Boy, did Ron Fournier of the AP come up with some utterly craptacular nonsense on Obama’s health care reform speech last night (here)…

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama faces the same obstacles that plagued former President Bill Clinton during a health care standoff 15 years ago. But Obama took a strikingly different path around them Wednesday night, choosing the promise of compromise over Clinton’s sharp-edged veto pen.

For Clinton, the my-way-or-the-highway approach backfired. The legislation died, Republicans won control of Congress just 10 months later and health care fell from the public agenda, though Clinton himself recovered to win a second term.

I’m surprised that Fournier didn’t tell us that little fairies in the shape of elephants flew around and spread pixie dust that brainwashed the voters of this country into rejecting “big gumint” and those dastardly tax-and-spend liberals. That makes about as much sense as what he just said about the 1994 congressional election which (pathetically) gave the Repugs control of the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years.

I will grant you that there was a bit of overreach by the Clinton Administration, particularly on the issue of gays in the military (which, really, shouldn’t be an issue – I think Obama is handling this better by letting former Iraq war vet Patrick Murphy lead the effort to repeal DADT in the House, though it would be nice to hear some opposition to the ridiculous Defense of Marriage Act by the president himself, which would only help repeal of DADT).

Update 9/12/09: By the way, speaking of the Defense of Marriage Act, I thought this was good news.

And I will also grant that what happened with health care contributed to the perception also, though the following should be noted from here (I know I got into this in an earlier post, but I think it bears repeating – a lot)…

In mid-August, former President Clinton…argued that blaming his administration’s decision to hand a (health care) bill to Congress was an inaccurate depiction of what occurred and not a reason the effort failed.

As keynote speaker at the Netroots Nation conference of progressive/liberal bloggers in Pittsburgh, Mr. Clinton sarcastically denounced what he considers the false, revisionist history: “Everybody knows that Hillary presented this horribly complicated, 1,300-page bill, which would have broken the back of the federal statutes. And what she should’ve done was refused to present a bill and just have her committee issue a report to Congress with recommendations.”

In reality, Mr. Clinton said, the bill-writing was dictated by Congress: “We actually pleaded with the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to let us send a report with recommendations and have them write the bill, and he said, ‘I will not take this up unless you send me a bill.’ ”

Mr. Clinton recalled that the chairman at the time — Representative Dan Rostenkowski, whom President Clinton later pardoned for a mail-fraud conviction — countered that without a presidential bill, interest groups would swarm all over his committee. The lobbyists would overwhelm the lawmakers, in other words.

And according to Mr. Clinton, the chairman argued: “There’s not enough base-level knowledge in the Congress to resist it, and we will never get anywhere. This will not happen unless you give a bill.”

Also, the Clinton budget had passed the year before, which would eventually ensure economic prosperity which lasted through the rest of his administration. However, at the time, the Repugs (cheered on by our corporate media stenographers on this and everything else, including the failure of health care reform) did nothing but harp about tax increases to Medicare and Social Security. That, along with their caterwauling about the assault weapons ban, gave Baby Newton Leroy Gingrich an opening to yammer on and on about his Contract on America.

(I think it’s also important to consider that, back then, the concept of conservative movement, ideologue Repugs wasn’t as commonly accepted as it is now, unfortunately. By that I mean that, though voters were unhappy enough with Poppy Bush not to elect him to a second term in 1992, there were still enough grownups in charge of the Republican Party who voters thought could actually perform the hard work of governance, to the point where those voters gave their party congressional power in ’94. However, I always thought that Gingrich’s flameout, as well as that of a certain dancing former exterminator, was at least as telling as his ascent – that is, voters woke up and realized what wingnuts they both truly were, aided by the Monica Whatsername inquisition.)

So basically, for Fournier to assign the failure of health care reform to pass in ’94 as the sole reason for the Dems’ loss of Congress is laughable. And though it’s possible that that scenario could be repeated if somehow health care reform doesn’t pass in this session, that would also take place if the voters assumed that the Repug party could be trusted again as they once were in the early ‘90s. And it’s a whole new ballgame on that score, my fellow prisoners.

And here’s more Fournier dreck…

Liberals were frustrated that a progressive revolution had not yet materialized under Clinton’s watch. Even worse, Republican and Democratic skeptics alike wondered whether he had the stomach for a fight.

Clinton responded that night 15 years ago by brandishing a pen and declaring: “If you send me legislation that does not guarantee every American private health insurance that can never be taken away, you will force me to take this pen, veto the legislation, and we’ll come right back here and start all over again.”

From that flourish of political arrogance followed every bad decision that doomed health care reform — a task force headed by his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, meeting in secret to craft a Byzantine plan with little congressional input.

It died upon arrival.

As noted above, former House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski was the one who wanted Clinton to produce a bill instead of Congress.

But Fournier isn’t done, folks…

Obama knows there is no chance of having a truly two-party approach to health care reform, and only a slim chance of dragging more than two or three Republicans aboard a Democratic bill.

But he also knows — his pollsters surely have told him — that the public craves at least the appearance of bipartisanship.

An Associated Press-GfK poll released hours before his address shows that eight in 10 Americans say it’s important that any plan that passes Congress have the support of both parties.

According to this, that is actually correct (does it say something that the only place where I can obtain this information is a Repug-friendly site?), believe it or not (the bottom of the post tells us that the poll sampling included 39 percent Democrats and 33 percent Republicans…presumably, the other 28 percent were independents or undecided – I cannot locate any other sampling information on this poll).

However, I think the following should be emphasized (here)…

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Yet the survey also revealed considerable unease about the impact of heightened government involvement, on both the economy and the quality of the respondents’ own medical care. While 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care.

I think concern about the impact on the economy is understandable given its sorry state at the moment.

So, we have Fournier’s poll telling us that 8 in 10 Americans support a poll with input from both parties. And we have the New York Times/CBS poll telling us that Americans strongly support health care reform and the public option (though they are justly concerned about the numbers behind those reforms).

Well, armed with that information, you would think the Repugs would have put together at least a semblance of legislation to address those concerns (presumably, the papers some of them were waving in the air during Obama’s speech last night – and don’t worry, I won’t say that they were imitating Neville Chamberlain since that would invite more stupid comparisons between Obama and you-know-who).

However, as we read from here…

Top Republicans in the House today unveiled a GOP health-care plan, stressing that they were looking forward to working with President Obama and Nancy Pelosi.

The plan, devised by the House Republican Health Care Solutions Group, promotes specifically targeting groups among the nation’s uninsured that could be covered by the existing system as well as keeping health insurance within the private sector.

…

Another area that is not touched upon within the GOP plan is cost. When pressed on the issue by reporters, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) struck back.

“We are not going to have a bill that is larger than the GDP of most countries,” he said, an apparent reference to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate on the Kennedy plan and other floated numbers — in the trillions of dollars — for the potential cost of other Democratic-backed plans.

He then went on to say the numbers for the GOP plan would come after the Democrats are done scoring their own legislation. When pressed harder for a ballpark estimate of the cost of the plan, Camp responded, “We do have ideas about that” before reiterating the GOP’s idea of insuring Americans under the age of 25.

So, as usual, they have something to amplify their talking points from their core constituencies (as well as fodder for more feigned umbrage), but nothing with enough detail to serve as a basis for serious legislation.

And Fournier concludes his piece with this…

Why wave a veto pen when Obama can make a pass at bipartisanship and declare victory over whatever Democrats muscle through Congress? He’s a good politician, and knows it.

Obama must figure he can make a half a loaf look like a bakery.

Well (taking Fournier’s trite metaphor a bit further), what else is Obama supposed to do when the Repugs don’t even bother to leave him any crumbs?

Also, Media Matters has more on Fournier here.

Update: Funny how Fournier didn’t mention the Bill Kristol ‘93 memo that kos noted here, isn’t it (though Huckleberry Graham remembers, of course).

Il y a quelques temps Historia, une chaîne de télé québécoise spécialisée en histoire, lançait un appel au public pour trouver des films de familles tournés en 1920 et 1989. Ces films allaient constituer le matériel de base pour l’émission ”J’ai la mémoire qui tourne” diffusée dès août 2009. Je vais vous présenter aujourd’hui le site web de cette émission.

Les films

On retrouve énormément de contenu vidéo sur le site de J’ai la mémoire qui tourne. Il y a des vidéos amateurs tournés à Québec, à Roberval, Rivière-du-Loup, Chicoutimi, Percé, Montréal, donc un peu partout à travers le Québec.

Il y a des webépisodes dont une qui porte sur Maurice Richard, commentée par Ron Fournier.

Le blogue

Le blogue de l’émission est rédigé par Sylvain Cormier, Marie Brunette, Yanic Viau, Marie-Michèle Tremblay, Eric Ruel et Guylaine Maroist. Ces billets donne des informations sur les vidéos: dans quelles circonstances ils sont été réalisés, dans quel contexte historique, etc. Comme quoi même les films de famille recèlent d’informations sur l’histoire du Québec!

Il manque quelques fois un lien vers le vidéo dont il est question dans le billet.

Web collaboratif

Le public est invité à enrichir le contenu de ce site web et ce, de plusieurs façons. En s’inscrivant (gratuitement), on peut téléverser des films issus de nos archives familiales, commenter et ajouter des tags (mots-clés) décrivant les films en ligne. On peut créer une liste de nos films préférés ou les partager via les médias sociaux (Facebook, Twitter, Delicioux, Digg, etc) ou par courriel.

La prochaine série de J’ai la mémoire qui tourne sera présentée à l’automne 2010.

On peut aussi suivre ”J’ai la mémoire qui tourne” via Facebook.

Le premier épisode de la série peut être visionné en cliquant ici.

En somme, cela vaut la peine d’être un visiteur régulier de ce site et d’y contribuer!

Adresse: http://jailamemoirequitourne.historiatv.com/accueil

Billet relié:

• Le cinéma au Québec au temps du muet (1896-1930)
• Je m’appelle Claude Jutra: portrait d’un cinéaste québécois
• Découvrez le cinéma canadien grâce au site de l’ONF
• Eléphant: la mémoire du cinéma québécois

There isn’t anything to do with a midnight show in this post except one thing: I’m going to see the sixth Harry Potter film tonight, and it’s going to be awesome. Don’t try to tell me otherwise, because it’s going to be amazing. I can feel it deep down in my bones. But other things happened today, so I’m going to tell you about them.

– QUESTIONING TRANSPHOBIA: A Russian man shot and killed his girlfriend when he found out she was trans. Remember when Emma Ruby-Sachs called Bruno an act of bravery? Yeah, that’s still bullshit.
– FRIENDLY ATHEIST: The Alabama Freethought Association helped get a billboard reading “Imagine No Religion” posted in Birmingham – as you can imagine, Alabama is not reacting well. It’s kind of hilarious.
– THINK PROGRESS: I’m sure Sarah Palin will get a kick out of this – a rightwing group has released an ad suggesting Sonia Sotomayor, of all people, pals around with terrorists. It’s funny how all the right’s suspected terrorist sympathizers wind up being, y’know, not white. Except Bill Ayers – but I guess to make that work they just remind themselves who he “pals around” with.
– HUFFINGTON POST: Senator Lindsey Graham thinks Sotomayor has a great shot of getting confirmed unless she has a meltdown. Is she just not feisty enough for you, Senator? I wonder if Senator Sessions feels otherwise.
– DAILYKOS: Senator Sessions wants to know why Judge Sotomayor didn’t rule the same way as that OTHER Puerto Rican judge. I understand that Sessions lives in a world where it’s totally normal to be surrounded by people the same gender, relative age, color, and with identical ideologies, but this is another great example of his complete lack of self-awareness and ethnocentrism. Thanks Jeff.
– CROOKS AND LIARS: Representative Zach Wamp has some problems with Rachel Maddow’s coverage of his C-Street Family.
– SHAKESVILLE: Ron Fournier of AP wants you to know he knows exactly what Sonia Sotomayor is thinking all the time, and that even though she doesn’t look like “you” (that is, the default white person Ron Fournier has in his head whenever he thinks about anything, I guess) she’s totally American and her family doesn’t hate her or something.
– OH NO THEY DIDN’T: Dan Radcliffe doesn’t care if you think he’s gay, because he thinks being gay would be awesome. This link is slightly NSFW, as Oh No They Didn’t often is. But the point is: I love Dan Radcliffe and I wish everyone in the whole world thought the same way he does.

If The Arkansas Project is the future of journalism, then I’d better brush up on my Paint.net skills and mastery of Google Image Search if I want to stay employed. That, and use lots of salty language!

I’m up to the task. And if you want to learn more about the future of this wretched craft, check out the Society of Professional Journalists‘ Region 12 Conference this weekend right here in Little Rock. There will be lots of panels and speakers, including Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier.

And speaking of panelists, Arkansas Project blogger David Kinkade is indeed on a “Future of Journalism” panel with Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Web guru Conan Gallaty and Arkansas News Bureau Web editor (and blogger) Zack Stovall. And Arkansas Business Editor Gwen Moritz will be part of group discussing how to cover the recession and federal stimulus on a local level.

Oh. And I’m on a panel about multimedia in journalism. Bring your Flip cams! We’ll talk about working in journalism across all media platforms, how it can work and the challenges and opportunities it presents.

Me on an SPJ panel — I buried the lede! Better brush up on that, too.

More

A PDF of the conference registration form

More on other panels at The Arkansas Project

As Zuul as my witness, I have absolutely no idea why this has caught on as a great way to ding Obama.

…Obama came before the nation to sell one of the most expensive and politically risky agendas ever offered by a U.S. president, but his language was heavy with caution. A hard-willed plan given a soft sell.

The teleprompter was no help during the question-and-answer session (reporters don’t signal their intentions), but Obama was no less careful during that give and take.

…WAIT–he’s careful whether he’s using a teleprompter or not? I don’t get it. What was the title of this article again?

Analysis: Teleprompter telegraphs Obama caution

Unbelievable.

Calm. Cool. Careful.

Even better, he likes to have it up on the teleprompter.

Geez–what idiot wrote this?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ron Fournier is the Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press.

Oh, that guy..

…the one who’s not Karl Rove.

Without a doubt, many of the attacks from the far-right against President Obama have amounted to nothing more than the political equivalent of speaking in tongues. The attacks are only marginally more coherent than Steve Carell’s Brick Tamland character from Anchorman shouting “LOUD NOISES!” for the sake of shouting something. Anything.

The most ridiculous of the loud noises are the ones that entirely ignore the legacy of the previous president. Specifically, the very same people making the loudest noises about President Obama have also spent the last eight years spastically applauding President Bush’s worst trespasses every step of the way. The far-right’s staggering disregard for the significant flaws of the former Republican president confounds logic when measured against their ridiculous attacks on the current president.

ATTACK: President Obama took a vacation to Hawaii.
REALITY: President Bush set a record for presidential vacations during two wars and a major hurricane.

ATTACK: President Obama’s budget could double the national debt.
REALITY: President Bush’s spending actually did.

ATTACK: President Obama is “shredding the Constitution.”
REALITY: You mean there’s a Constitution left to be shredded?

ATTACK: President Obama chuckled while talking about bailing out the auto industry.
REALITY: President Bush routinely smirked and grinned while talking about the significantly more serious issues of war and military casualties.

ATTACK: President Obama is incompetent.
REALITY: Do I even need to do the list?

ATTACK: President Obama is presiding over a one-party fascist government.
REALITY: This is not a joke.

So. Loud noises!

This is sort of like a fan of the Jonas Brothers accusing Death Cab for Cutie of selling out. Devoid of logic or basic consistency, these attacks are reduced to being nothing more than angry shouting. Speaking in tongues. All told, there isn’t a single Bush flaw that hasn’t been hamhandedly projected onto President Obama, and we’re not even three months into the Obama presidency.

But wait. There’s more.

As has been the case for too many years, more than a few of these crazy bombs have made the too-short journey from the far-right’s psychotic pit of despair and into the establishment press. But in the case of the newest round of loud noises, the opposite is actually true.

ATTACK: President Obama uses a teleprompter when delivering prepared remarks. This clearly means he’s a moron and intellectually incurious and incompetent and hopelessly doofish. Impeach! Impeach!

This one appears to have started with a February item by Dean Barnett in the self-satirical Weekly Standard in which he wrote that President Obama is unable to deliver prepared remarks without a teleprompter. You mean the president doesn’t memorize his speeches like other modern presidents? And by “other modern presidents,” I mean zero other modern presidents. Shocking.

Then, earlier this month, Carol Lee wrote a piece for the Politico. Her angle was, in essence, that President Obama’s New Fangled Word Squares from Outer Space sometimes make it difficult for photographers and videographers to get a clean view of the president. Poor, poor news media. Why does President Obama’s teleprompter hate America?

In the past couple of weeks, the teleprompter attack has gone full-blown viral among far-right tea baggers and bloggers (who, by the way, still haven’t “gone Galt” as promised). Michelle Malkin, for example, posted a series of terrifically unfunny photoshopped images of the president and his teleprompters. Drudge ballyhooed a hilarious blog written by — get this — the president’s teleprompter. And random members of broader wingnuttia have taken to calling the president “TOTUS” (Teleprompter of the United States).

So funny! I tell you what, here’s more fuel for the far-right bloggers. A gift from me to them. President Obama, it turns out, needs a pen — a PEN! — in order to write words on paper and to sign his name. Zing! Pow! Time to work up some awesome Obama’s Pen photoshops. In Pen We Trust! Barack HusseINK Obama! Sharpie of the United States — or “SOTUS.”

But okay, I get it. The claim from the far-right is that, without his teleprompter, President Obama is a dumb stupid. Yes, far-right Bush dead-enders are equating verbal performance with intelligence.

Say what you will about his politics, but no one with any degree of honesty can claim with a straight face that President Obama isn’t one of the smartest presidents of the last 50-plus years. The president’s impromptu speaking style, which the far-right misperceives as somehow “stupid,” is actually the president being thoughtful and prudent. And yes, he occasionally stammers and uses common verbal tics, but does that mean he’s “stupid?” Or disconnected? The same faction of people who proudly champion anti-intellectualism as a virtue are currently accusing a very smart man of being an idiot. Let me know if you can figure that one out. While you’re at it, what the hell is a “peeance freeance secure Iraq?”

The teleprompter attacks have become so inexplicably widespread that, Monday night, David Letterman aired a bit called “Teleprompter vs. No Teleprompter” about how stupid the whole teleprompter thing has become. Leading into a video comparing a clip of President Obama using a teleprompter and George W. Bush stammering without one, Letterman basically said (paraphrasing): “This is seriously all they’ve got?”

Little did Letterman know that on Tuesday night the Great War on Teleprompters would reach new levels of hackery. Immediately following the end of the president’s prime time press conference, David Gregory on NBC and Brett Baier on FOX News Channel reported that the president used a teleprompter for his customary prepared statement at the top of the event. As if that was somehow unusual. Baier, by the way, read his remarks from a teleprompter.

Meanwhile, the AP’s Washington Bureau Chief and Karl Rove Enabler, Ron Fournier, described the teleprompter as a “crutch.” Fact: all presidents read a prepared statement at the outset of their press conferences. More on that presently. The whole Fournier item is one long, shameless, desperate grab for far-right blog links. (Quick aside: in the comments under the Breitbart posting of Fournier’s article, a far-right commenter wrote: “Grab some John Galt gear from [Café Press store link] and join us at your local Tea Party this April 15th.” Yeah do that, because nothing says “deliberately not earning money and withdrawing from society in order to bring down the economy” quite like promoting and selling John Galt swag. Consistent!)

A “crutch,” is what Fournier called it. This implies that using a teleprompter is somehow easier than reading from printed pages. That’s definitely not always the case. Just ask John McCain. If you’ve ever tried to read a speech or some dialogue from a teleprompter, it just rolls along — sometimes too quickly, other times too slowly. If it’s manually operated, you have to rely on the judgment of the operator and hope they’re paying attention. It’s really quite unnerving unless you’ve really mastered it. But if you have, why go back to reading from pages? There’s no point. It’s like learning to pilot a jet, but then only ever traveling bareback on a donkey.

In politics and the media, teleprompters are about as commonplace as microphones and people named “O’Donnell.” Some use a teleprompter, some use paper, some use cue cards, some use both. Really, what difference does it make whether prepared remarks are read from paper or Perspex? Either way, we’re talking about prepared text printed on a readable medium. The teleprompter isn’t some space-age interdimensional portal that automatically injects your audience with nitrous oxide and mild doses of heroin, drugging them into an involuntary state of euphoric torpor. It simply allows the reader to deliver a speech without looking down at the podium. That’s all.

Once again, there’s no other way to describe this attack other than to call it “loud noises!” amounting to schizoid, nonsensical garble. Just like any Glenn Beck show, in fact — maudlin platitudes that, if shouted loudly enough, sound very serious.

So ultimately if the intention is to turn “teleprompter” into a bad word, then good luck running Sarah Palin in 2012. Sarah Palin — whose one bright shining moment came complete with a teleprompter, and whose most damning moments came without one.

BobCesca.com

Two of U.S. News & World Reporters have fresh insights about the “controversy” over President Obama’s use of a teleprompter at last night’s press conference.

Robert Schlesinger:

AP’s Ron Fournier described the device as a “familiar crutch.” Crutch? Really? That implies that Obama suffers some sort of debility that requires additional aid. And while some presidents might have memorized their opening statement and delivered it from memory (Richard Nixon comes to mind), it is not uncommon to read a prepared statement to open a press conference. And it’s not odd to use a teleprompter as opposed to pieces of paper on the podium.

If he starts reading off a teleprompter when answering questions, that would be news-worthy (and worrying). But until then the “teleprompter issue” is more interesting for what it says about those who keep raising it than about Barack Obama.

James Fallows:

The whole “Obama can’t talk on his own” concept is bizarre, given his performance through two years of stump speeches and debates during the campaign. But it seems to have gotten so much credence in the right-wing world that it is worth addressing head on.

Bless you, Wonkette.

My favorite site calls out the Associated Press for a pointless “analysis” piece by AP Bureau Chief Ron Fournier that notes President Obama relied “on a familiar crutch” last night by using a teleprompter while delivering his opening remarks last night.

Writes Wonkette editor Jim Newell:

It seems that Ron Fournier and many others have forgotten the basic format of every single presidential press conference ever, which is for the President to read a prepared statement for 5 minutes or so and then take questions. Would they be happier if Obama spent five hours of his workday trying to memorize his remarks?

Can we dispense with these silly Obama-uses-a-teleprompter stories already?

This week’s Arkansas Business newspaper is online here. Among this edition’s content:

KARN-AM/FM, 920/102.9 — now home to a weekend golf program — is changing its AM station to an all-sports station, and sports-radio leader KABZ-FM, 103.7, will feel the ripples.

Employees of scandal-plagued Stanford Group Co. in Little Rock have picked up new employment elsewhere. (Related: The Memphis Commercial Appeal on investors who lost big.)

Electronic gaming kept Arkansas’ two racetracks alive, bringing in valuable tourist dollars to West Memphis and Hot Springs in spite of competition in Mississippi and recession. (Also: Richard Davies, executive director of the Arkansas Department of Parks & Tourism, on why Arkansas tourism is still swinging.)

J. French Hill, chairman and CEO of Delta Trust & Banking Co. of Little Rock, writes an open letter to FDIC Chairman Sheila Blair on the FDIC’s plans to take $27 billion out of the banking system during 2009 by way of a special assessment.

Ron Fournier, the Associated Press’ Washington bureau chief, and Tom Hallman Jr., who won a Pulitzer Prize at The Oregonian of Portland, are among the speakers at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Region XII conference April 3-4 in Little Rock.

by matttbastard

Shorter Associated Press: “‘The world’ = an Italian op-ed scribe, some guy in France, an Egyptian civil servant, and Hugo Chavez.”

*blink*

Y’know, one would think a purportedly reputable, mainstream news organization would tap into ye olde expense account and commission an opinion poll to, y’know, semi-accurately measure global opinion. Kinda like these outlets did, in order to gauge the domestic mood prior to Obama’s inauguration, instead of simply splicing together a handful of anecdotes.  But that’s precisely the sort of unnecessary clutter that Ron Fournier’s revoultionary “make shit up” policy swiftly cuts through, like a freshly-sharpened bowie knife slicing a thick hunk of canned ham.

Mmmm, canned ham.  Followed by donuts and coffee for dessert. Now that’s a surefire recipe for success.

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers

by matttbastard

1992 called–it wants its appalling lack of journalistic ethics and standards back.

No, seriously–you keep making shit up, with no apparent interest in sifting through unfounded allegations and baseless conjecture to find a nugget of fact. Hint: continually filing meat-free stories with breathless headlines like “Senate-for-sale case threatens new chief of staff” is a good way to brand yourselves as the Fox Newswire. Not to say that you’ve collectively lowered yourselves to the histrionic level of Professional Obama Haters (yet); but the desperate Blagobamarahmbogate obsession is getting a bit pathetic.

At this point, it seems that the primary source fuelling most of the recent unfounded allegations and baseless conjecture regarding Blagobamarahmbogate is–wait for it–the Associated Press. As Steve Benen said, “[a]s serious as Blagojevich’s problems are, it sounds like the Obama/transition team angle is a dud. There’s just nothing there.” So why, in the middle of the worst economic downturn since 19-fucking-29, do you insist on flailing and floundering with great speculative ado over, um, nothing?

Newsflash: there’s no clutter left to cut through, kids; you’ve totally eviscerated the biggest obstacle to successfully implementing Ron Fournier’s new mandate: your credibility.

in fairness and balance,

matttbastard

PS: George Stephanopolus would like to formally apologize for taking the wind out of your sails today. Not that this latest no-shit-revelation will be enough to stem the speculative bluster emanating from your Washington Bureau. But one can always hope you’ll now start charting a new course.

(I know, and a dapple-fucking-grey pony.)

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers

This may come as a shock to you, but despite conventional wisdom and what Hollywood might have you believe, women–especially professional women–actually get along with each other. So, until you come up with some actual, y’know, proof of acrimony between Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton, as opposed to speculation and conjecture, tell your staff to stop phoning in lazy Page Six-style hit pieces in lieu of purportedly ’serious’ political reporting. Also, please go see somebody about the ongoing Clinton Derangement Syndrome festering within the ranks of AP’s Washington Bureau; at this point, it’s borderline pathological.

love and napalm,

matttbastard

h/t Ta-Nehisi Coates

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers

Jay Newton-Small has a piece in the Washington Post arguing that the AP’s attempts to bring more “attitude” to its political coverage are strangely out of character and that the AP is surrendering its brand, that of the down-the-middle “neutral abiter”:

“I worry that their strategy is too 2004 Web and not a 2008 approach to the Web,” says Dick Keil, a former AP reporter who spent 20 years working for wire services before becoming a political consultant. “It’s like New Coke — it seems cool now, but just wait. It could bring down the whole company: They have a recognized, respected and trusted brand and identity, and they are moving in a radically new direction likely to make the vast majority of their subscribers uncomfortable.”

…[I]n a world, and a Web, full of analysis, opinion and “accountability journalism,” what’s missing is a neutral referee. Which is a bit like living in a world with a North Pole and a South Pole but no equator. If there’s no one to set the standard, how will we know when we’ve crossed the line?

I wish Keil or Newton-Small had explained what they think a “2008 approach to the web” is, because the piece offers no ideas on that front beyond the rhetorical flourish. In any case, the problem with this piece is that it follows the classic line of reasoning of Jay Rosen’s bete noir, the newsroom curmudgeon: the past was great, the present scary, and the future, potentially apocalyptic.

Of those three notions, the first is by far the most pernicious. The past just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The piece ignores the crisis in credibility that has afflicted the media over the past generation. The idea of a media “neutral arbiter” – Walter Cronkite, the New York Times, the AP – is a fiction, harking back to a fleeting era of political consensus dating to the “Mad Men” era. This Olympian media ideal has been eroding ever since, and the erosion accelerated during the Bush years. It has hit two low points recently – the media’s credulous treatment of the Bush administration’s reasons for going to war with Iraq; and in the cable talking heads-driven, “everybody is equally at fault” approach to campaign coverage. (Though there’s finally been some pushback on the latter in response to the McCain campaign’s aggressive pushing of falsehoods.)

The AP’s attempts to bring more attitude to its political coverage, directed by Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier, have been erratic. Sometimes laziness or outright bias has taken the place of substantive argument, and Newton-Small’s piece makes it clear that some AP reporters are uncomfortable with the new approach. But at least they’re trying. The traditional “AP brand” is already dead, and just wishing we could somehow reanimate it won’t address the problems that killed it.

I think that it is very important that everyone read this article!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080928/ap_on_re_us/the_racial_divide

By RON FOURNIER and ERRIN HAINES, Associated Press Writers

I don’t know who else noticed besides your humble narrator, but Ron Fournier and Charles Babington of the AP took turns this weekend writing two stories on the same poll concerning the election.

I’ll give you Fournier first (here)…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them “lazy,” “violent,” responsible for their own troubles.

The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points.

And now Babington (here)…

(The poll) shows that a substantial portion of white Americans still harbor negative feelings toward blacks. It shows that blacks and whites disagree tremendously on how much racial prejudice exists, whose fault it is and how much influence blacks have in politics.

One result is that Barack Obama’s path to the presidency is steeper than it would be if he were white.

And in other news, the sky is blue, water is wet, the Pope is German, and Dubya’s job approval rating is now at 19 percent (here – doesn’t have anything to do with this post, really, but what would I be if I missed an opportunity to take a shot over that?).

Yes, race is an issue, but Fournier and Babington both throw around a lot of statistics from Stanford University (which I’ve never identified as a hotbed of progressive political thought anyway) that I’m not going to waste anyone’s time trying to analyze (I’m a blogger, not an insurance actuary). I put more stock in reporting on this matter like the type that Dave Davies of the Philadelphia Daily News provided here (not trying to impugn him in the post title, by the way).

And if I can “go meta” for a second on this, I just want to make the personal observation that, as a white male living in the Northeast, I no longer feel any implied sense of entitlement or superiority over anyone living in any other region of this country on the matter of race. It’s true that I should not have felt that way anyway, and I’m sorry about that. But after watching or hearing of the conduct of a great many people who I thought knew better than to disqualify Barack Obama merely because of the color of his skin over these last few months, I have to tell you that I have found myself truly sobered into recognizing this fact (and I have found that conduct to be utterly shocking – say what you want, but that’s the way it is, as that news guy used to say).

That being said, though, I would just like to remind us all of this Gallup poll from last February which, among other things, showed steeper numbers for Hillary Clinton in a matchup with John W. McBush when it came to white male voters (40 HRC- 55 McBush versus 45 Obama – 50 McBush) and showed better numbers among overall voters for Obama against McBush than HRC against the Repug nominee (with the exception of voters 65 and older).

And though Hillary Clinton fared better than Obama in a McBush matchup when it came to rating the two Dems on their experience, I personally think that’s a wash given the fact that our corporate media would have recycled every conceivable negative Clinton narrative to negate her edge had she won the nomination. I think it works to Obama’s advantage that he’s more of a “blank slate,” the nonstop Tony Rezko-Reverend Wright caterwauling by Fox Noise and right-wing attack radio notwithstanding (a lot harder for Broderella, for example, to go sniffing around in the Obama’s underwear drawer than the Clinton’s).

Also, please keep in mind here that I would have been happy with Hillary as the nominee (yes, really). She and Obama were both excellent candidates, but what decided it for me was the precision of Obama’s campaign, versus all of the pratfalls from the people who were supposed to be serving Hillary (and both she and her husband had their stumbles also – those contrasts told me how each of them would have governed). I’m not trying to use “analysis” from Fournier, Babington or anyone else to justify my selection (and either way, that selection would have been historic from the moment John Edwards left the campaign, which, we now know, was an act of providence).

I don’t know how much of an issue race is going to play in this election, and I have news for you: nobody else does either. And unless the AP is going to walk us step by step through exactly how this study was conducted (e.g., they note that photos of Caucasians versus African-Americans were shown to measure responses in the Stanford study; why can’t we see the photos?), they shouldn’t try acting like they do (at the very least, the Fournier and Babington pieces should have been labeled “analysis”; why was even that slight gesture too much trouble?).

Update: As soon as I pressed Enter on this, I realized I’d forgotten to point out that there are a bunch of nested links for both the Fournier and Babington pieces providing more information on the survey methodology, though it takes some digging to get to this information.

Update 9/23/08: This is a recording…

Say “Ka-Ching!” McCain Poses with Chief Lobbyists for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

• McCain Hypocrisy Exposed.  McCain campaign chief Rick Davis was paid $2 Million by an astroturf lobbying firm set up by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the “Homeownership Alliance”).  (More and more, it seems you can safely assume any attack from McCain is actually psychological projection of his own character flaws and ethical lapses.)

McCain Refuses to Acknowledge How His Deregulatory Dogma Contributed to Wall Street Crisis

• In the McCain camp’s over-the-top tirade against the New York Times, Politico finds it got many facts wrong, many of which were gratuitous and unnecessary.  Joe Klein says they’ve jumped the shark, and their diversionary tactics aren’t working.

• Hillary to work overtime for Obama campaign in Ohio between now and election.
• New Iowa Poll:  Obama lead expands to 53-39%.
• New WaPo/ABC Poll also finds Obama leading in Virginia, 49-46%.
• Hotline/Diageo daily tracking poll, Obama leads 47-42%.
• New CNN National Poll, Obama leads 51-46% among registered voters, and 51-47% among “likely” voters.
• New Suffolk Univ. Poll says McCain’s longstanding lead in Nevada has dwindled to a near tie, 46-45%.
• New PPP Poll has Obama way ahead in New Mexico, 53-42%.
• New Virginia SUSA Poll:  Obama 51, McCain 45%.
• New Michigan Poll:  Obama 52, McCain 43%.
• Bush’s overall approval rating falls to an all-time low in ARG polling of 19%.  His approval rating for handling the economy is 17%.
• National Association of Police Officers (NAPO) endorses Obama-Biden.
• Humane Society breaks tradition to endorse Obama-Biden.
• The McCain campaign is furious that the NY Times exposed its hypocritical lobbying ties to Fannie and Freddie, and counters by arguing the NY Times is in the tank for Obama. Team Obama’s response:

“Number of probing stories the NY Times has written over the course of the campaign about Barack Obama, his life, his religion, his childhood, his politics, his time in the state senate, his time in the U.S. Senate, his family, his religion, his friends, his fundraising and all other manner of associations: more than 40

Number of stories the NY Times has written over the course of the campaign about the last major financial regulatory crisis, resulting in a huge bailout, and which John McCain was centrally involved in with his political godfather Charles Keating: 0“

• NY Times Editorial decodes racist dog whistles used in McCain ads (”disrespectful”) and his surrogates (”uppity”).
• Al Giordano launches campaign to remove Ron Fournier as AP Washington Bureau Chief for violating its own journalism ethics standards.

• Paul Krugman:  dubs the Wall Street Bush Bailout “Cash for Trash” and says Congress should resist pressure to rush to approve it without further scrutiny and revision.
• WaPo: On Main Street, there’s a lot of resentment towards the Bush Bailout.

• Morgan and Goldman agree to become regulated banks governed by the Bank Holding Company Act, which, among other things, will grant them the same access as other commercial banks to the Fed’s emergency loan program.  In other words, they didn’t do this as an act of penance.
• Newsweek: John McCain has 13 cars to go along with his 9 homes (Psst, hey Michigan, three of the cars are foreign!).

• WaPo:  “First Dude” Todd Palin is deeply involved in governing Alaska.

• NY Times:  Democrats prepare own Bush Bailout plan with revisions and new conditions.

• Four More Years of the McSame? WaPo reports on how McCain and Palin are surrounded by advisers who are veterans of the Bush/Cheney Administration.

• NY Times:  Bush bailout allows for bailout of foreign banks with U.S. taxpayer funds, which would make the foreign banks very happy indeed.

Sunday morning politics linkdump. Sorry for all these linkdumps, by the way—it was a busy week. Next week should see a return to a little bit more sustained commentary (including the exciting return of debate liveblogging!).

* There have been some interesting debates about poll biases lately. Ron Fournier (grumble) at the AP covers a study that argues Obama would be further ahead were it not for racial animus, by as many as six points. FiveThirtyEight throws cold water on this, as well as looking closely at the possibility of a “cellphone effect” in the polls. If Obama does 2.8% better in polls that include cellphones, that suggests a shifting map like the one below, turning Virginia light-blue and strengthening small Dem leads in Ohio and Colorado.

* A study from political scientist Alan Abramowitz argues that Obama will win, when all is said and done, with 54% of the popular vote. That he’s naively comparing historical models with this year’s unprecedentedly diverse tickets in both camps shows how seriously we should take this analysis.

* A new PPP poll shows North Carolina tied. Other recent polls show South Carolina within six, West Virginia within four, and MontanVoteRonPaula within two.

* There’s evidence of a “Palin effect” in Florida driving undecided voters to Obama.

* The Spine tries to get a handle on Obama’s early-voting advantage, beginning as early as this Friday in Virginia. The second link has some stats of interest for Dukies and Durham residents:

In addition, more early-voting centers are being located at colleges and universities, a change that significantly affects student turnout. Students at the University of North Carolina and N.C. State were able to vote on campus throughout the two weeks leading up to North Carolina’s primary contest in April. At Duke University, however, students had to make their way to voting sites in the city of Durham. While turnout for Durham County was 52% in the Democratic primary, only 11% of eligible Duke students voted. This fall, however, Duke will have its own early-voting center, open for business starting Oct. 16.

* The McCain camp has successfully demanded the VP debate rules be changed to protect Sarah Palin.

*Judge orders Cheney not to destroy his VP records.

* SNL mocked McCain this week. He also preemptively mocked himself with an article in Contingencies arguing (for reals) that “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.” Straight out of the Dept. of Bad Timing. Obama’s already taken aim at this.

* Will Obama raise my taxes? A helpful widget.

* And American Stranger has a long post on ideology that seems to take as one starting point my post on Slavoj Žižek, Obama Supporter. Essentially Ryan takes aim at the various binds the Left finds itself in with regard to political action, and I largely agree with what he says—though I certainly hope I wasn’t in mind as his example of sell-out “liberal ‘pragmatism’ a la The New Republic.” My point, both in the earlier post and now in this one, is simply that the U.S. President has a tremendous ability to make life better or worse for real people with real lives, all over the world, many of whom (believe it or not!) do not have cushy long-term contracts with elite universities. Naderite “Oh, they’re all the same!” negativity only makes sense to people who are inoculated by class and privilege from the consequences of that power.

The mere recognition that the perfect not be the enemy of the good doesn’t quite throw my lot in with TNR, I don’t think, and certainly not so long as we also keep in mind that the good not be the enemy of the better. Our discomfort with pragmatic compromises—and we should be discomforted by them, every time and in every case—isn’t by itself a reason not to be pragmatic.

(H/T Mickeleh)

Andrew Sullivan, Naomi Klein and Will.i.am appear on Realtime with Bill Maher. (BTW, Maher cites polling data that’s about a week out of date).

• A great summary of the universal criticism Bush’s bailout bill has engendered from across the ideological spectrum.
• Frank Rich compares the lies and manipulation behind the launch of McCain-Palin to the Bush White House’s run-up to the Iraq War.
• Politico: Bush bailout backlash builds.
• Opening SNL skit hits McCain for producing false and misleading ads (link here).
• Steve Katz, in an Op-ed in Seattle PI, says Palin is political junkfood for low information voters, but traditional media is under-reporting how much voters can’t stomach her, because they’re enjoying reporting on the novelty of her.
• Miami Herald reports on Obama’s enthusiastic reception given by a huge crowd in “Republican country” of Jacksonville, Florida.
• San Francisco Chronicle:  Palin bounce declining because she’s been repeating same convention speech lines for weeks, stumbled and the facts that have come out conflict with original storybook image. While she remains popular with the base, she appears to be repelling independent and undecided voters, which may explain the campaign’s decision to cancel Palin campaign events for this upcoming week.

• WaPo: McCain’s article on health care becomes fodder for Obama attacks, because in it McCain pledges to do for health care what deregulation did for the banking industry (oops).
• WaPo’s Balz:  Obama attacks McCain on deregulation and social security in Florida.
• Joe Biden is a gun owner and proud of it.
• Judge issues preliminary injunction ordering Cheney to preserve his official records.
• NY Times:  New pact on debate will let presidential candidates spar more freely, but in return, VP debate will have a much more restricted format at the insistence of the McCain campaign.
• WaPo notes that while the time for answers was shortened, there is no limitation on the subject areas that Gwen Ifel can ask of the VP candidates.  Team Obama also sought and won a point of having Biden and Palin behind lecterns, instead of at a table together (as the VP nominees did in 2004).
• WaPo shares some inside scoop on how the two campaigns huddled with economic advisers as the crisis unfolded on Wall Street.
• In a must read, Al Giordano slams the AP’s Ron Fournier’s irresponsible reporting and debunks the so-called Bradley Effect.
• Sebastian Mallaby, in a WaPo Op-ed, criticizes the federal bailout as impulsive and unwise.
• Glenn Greenwald also criticizes the Bush Administration’s proposed bailout legislation.

Obligatory McCain/Palin posting: Team Maverick™ has lost even the AP, whose Washington Bureau is famously staffed by a man MoveOn has been trying to get fired for bias and conflict of interest. It’s the lying, stupid:

The “Straight Talk Express” has detoured into doublespeak.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain, a self-proclaimed tell-it-like-it-is maverick, keeps saying his running mate, Sarah Palin, killed the federally funded Bridge to Nowhere when, in fact, she pulled her support only after the project became a political embarrassment. He accuses Democrat Barack Obama of calling Palin a pig, which did not happen. He says Obama would raise nearly everyone’s taxes, when independent groups say 80 percent of families would get tax cuts instead.

Even in a political culture accustomed to truth-stretching, McCain’s skirting of facts has stood out this week. It has infuriated and flustered Obama’s campaign, and campaign pros are watching to see how much voters disregard news reports noting factual holes in the claims.

Krugman, too, is outraged, and Josh Marshall (to his credit) has basically been having a week-long freakout. Here’s Krugman:

But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.

They’re not the only ones. ThinkProgress has a growing list of McCain’s ever-shifting positions. (Steve Benen has another one.) Basically every post on the respected and independent factcheck.org from the last week has about McCain’s lies. And on The View, just today, he falsely claimed that Sarah Palin had never requested an earmark as governor—a flagrant, wild lie.

It’s a farcical situation that turns tragic with the media’s refusal to properly report any of it. The cost for lying must be public approbation—otherwise politicians will lie constantly. The failure of the news media since the Republican convention to substantively report on basic, easily provable distortions is as great a betrayal of the public trust as any other over the last ten years. And as we all know well, all too well, that is saying a lot.

Obama, too, hasn’t yet done enough. But that may soon change: a spokesperson today claimed that McCain “would rather lose his integrity than lose an election,” presumably the first salvo in their new aggressive approach. I’ve got a lot of faith in Obama and his team; as I’ve mentioned before, whenever I’ve disagreed with their decisions they’ve turned out to be (more or less) right. Obama is cautious, perhaps too cautious, when it comes to hitting back—but it’s gotten him this far.

I agree, that is to say, with Noam Scheiber: I really think Obama’s been playing rope-a-dope, letting McCain embarrass himself with nonsense 50-days-and-change out from November 4—and now that McCain has completely overreached, Obama’s free to hit back as hard as he wants. Let’s hope the gloves really are coming off, finally and at last.