Memo to Richard Wolfe:
When your former editors, one of whom just said that President Obama is “standing above the whole world, he’s sort of God,” thinks you’re a an embarrassing lapdog for Obama, it’s a little like Amy Winehouse complaining that you have a substance abuse problem.
P.S.: If said editor helps run a “news” magazine that just made Stephen Colbert a guest editor, you should probably seek therapy ASAP.
Filed under: Economy, MSM, Obama, Online Video, Shameless Self Promotion | Tags: economic reporting, media bias
By the middle of 2003, a mild recession had ended and the economy turned around big-time, with the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs and whopping GDP growth of 7.5% in the third quarter. Yet month after month, the national media downplayed the good economic news with the dreaded “but,” as in “Positive economic indicator X was released today, but the economy is still in the toilet…” (Oh, by the way… George W. Bush was President back then.)
Of course, with President Obama now in the White House, the media’s economic coverage is the mirror opposite. As the unemployment rate skyrockets and hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost every month, the bad economic news is spun by Obama’s friends in the media: “Negative economic indicator Y was released today, but it’s not nearly bad as we’d expected, and besides, unemployment can be fun!“
As I watched more and more of this massive change in the tone of economic reporting recently, I decided to produce a little compare-and-contrast video. I did so not in the hope that the media will now start talking down a possible economic recovery the way they so obviously and unfairly did a few years ago, but just to shine some light on the almost cartoonish nature of media coverage both then and now. And maybe to convince a reporter or two to not ask Obama how enchanting it is to be President, and instead maybe ask him how in the world we’re going to deal with this chart.
Filed under: Uncategorized
In this morning’s Washington Post, Dana Milbank provides further evidence that the grassroots energy level on the left continues to wane.
Even as his Post colleague Dan Eggen attempts to put a positive spin on attendance at this week’s “America’s Future Now” conference by describing it as the gathering of “several thousand liberal activists,” Milbank tells the real story on the opposite page:
“(Group Co-Director Roger) Hickey estimates attendance dropped from 2,500 last year to 1,500 this year, and even that may overstate things. At yesterday morning’s four concurrent “issue briefings,” 585 chairs were set out. Only 213 of them were occupied, including just 15 for the session on global warming. “Radio row” was quiet, the “TV Terrace” was empty, and two people sat typing on “Blogger Boulevard.”
This is completely consistent with what we’ve seen at many other political events this year. Grassroots conservatives and libertarians, newly freed from the Bush and McCain albatrosses and aghast at government bailouts and debt piling up at previously unimaginable levels, are staging massive Tea Party rallies and packing the Virginia GOP Convention literally to the rafters of the RIchmond Coliseum.
Meanwhile, liberal Tea Parties draw embarrassingly small crowds, and as the video below shows, even Democratic debates in the the biggest campaign of the year are playing to half-empty rooms.
It’s indisputable that since January the grassroots energy has shifted monumentally to the right. The only question now is whether it’ll last long enough to translate to electoral victories in November of 2009 and 2010.
Earlier today I had the honor of attending the dedication ceremony for President Reagan’s new statue in the U.S. Capitol.
The event was attended by a lot of big-name political and media figures, including Nancy Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Ed Meese, Jim Baker, Senate Leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, Speaker Pelosi, House GOP Leader John Boehner, and even former Reagan nemeses Sam Donaldson and Chris Matthews.
After working the past 15 years in Washington politics, it’s easy for me to get pretty jaded and cynical sometimes, but this was a truly special ceremony, especially Mrs. Reagan’s brief, emotional remarks. Here’s a short video I put together that features some of the highlights, including short interviews I conducted with Dr. Kissinger and Chris Matthews about their memories of President Reagan:
Bad news for Big-Government Republicans and Democrats who hope to capitalize on the principled stands of true fiscal conservatives who refuse to go along with Washington’s limitless spending: most people understand that an economic crisis caused by massive debt and overspending will never be solved by more debt and overspending.
H/T: Stephen Gordon at The Next Right
