What Liberal Bias in the Media?

Yesterday, I had to recheck my program guide because I thought that the so-called mainstream media had morphed into Fox News, Info Wars, and the Drudge Report. In fact, Fox News Sunday’s coverage of the administration’s Obamacare problems was pretty tame.

David Gregory of ‘Meet the Press’ tried to grill Leader Pelosi, but she’s been on a few talk shows and was ready. David let Senator Ayotte slide when she said that Republicans wanted to work on a bipartisan healthcare bill. I think that would be news to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. It wasn’t until later in the show when, Mike Murphy, republican strategist, revealed that the GOP is sitting on the sidelines cheering all the failures but won’t say it publicly because a lot of people have lost their healthcare coverage.

It seemed like all the talk shows were using the same script that started early last week. "Will this disastrous roll out be Obama’s Katrina or Iraq? " A democrat quickly pointed out that no one has died because the website is not working. I think the opposition party is trying to mask President Bush’s failures by falsely comparing administrations. History will judge the Affordable Care Act and President Obama because it takes more than a news cycle to evaluate the final results.
‘ABC This Week,’ took it to another level implying that the president’s problems at home would transcend as weakness in our negotiations with Iran. That’s a lot to get into, but Howard Dean pretty much stopped that talk when he said it was the president’s tough sanctions that brought Iran to the table in the first place. It was also brought out that the president would have a tough time passing the immigration reform. You think? Speaker Boehner said that issue would not come to the floor in 2013 and that did have a thing to do with the Obamacare.

This morning, MSNBC’s 'Morning Joe’ with Joe Scarborough summarized the weekend talk shows and to no surprise, Joe Scarborough, emphasized the negatives. Joe said that the 39 Democrats who voted for Fred Upton’s bill scared the White House. That was the theme all weekend but Lawrence O’Donnell and Chuck Todd shot that down. When the White House let it be known that Fred Upton’s bill would be vetoed, it made it a political safe vote for the Dems. Now, if 100 Democrats would have voted for it, that would have been a different story. Joe Scarborough tried to mock Leader Pelosi’s statement that her party would “stand tall” behind the Affordable Care Act but Chuck Todd disagreed saying they voted for it, and it is in their best interest to own it. That’s so true, in the 2010 election the 32 blue dogs who voted against ACA all lost their election but all Democrats who voted for the law were reinstated. That just proves that voters still like politicians who stand on principal.

It is just my unprofessional opinion, but I think that this White House relationship with the media has been strained since the Justice Dept. threw a wide net around their fellow journalist Fox News’s James Rosen’s phone calls. I saw Andrea Mitchell attacking the president’s credibility on a lot issues after that.

It’s fair to say that no one would want to watch CNN explain how the insurance companies are trying to profit off the latest missteps in rolling out Obamacare nor do people want to hear about the successful signups. The talk-show hosts and reporters have company sponsored health care policies, so how can they know the joy people are having by purchasing insurance for the first time in their lives? I would be satisfied with some stories about states denying their citizens health care just to satisfy their ideological principles.

We have to live with the media coverage we have and it doesn’t do any good to long for the days of Walter Cronkite because the audience, times, and expectations have changed.
Who knows, next Sunday the media may do a story about CBSs, Lara Logan, using fake whistle blower, Dylan Davies, account of what happen in Benghazi

Getting the Truth is Like pulling Teeth

I finally got relief when my molar was pulled but not before I had to endure extreme pain every time the dentist would come to check the numbness of the affected area. The dentist had a knack for finding the nerve that caused the most pain. Afterwards, his assistant gave me a list of do’s and don’ts. Whatever happened to the old pioneer days when the patient was given ½ bottle of whiskey got the tooth pulled and then went out and plowed the back 40?

I got home around 10:30 AM, took my pain pill, turned on the television, and I thought I was going to catch up on the news. I don’t know if it was the pain pill or the sheer boredom of watching the same stories being rehashed that put me to sleep. I know it’s the “dog days of summer” but how many stories can you do on “who will win the Republican presidential primary in 2016?” We’re only eight months into President Obama’s second term!

Every now and then I do hear something that makes me laugh such as Rand Paul saying “There is no greater defender, truly, of minority rights... than myself." I tend to believe Hillary Clinton when she said “Anyone that says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention.” Rand Paul is a lot like his dad, because they both like to use statistics to try to pull the wool over people’s eyes. In this case he correctly says that more black people voted than whites but then he goes on to say that it proves there’s no racial discrimination. Of course, we no longer have Jim Crow laws but Section 4 (pre clearance) of the Voting Rights Act was largely responsible for that large black turnout, and we all know what the Supreme Court did to that. One only has to look at the recent North Carolina voting laws that were passed if you want to know what voter suppression looks like. Like the snake oil salesman that he is, Rand Paul said “who can be against showing proper ID before you vote?” That’s one of those questions that require more than a yes or no answer and politicians know that.

Usually a political strategist gets away with their exaggerations and half- truths, but that was not the case yesterday when a Republican strategist tried to blame the Democrats of today for the actions of the Jim Crow tactics that were used by southern Democrats of yesteryear. The pundit told the strategist that he could not let him get away with that, and then went on to tell his audience that the two parties have changed sides.

If there was evidence of rampant election fraud, then both parties should sit down and work out a solution; not just GOP legislators and governors trying to enhance their chances of winning. The issue is not just about the voter ID. It's about the cost, what will be accepted, and availability. Voters have already shown proof of who they are, when they registered to vote; it wasn’t a matter of just signing your name. I’m all for a national ID card, but I can just hear the outcry from libertarians by the sheer mention of it. How ironic, conservatives are dead set against regulations unless it has to do with voting and a woman’s right to choose.

Ben Smith, who runs the website ,BuzzFeed, said he took off for a week, turned off all his electronic media devices and then came back to find that he didn’t miss a thing because it’s the same news on a continuous loop.

The Facts Aren’t That Sexy These Days

I really enjoyed watching the host of “The Last Word” Lawrence O'Donnell ,tell it like it really is last night. He said that the media loves to be in scandal frenzy because it beats investigative journalism. All they have to do is dig out the old “Watergate” playbook  “what did the the president know and when did he know it.” For backup,the media has added “why didn’t he know,and if he did why didn’t he put a stop to it?”  The media has always had a deadline but nowadays the need to be first will often take precedence over factual journalism.  The administration hurt the feelings of the mainstream media by aggressively going after their sources, whom they say the leaked classified information.  As of right now, the media doesn't feel a need to give the president the benefit of the doubt.

Mr. O'Donnell was elated because some Democrats are stepping up to the plate and saying the real scandal is the abuse of  501 ( c) (4 ) and after this is all over, the IRS will be beaten up so bad that they will be scared  to go after the violators.  I was wrong yesterday when I gave an example of how the abuse could be solved. The easy remedy would be to remove the word “primary” from the law and stick to the original word “exclusively" in designating that all funds are used for promoting general welfare to obtain tax-exempt status. 

 

Conservative groups were wrongly singled out, but it wouldn't be wrong to expand that search criteria to include church phrases, and words like progressive.  Conservatives were not denied nor were there audited,  and they didn't have to pay a single dime in taxes.  They were asked inappropriate questions but all that can be rectified.  


This morning RNC Chairman,Reince Priebus, went on the “Morning Joe” trying to say that Lois Learner of the IRS is hiding something because she pleaded the fifth yesterday. John Heilemann, co-author of "Game Change", would have none of that.  Pleading the fifth is a legal procedure, and any lawyer worth his degree would not let his client testify in a congressional hearing, knowing that the FBI is undergoing a criminal investigation into the matter.  Several prominent attorneys have said that the Republican representative who said that she waved her rights by making an opening statement was just showboating because she certainly did not.


The Wall Street Journal is not a liberal rag and certainly not a fan of our president,so it was surprising that they published an article suggesting what I thought all along, that this is a low level blunder that was not politically motivated.

Sahil Kapur 9:27 AM EDT, Thursday May 23, 2013

“Internal IRS emails analyzed by the Wall Street Journal indicate -- albeit not conclusively -- that the agency's targeting of conservative groups was designed by low-level employees in the Cincinnati office.
[House Oversight] Committee staff on Wednesday released several documents related to the matter—including the IRS emails and a 2012 statement by Ms. Lerner—that helped provide a clearer picture of what happened. The criteria were developed by an IRS screening group in Cincinnati "based on cases they were seeing," Cindy Thomas, a supervisor in the Cincinnati office, wrote in a June 2011 email to an official in Washington. "When the screening group starts seeing new type cases that have similar issues, they meet and come up with criteria to identify 'emerging issue' and elevate information," she wrote.
In another email from June 2011, a screening manager in Cincinnati, John Shafer, outlined the criteria the group was using to select applications for extra review. They included references in the case file to "tea party," "patriots" or "9/12 Project"; issues such as government spending, debt and taxes; advocacy or legislative activity to "make America a better place to live"; and "statements in the case file that are critical of…how the country is being run."
The Journal notes that the emails don't rule out involvement by high-level officials by they also don't contain any evidence that the targeting scheme was developed by anyone other than low-level staffers.”

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/internal-emails-indicate-irs-targeting-designed-by-low?ref=fpb

Will the media ask Karl Rove how much his group gives to charity? Karl Rove is not bashful,so he will say not a penny and then go on to name all the liberal groups that take advantage of their tax-exempt status.The media will then write a story how the left and right takes advantage of the loophole in the IRS code but they won’t say that recently it’s generally conservative groups who are likely to abuse their status.They certainly won’t pressure the IRS to stop the abuse because catching the White House and the president in a gotcha moment will sell more papers.

Calm Down…Take a Deep Breath

I'm as little ashamed of myself for calling the last three controversies… scandals.  I didn't go as far as Miki Brzezinski, David Gregory, Chris Matthews or Andrea Mitchell by saying the president has to get out in front of this, or it will derail his presidency.  Yesterday was one of those days where Chris Matthews was hyperventilating so much that he wouldn't let his guest get in a word in edgewise.  He kept saying that the president needed a James Baker type to keep the media and Republicans in check.  As David Axelrod reminded us yesterday, the same people got all upset because they thought the president looked weak during the BP oil leak.  David Axelrod said the president came back and won another election.  The pundits are not accustomed to the managerial style of President Obama.  He's a cautious person, who's not warm and fuzzy or superficial, so he's not prone to "hair on fire" decisions.  He doesn't really care what the media or his enemies think.

You can throw out the history books when you talk about President Obama because he's not an arm- twister like Lyndon Johnson, a political animal-like  Bill Clinton or a charmer like Jack Kennedy.  He does like to campaign, and he's more about big policy that he is about trivia matters.  The fact that he doesn't play the  normal belt way politics came back to haunt him because he could not get background checks passed, although it had 90% backing from the American people. He doesn't care if he angers his base in order to cut a deal but by now he ought to know that the GOP will never make a deal if they think it will help his presidency.  Yesterday Jon Stewart asked former Republican Senator Olympia Snowe if anyone  objected when Mitch McConnell said that the GOP would oppose anything Obama wants.  She said no, but she did vote for his stimulus package.

Since the 100 emails prove the administration was not covering up anything in Benghazi, people like Karl Rowe are now trying to say that the president is disengaged.  Republicans like to point to the testimony of the whistle blowers as proof that the four Americans didn't have to die but that is shameful and disingenuous.  It might've been a planned attack for the terrorist, but the consulate was not prepared nor did they have a military force that could reach them in time.  There was plenty of blame to go around between the State Department and the CIA, but the talking points should never have been the primary focus because, as Hillary Clinton famously said, " what difference does it make?" This issue will not go away for the Republicans because they think they can use this against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

This morning Willie Geist of MSNBC " Morning Joe," said that we don't know what the White House's involvement is in the IRS controversy or how high this went up the ladder.  That's right but why is he assuming that it does.  The GOP said that they lost the 2012 election because the president gave out free stuff, so now is it because 298  501(c) (4)applications were held up?  The Usa Today had a headline that Joe Scarborough kept raising for all to see yesterday that read"  IRS gave liberals a pass" but two liberal groups were denied tax-exempt status.
 
The media has a legitimate complaint about the actions of the Justice Department, but they get an "F" for their reporting this week.  For one, ABC thought they had the goods on the administration but Jonathan Karl didn't do his due diligence because he didn't read the emails he received from a source before he said  that he had the "smoking gun." This afternoon Jack Trapper of CNN was visibly angry because the president didn't apologize for the actions of the Justice Department and Atty. General Eric Holder ‘s" non answers." Reporters need to report the news and not be part of it.  We certainly don't want the government to suppress the news but if reporters want support from public, then they have to remain professional and just the report vetted news.

How ironic, the IRS, the government and the media could never win a popularity contest  but right now their credibility is at stake. 

What Did I Learn Over the Weekend?

I learned that the new Republican Party will take an ax to the defense budget if it means the wealthy will get to keep their tax loopholes. There’s no question that President Obama overplayed his hand by using fear mongering tactics that were proved to be wrong. It gives credence to the old saying “if you lay down with dogs you will get up with fleas.” The president has a 51% approval right now and the GOP has a 29%; the difference is that 29% translates into a 81% approval in the representative’s district.

Joe Scarborough parroted the GOP line this morning by saying that cutting 1% of the budget will not bring on the doom and gloom the administration was trying to shove on the American taxpayer. At first, it was 3% of GDP, then 2%, and now it’s 1% but the fact remains that the current 1% applies to the next seven months, and it is not applied evenly across the board. Those states that depend on government contracts will feel the pain more than those that do not. The furlough of government workers will not improve the unemployment picture. Even Joe Scarborough admits that the cuts will be taken out of growth incentives like education, research and development and infrastructure projects. Congress will take up a bill to give the president the budget-cutting options, but they might as well say, “You have to cut off one of your fingers but we’ll let you pick the one you want to cut off.”

John Boehner stuck to his talking points this weekend on “Meet the Press” with David Gregory. He said that nobody in Washington knows what the sequester will do. That’s just your personal opinion John, but you don’t pay much attention to leading economist besides you can’t see much as long as the Tea Party is pulling on your chains. He also said that he pulled out all the stops to avoid the sequester cuts by passing two budgets. John, the American people rejected those proposals in November, but now you expect the Senate to consider those bills which are loaded with poison pills. Congressman Ryan’s first budget called for vouchers which the public overwhelmingly rejected and his second budget doesn’t touch the defense budget at all, has no revenues, and makes most of his cuts on students, the elderly and the poor. Mr. Boehner, if the house had the filibuster rule, Ryan’s budgets would have never made to the floor for a vote. The House and the Senate rules are different as night and day. I get very upset when the so-call liberal media doesn't call out John Boehner or any other Republican when they revert back to "who me" I am on the side who passed a budget. I know when they start doing that,word will get out and they will be boycotted and then the offended party will go on a network who will coddle them.

 I just read where corporate profits were up to 14.2% yet personal income was down by $500 billion. The GOP will consider removing the tax loopholes for a cut in corporate tax rates. Corporate's profits are up to 14.2%, remind me again of why they need their rates lowered?

There was the “who cares” category such as the Dennis Rodman interview about his trip to North Korea, the email scandal between Bob Woodward and White House staffer Gene Sperling and the Mitt and Ann Romney sympathy tour. It didn’t surprise me that Ann Romney would blame the media for husband’s loss because America didn’t get to know the real Mitt. Come on Ann, Mitt has been running for public office for most of his life, but I will grant you that he took different positions on each run. Perhaps we didn’t get to know the 2012 version of Mitt Romney.

It doesn’t surprise me how the media will follow a story for ratings, but the politicians know that and take full advantage. John McCain and Lindsey Graham are fixtures on the Sunday shows because they are willing to give the networks the sound bites they desire.

Is the media controlling the agenda?

I kept shaking my head in disgust the other night when I heard Wolf Blitzer tell Paul Ryan that he would have to wait for the fact checkers to verify the accuracy of his statement. Huh? I can't imagine Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Tim Russert or even Dan Rather saying such a preposterous thing. Like a competent attorney, those four journalists, I mentioned knew the answer before asking the question. Wolf Blitzer is an excellent journalist, but he has access (or his staff has) to Google, Nexus Lexis and other tools; it's his job to ask the probing questions and to extract honest answers. They might lose some guests following that format but as my wife likes to say," Oh well."

The media is again trying to control the agenda; the first question that was asked of several democratic operatives was “How do you answer Mitt Romney's challenge when he asks if you're better off now than you were four years ago." To be perfectly honest it worked because it stumped Obama's people. They couldn't say that today was great, and they couldn't give a nuance answer without looking like they were babbling. Former President George W.Bush's political consultant, Matthew Dowd, gave the Obama people some good advice on answering that two-fold question. The first is that they should be judged on how they averted a depression, and the second should be to compare the future policies of both candidates. The election will not be about the latest four years or the previous eight years; it will be about the future.

The media on the eve of the Democratic National Convention is now trying to lay out the theme of Friday's job report and its importance because it will come out nine hours after President Obama gives his acceptance speech. The media seems to think that a bad jobs report will put a damper Obama's message keeping him from getting his counter bump to Romney's speech. I think a bump in the polls is no longer relevant because we are so polarized, and so many people have already made up their minds. The debates he might be the determining factor in swaying those independents (4%-6% of the vote).

 I was stunned to see Melissa- Harris- Perry of the MSNBC show bearing her name, lose it Saturday and go into several minute tirade.  Her guests mentioned that the entrepreneurs are the risk takers.  After hearing that she elevated her voice and said"What in the world is riskier than being a poor person in America? I live in a neighborhood where people are shot on my street corner. I live in a neighborhood where people have to figure out how to get their kid into school because maybe it will be a good school and maybe it won't. I'm sick of the idea that being wealthy is risky. No, there's a huge safety net, that whenever you fail, we'll catch you, and catch you, and catch you. Being poor is what is risky. We have to create a safety net for poor people and when we won't because they happen to look different from us, it is the pervasive ugliness. We cannot do that."

The Sunday talk shows provided a little excitement and some good information for a change. I've never heard David Gregory mix it up with a guest as much as he did with Newt Gingrich. The exchange was inevitable because Newt Gingrich wanted a fight with the media as he always does, and he thought he had the upper hand but he was not on Fox News. Newt Gingrich angrily stated that the "Democratic Party plank on abortion is the most extreme plank in the United States. The president of United States voted three times to protect the right of doctors to kill babies who came out of abortion still alive. That plank says tax-paid abortion at any moment of…meaning, partial birth abortion…that’s a 20 percent issue. The vast majority of women do not believe the taxpayers should pay to abort a child in the eighth or ninth month"…

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman replied:

"I’m a Planned Parenthood Democrat on– on– on the issue of– of choice. And I think that is where the country should be. That is where many, many women in this country are. And I’m glad there are people running for the presidency who will defend that position. Period. Paragraph. End it."
With that, David Gregory said, “we’ve got to end there" as the red face guests prepared to depart.

ABC Sunday with George Stephanopoulos was equally exciting and educational because it shed some light on the strategy of the Romney campaign. According to one of Mitt Romney's top consultants, fact checkers are wrong. I think Matthew Dowd gave a great anecdote to that. Mr. Dowd said that Paul Ryan wanted his audience in the hall and those watching on television to believe that Barack Obama did not keep his promise of keeping the plant open in his hometown. Paul Ryan doctored the truth in order to create that impression. Although the Romney campaign is still running the ad in key swing states that lies about Obama removing the of work requirement for welfare; they did not mention it during the convention. I believe Bill Clinton will clear up any discrepancies when he speaks Wednesday night.

I've never seen Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday, behave the way he did yesterday. He acted as though he was part of the Romney/Ryan ticket. He thought the numbers he put on the board were going to be the determining factors of the election. He was surprised when Brit Hume and Bill Kristol didn't exactly agree with him. I was surprised when Bill Kristol said Paul Ryan should have owned up to their part in the financial crisis because most people don't believe that the Democrats or Obama are solely to blame. Most people are aware of what the Obama administration inherited. He said it would have put pressure on Obama to admit that mistakes were made by both parties. Obama can now take the high road and say that he learned from those mistakes and if given four more years he will go out of his way to incorporate Republican ideas; even if giving a little more than he wants to.

Who in the world scheduled, Bill Clinton’s Democratic National Convention prime time speaking engagement on the same night that the Dallas Cowboys play the New York Giants? Hello Clint Eastwood fiasco, the Democrats will match that. That's going to be a long night for me because I will have to TiVo the convention and watch it after the game. Oh well, I'm retired.

Have a good Labor Day everyone.