said this today" thing in news articles instead of just directly quoting him.

Or when they discuss a video that is widely available online and won't even link it. Admittedly I could just find it myself, but it would be good to save readers some time.

[Xiahou]

Here's a good write-up from the LA Times on the Obama administration's ill-advised offensive against FoxNews. An excerpt follows:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The idea of Fox News setting the news agenda alarmed White House officials, who decided to vocalize their criticism of its coverage to try to dissuade other reporters from following the network's lead.

"I think the mainstream media has to ask themselves at a time when there are wars, when there is a bad economy, when there are huge challenges facing this country, whether they want to chase a narrow political agenda," Dunn said.

It's unclear whether the tactic will be effective. Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, said that "if someone else breaks a good story, and if -- important if -- our own reporting backs it up, we'll run it. Even if it's Fox."

Los Angeles Times Editor Russ Stanton took a similar stance, saying, "We would follow any news story -- after confirming the facts and figuring out a way to advance it -- if we believed it was important to the readers of the Los Angeles Times, regardless of the organization or individual that broke it."

News executives at the other broadcast and cable television networks declined to comment on the dust-up. But there are signs that some in their ranks are uncomfortable with the White House's tack. Last week, ABC senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper quizzed Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the appropriateness of the White House determining what constituted a news organization.

On Thursday, the Washington bureau chiefs of the networks balked when the Treasury Department sought to exclude Fox from a series of interviews with executive pay czar Kenneth Feinberg that was being filmed with a pool camera. The bureau chiefs insisted that Fox be included because it was part of the five-network pool, said CBS bureau chief Christopher Isham. "There was no debate," he said.

A senior administration official said the White House had not told Treasury to exclude Fox, and Gibbs told correspondent Major Garrett it had been a mistake.

On NBC last week, Obama tried to play down the dispute.

"What our advisors have simply said is that we are going to take media as it comes," he said. "And if media is operating basically as a talk radio format, then that's one thing. And if it's operating as a news outlet, then that's another thing. But it's not something I'm losing a lot of sleep over."

Basically, the Obama administration has said publicly that it will do no interviews with FoxNews, and theirspokespeople have gone on other news shows and told them that they shouldn't follow news stories broken by Fox.

Of course, this strategy is designed to appeal to the liberal base and is no doubt wildly popular with them, but hardly exemplary of the most open administration ever.... Also, by almost any other metric it's been a miserable failure. Fox's ratings are higher than ever as a result, and other news organizations have said that they will continue to follow news stories broken by FNC and their attempt to freeze Fox out of the White House press pool- to which they've belong since '97- also failed.

Now, think what you want of FoxNews, but can someone explain how this strategy is anything other than stupid, petty, or both?

[Louis VI the Fat]

Now, think what you want of FoxNews, but can someone explain how this strategy is anything other than stupid, petty, or both?

Sure. FoxNews isn't a news station at all. It is a conservative propaganda machine. The Democrats have no need to dignify it by pretending it is anything otherwise. Just fight back, or ignore it altogether.

[Xiahou]

Sure. FoxNews isn't a news station at all. It is a conservative propaganda machine. The Democrats have no need to dignify it by pretending it is anything otherwise. Just fight back, or ignore it altogether.

So, you're just saying it's a stupid tactic and not petty? By fighting back they've only managed to increase Fox's ratings, making them more popular than ever. Ignorance might have been a questionable tactic, but it would've been far smarter than squabbling with them.

Fox News Ratings Soar After Snub From Obama