Thoughts & Commentary on the Obama Administration

[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

[Samurai Waki]

Fox News Ratings Soar After Snub From Obama

I doubt any of their ratings are by new members of the pool, they became disillusioned with Bush, they found something they can all hate together, and Fox News likes to tell it how their viewers would like to think it is. That's US Media for ya, whether it means anything at all is yet to actually be seen.

[Louis VI the Fat]

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

The number one and number two ratings are for O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. Says it all, I think.

Obama needs to concern himself with rightist activism no more than Bush needed to waste his time with 9-11 truthers.

All that should concern the White House, occupied by whichever party, is to evenly divide its time amongst news sources from different persuasions, and to hold itself accountable to an as diverse range of political press as possible. This means the President does not need to be available for commentary to Fox.

Is it smart? Yes, in the long run it is. The Democrats should not play along with Murdoch's game. If one dignifies Fox by pretending along that it is a serious news station, people might actually believe it is.

[Lemur]

In fairness, Rupert Murdoch did not invent this type of journalism, and it's far from a new phenomenon. He's just partying like it's 1899.

That said, President 44's public calling-out of Fox makes no obvious sense, and is pure win from Fox's perspective. But this president tends to play a deep game, so I wouldn't bet against there being some underlying motive that will be made clear in the months/years ahead. And I wouldn't be surprised if Fox wasn't the intended target anyway.

I would not want to play chess against Obama. Time and again he's been shown to be thinking six or seven steps down the road.

-edit-

A helpful reality check for fiscal conservatives:

According to the Congressional Budget Office's January 2009 estimate for fiscal year 2009, outlays were projected to be $3,543 billion and revenues were projected to be $2,357 billion, leaving a deficit of $1,186 billion. Keep in mind that these estimates were made before Obama took office, based on existing law and policy, and did not take into account any actions that Obama might implement.

Therefore, unless one thinks that McCain would have somehow or other raised taxes and cut spending (with a Democratic Congress), rather than enacting a stimulus of his own, then a deficit of $1.2 trillion was baked in the cake the day Obama took office. Any suggestion that McCain would have brought in a lower deficit is simply fanciful.

Now let's fast forward to the end of fiscal year 2009, which ended on September 30. According to CBO, it ended with spending at $3,515 billion and revenues of $2,106 billion for a deficit of $1,409 billion.

To recap, the deficit came in $223 billion higher than projected, but spending was $28 billion and revenues were $251 billion less than expected. Thus we can conclude that more than 100 percent of the increase in the deficit since January is accounted for by lower revenues. Not one penny is due to higher spending. [...]

I continue to believe that the Republican position is nonsensical. Final proof is that the previously cited CBO report shows total federal revenues coming in at 14.9 percent of the gross domestic product in FY2009. According to the Office of Management and Budget, one has to go back to 1950 to find a year when federal revenues were lower as a share of GDP. For reference, revenues averaged 18 percent of GDP during the Reagan administration and were never lower than 17.3 percent - 2.4 percent of GDP above where they are now.

I think there are grounds on which to criticize the Obama administration's anti-recession actions. But spending too much is not one of them. Indeed, based on this analysis, it is pretty obvious that spending - real spending on things like public works - has been grossly inadequate. The idea that Reagan-style tax cuts would have done anything is just nuts.

Actually, I believe that the stimulus was smaller under Obama than it would have been under McCain. If a Republican president requested stimulus funds, not only would the Dems have gone along for the ride, the criticism from the right would have been predictably muted, thus allowing a far bigger package to make its way through.

[Xiahou]

In fairness, Rupert Murdoch did not invent this type of journalism, and it's far from a new phenomenon. He's just partying like it's 1899.

Nor is FoxNews the only current perpetrator. The wildly less popular MSNBC features shows that lean every bit as far left as Fox shows do right. Naturally, Obama isn't calling MSNBC out for not being a real news organization.... since he agrees with them.

That said, President 44's public calling-out of Fox makes no obvious sense, and is pure win from Fox's perspective.

I agree here.

But this president tends to play a deep game, so I wouldn't bet against there being some underlying motive that will be made clear in the months/years ahead.

I haven't really seen too many examples of this yet.... am I missing them?

[Lemur]

Nor is FoxNews the only current perpetrator. The wildly less popular MSNBC features shows that lean every bit as far left as Fox shows do right.

False equivalence strawman. The moment Fox News decides to hand over three hours of daily programming to a Democratic congressman, let me know. In fact, FN has been shedding opposition voices rather rapidly. FN is deep into echo-chamber territory.

Won't deny that MSNBC is trying to cater to the left, but they're doing it in what appears to be a much more traditional way. I have yet to see evidence of any sort that MSNBC is letting the politics bleed into the straight news in the way Fox News has.

As for Obama's rope-a-dope tricks, if you haven't spotted them already you never will.

Here's an author whom I respect deeply putting his analysis on the latest game (not that I think you will accept any explanation of Obama's behavior that does not include the words craven, incompetent, socialist and/or stupid):

[A]t the end of the day, Fox News’ nightly audience in the third quarter of this year was 2.25 million viewers in primetime (source). For perspective this means that it has roughly the same audience as your average Dollhouse episode, which was just yanked by Fox (the broadcast network, not the cable news network), so that its ratings wouldn’t stink up November Sweeps. Even with Fox News’ ratings going through the roof because of its little war with Obama, the actual number of viewers is minuscule. Or to put it otherwise, 2.5 million Americans watch Fox News, which means that 297.5 million Americans don’t.

Which makes it a low-risk ideological foil for the White House. Follow: The White House says Fox News is not a real news organization and is the propaganda arm of the GOP, Fox News throws a very public **** fit about it, which gives it higher ratings and an impetus to skew even more to the right in its presentation, and go out of its way to criticize Obama even further. Meanwhile the noise is all covered by multiple other news outlets, which in aggregate reach a much larger audience, which show Fox News anchors and personalities in the middle of ideological conniptions, confirming to the general population the proposition that, indeed, Fox News is more interested in politics than news, and reinforcing the impression that Fox News and the GOP are reading off the same page. Which makes the GOP look unreasonable in an era in which its popularity isn’t, shall we say, spectacular to begin with. To what end? Well, you might have heard there’s a health care debate going on.

Mind you, using politics to marginalize the press is not exactly a new thing; note, if you will, the aforementioned four decades of railing against the “liberal media.” What ought to make conservatives pissed off at Obama is not that he’s taking a page out of their playbook, but that he’s improved upon it. Conservatives moaned about liberal bias in the press to carve out an alternative ideological media under the guise of “balance,” but never managed to marginalize the “liberal media” in any significant way; it was just too damn big. Obama, on the other hand, is picking a fight with a small conservative entity and is essentially forcing it to do what he wants — make conservatism (and by extension the GOP) look like an extreme political position — by adding to what it needs to survive: an audience. But it’s a small-scale audience comprised of people already opposed to the president and his policies (ie., no great political loss). The conservative war on the media was Clausewitz; the Obama war on the media is Sun Tzu.

[KukriKhan]

Hmmm... so the White House tweaks the nose of Fox News, anticipating that Fox and its talking heads will froth at the mouth in public - a week or two ahead of voting on Health Care Insurance Reform. De-legitimizing Fox's stance on the issue.

If that was the intended tactic, I gotta tip my hat. I wonder if it'll work a third time (the 1st being R. Limbaugh), on like Cap'n Trade, or Universal University Education?

[LittleGrizzly]

Well if that's the idea then it sounds pretty smart... I would wonder about it working but fox news seems extremly biased on a good day so frothing at the mouth even someone idealogically minded towards some of thier ideas would be put off by the blatant partisanship...

[Lemur]

The latest polling backs up the rope-a-dope theory. And let's be honest, that's how President 44 operates anyway.

[Xiahou]

Obama must be playing chess again....
The White House picks a fight with Edmunds.com

But in addition to Fox News, now The White House is going after highly-respected and influential car site Edmunds.com.

They're actually using The White House blog to dispute the site's analysis of Cash-For-Clunkers (via Detroit News).

The post is snarkily titled: "Busy Covering Car Sales on Mars, Edmunds.com Gets It Wrong (Again) on Cash for Clunkers"

I'm tempted to say this is the administration just being thin-skinned and petty again, but I trust their constant whining about anyone who is critical of them is all part of a grand strategy and not just being crybabies.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

14% of people think fox news is mostly liberal?

While I think the obama people know what their doing, I would fall all over myself praising their genius. Knowing what you can say and what kind of criticism you can handle is PR 101, yeah? It is a worthwhile move though, the republicans gained a lot by casting most of the news as "liberal media", and the democrats will gain by having fox news percieved as crazy conservative.

[Meneldil]

Nor is FoxNews the only current perpetrator. The wildly less popular MSNBC features shows that lean every bit as far left as Fox shows do right. Naturally, Obama isn't calling MSNBC out for not being a real news organization.... since he agrees with them.

The day MSNBC will be recognized worldwide as a complete and utter biased channel that only aims at leftist hippies and doesn't produce any real news, maybe your argument will hold some value.

Now, I don't want to burst your bubble, but the European media (both from the left and from the right) often point the finger at FoxNews, O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and their other friends. 2 days ago I read a newspaper from Geneve that had an article about Glenn Beck. One week ago it was Slate.fr (who admitedly just translated the article from Slate.com). Before that, it was Le Monde.
This channel is a joke that makes America look stupid and dangerous.
On the other hand, nobody cares about MSNBC. They might very well be biased (and it's quite obvious they are), but there's a difference between being biased and spouting lies 24/7, making threats, exposing silly conspiracy theories, calling people traitors because they have a non-american sounding name and what not.
FoxNews would make Goebbel and the propagandastaffl look like mere amateurs (and yeah, that's a godwin).

[KukriKhan]

I'm surprised to read that French and Swiss media take note of Fox or MSNBC. I sort of understand that the Rupert Empire (Fox) extends globally, but MSNBC? Can you view Glenn Beck directly on TV, Meneldil? Or indirectly, via news stories & internet?

[Lemur]

Well, I don't watch any cable news (that way madness lies, quoth Lear), so all of my exposure to MSNBC, Fox News and CNN comes from YouTube or embedded clips. If I can (sort of ) keep up with the cable heads that way, so can anyone anywhere.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

The day MSNBC will be recognized worldwide as a complete and utter biased channel that only aims at leftist hippies and doesn't produce any real news, maybe your argument will hold some value.

Now, I don't want to burst your bubble, but the European media (both from the left and from the right) often point the finger at FoxNews, O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and their other friends. 2 days ago I read a newspaper from Geneve that had an article about Glenn Beck. One week ago it was Slate.fr (who admitedly just translated the article from Slate.com). Before that, it was Le Monde.
This channel is a joke that makes America look stupid and dangerous.
On the other hand, nobody cares about MSNBC. They might very well be biased (and it's quite obvious they are), but there's a difference between being biased and spouting lies 24/7, making threats, exposing silly conspiracy theories, calling people traitors because they have a non-american sounding name and what not.
FoxNews would make Goebbel and the propagandastaffl look like mere amateurs (and yeah, that's a godwin).

Well, wouldn't you expect european media to care more about fox lying than about nbc lying?

Also, weren't we discussing last page about how fox broke the story on some advisor of obama's being a 9/11 truther, and now the obama administration is saying "don't pick up the stories they break"?

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

The day MSNBC will be recognized worldwide as a complete and utter biased channel that only aims at leftist hippies and doesn't produce any real news, maybe your argument will hold some value.

What it is recognized as does not mean that it can't be something else.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Also, weren't we discussing last page about how fox broke the story on some advisor of obama's being a 9/11 truther

Leaving aside the nature of Fox for a minute, I have two conflicting emotions about that.

I actually think Fox (Beck I think it was?) did a great job in exposing that. And in calling out several other less succesful personell pickings of the Obama administration. (Where does he find these people?)

Secondly, I think Fox missed the mark with that one and similar stories. It carefully avoids the essence, the critical issues, and instead concentrates on the trivial, the ephemeral, blowing stories up way out of proportion.

News ought to be about healthcare reform (not 'socialized healthcare' as Fox has dubbed it), or Afghanistan, or even policy failures of Obama. It is not important that somebody on the fringes of government happened to put his autograph somewhere. That is not a sign of Obama turning America into a socialist dictatorship. And it still isn't even if you howl about it all week long.

[Furunculus]

The day MSNBC will be recognized worldwide as a complete and utter biased channel that only aims at leftist hippies and doesn't produce any real news, maybe your argument will hold some value.

Now, I don't want to burst your bubble, but the European media (both from the left and from the right) often point the finger at FoxNews, O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and their other friends. 2 days ago I read a newspaper from Geneve that had an article about Glenn Beck. One week ago it was Slate.fr (who admitedly just translated the article from Slate.com). Before that, it was Le Monde.
This channel is a joke that makes America look stupid and dangerous.
On the other hand, nobody cares about MSNBC. They might very well be biased (and it's quite obvious they are), but there's a difference between being biased and spouting lies 24/7, making threats, exposing silly conspiracy theories, calling people traitors because they have a non-american sounding name and what not.
FoxNews would make Goebbel and the propagandastaffl look like mere amateurs (and yeah, that's a godwin).

breaking news everyone: we are all stunned and amazed that a decidedly left wing group of nations (comparitively) picks out a right wing news corporation from right wing america in order to shower it with contempt.

an element of group-think, no? an inability to recognise the failings and shortcomings from within ones own circle.........

perhaps a dash of zenophobia thrown in as well? highlighting that which is different for contempt and isolation because it does not conform to your world view.........

fox may have its faults, but the idea that europe considers fox to be contemptible holds exactly zero weight with me, for the reason outlined in the first sentence.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I actually think Fox (Beck I think it was?) did a great job in exposing that. And in calling out several other less succesful personell pickings of the Obama administration. (Where does he find these people?)

It is now monday and I had to work all day.

So I now disagree with Fox rummaging through the dumpster of every person distantly involved in the Obama administaration. This is a witchhunt. Everybody here in the Backroom has posted something that he wouldn't want to be reminded of when applying for a new job. What public service is served by Fox' relentless hunt searching for possible unfortunate remarks somebody may have made fifteen years ago? Who is served by Fox staking out in somebody's seage, hoping to find some turd to float along, and start a week long cabal about it on their talk-television shows?

This is not useful investigative journalism. It is turd-fishing, hoping to find some trivial matter, perhaps a youthful mistake, that can be blown way out of proportion and used as 'evidence' of Obama's Marxist attack on America.

[Strike For The South]

It is now monday and I had to work all day.

So I now disagree with Fox rummaging through the dumpster of every person distantly involved in the Obama administaration. This is a witchhunt. Everybody here in the Backroom has posted something that he wouldn't want to be reminded of when applying for a new job. What public service is served by Fox' relentless hunt searching for possible unfortunate remarks somebody may have made fifteen years ago? Who is served by Fox staking out in somebody's seage, hoping to find some turd to float along, and start a week long cabal about it on their talk-television shows?

This is not useful investigative journalism. It is turd-fishing, hoping to find some trivial matter, perhaps a youthful mistake, that can be blown way out of proportion and used as 'evidence' of Obama's Marxist attack on America.

I'll agree to an extent.

Some of the things Fox talks about are important and none of the other networks cover them (ACORN). However the fact that to get to 1 good point you need to go through 100 miles of crazy doesn't help them.

[Xiahou]

Here's a shocker- Stimulus jobs wildly exaggerated

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

But in interviews with recipients, the Globe found that several openly acknowledged creating far fewer jobs than they have been credited for.

One of the largest reported jobs figures comes from Bridgewater State College, which is listed as using $77,181 in stimulus money for 160 full-time work-study jobs for students. But Bridgewater State spokesman Bryan Baldwin said the college made a mistake and the actual number of new jobs was “almost nothing.’’ Bridgewater has submitted a correction, but it is not yet reflected in the report.

In other cases, federal money that recipients already receive annually - subsidies for affordable housing, for example - was reclassified this year as stimulus spending, and the existing jobs already supported by those programs were credited to stimulus spending. Some of these recipients said they did not even know the money they were getting was classified as stimulus funds until September, when federal officials told them they had to file reports.

You're already dealing with such a nebulous metric as jobs 'created or saved' and even still the numbers are fraudulent...

[Beskar]

From a Socialist to America.
You are no where near Socialist, stop using our name in vain.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Here's a shocker- Stimulus jobs wildly exaggerated
You're already dealing with such a nebulous metric as jobs 'created or saved' and even still the numbers are fraudulent...

The employment numbers are disappointing. I don't see the fraud.


If jobs 'created or saved' from existing subsidies are added into the numbers, with these existing subsidies re-classified as part of the stimulus package, then the expenses paid on the stimulus packages is accordingly lower too.


I wish I knew if the administration mixes these two numbers up. That is, if they speak of 'jobs created' counting all the jobs created from federal subsidies, but when discussing the total amount of money spend, using only the newer stimulus packages. This would be fraudulent.

[Crazed Rabbit]

The Onion shoots, and scores!

Obama's Home Teleprompter Malfunctions During Family Dinner.

CR

[Lemur]

You can always count on The Onion, God bless 'em. Here's some news that should be from them, but isn't: A majority of Republicans believe that ACORN stole the election.

PPP's newest national survey finds that a 52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately. [...] Overall 62% of Americans think Obama legitimately won the election to only 26% who think ACORN stole it for him, as few Democrats or independents buy into that line of thinking.