2012 US Election -- Round 2

[Coito ergo sum]

Wall Street Journal piece on how the media in general moved from a check and balance on the Presidency, to a cheerleader.

Pliability Journalism
Change comes to the Associated Press.
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By JAMES TARANTO

More than 144 hours into Barack Obama's presidency, the economy is still in recession, the country is still at war, and in many parts of the country it's still cold outside. Citizens are growing impatient: Wasn't President Obama supposed to bring change?

Yet one institution has changed dramatically, and in a very short time: the press. After spending the Bush years as a voice of opposition, American journalists have by and large turned on a dime and become cheerleaders for the man in power.

A case in point is the Associated Press, perhaps the nation's premier "straight news" outfit. During the Bush years, the AP introduced a new reportorial idiom called "accountability journalism," whose goal is "to report whether government officials are doing the job for which they were elected and keeping the promises they make." Turns out they weren't.

But the AP's new idiom, which we hereby name "pliability journalism," aims to show that everything is completely different from the bad old days of a week ago and before. A Saturday dispatch by Liz Sidoti, titled "Obama Breaks From Bush, Avoids Divisive Stands," shows how it works:

Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush's unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government.
A central feature of pliability journalism is the bending of contrary facts to fit the narrative of change, hope and unity. Here's how Sidoti reshapes one such fact:

So far, Obama's only real brush with issues that stoke partisan passions came when he revoked a ban on federal funding for international groups that provide or promote abortions. He did that quietly by issuing a memorandum late Friday afternoon. The move was expected; the issue has vacillated between Republican and Democratic presidents.
So three days after taking office, Obama executed a 180-degree policy turn on the nation's most emotionally charged subject. That would seem to be the epitome of divisiveness. But no. It (1) has been "Obama's only real brush with issues that stoke partisan passions," (2) was "expected" and (3) was done "quietly."

Sidoti also notes that "some Republicans are griping about Obama's economic stimulus plan and closing Guantanamo. But their protests are somewhat muted, perhaps because little of what Obama has done thus far is a surprise." So it turns out the abortion order was not the president's only brush with issues that stoke partisan issues. In order to meet Sidoti's definition of "divisive," it seems, Obama would have to do something surprising--which, since he is a liberal Democrat, means he would have to do something conservative.

Oh, and when the next Republican president restores the ban on funding abortions overseas, will Sidoti credit him with not being divisive if he does so with little fanfare? Or would that be an example of excessive secrecy and lack of accountability?

Paul Haven, in a Sunday dispatch, tells how much things have changed on the international scene:

In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama signaled conciliation to America's foes by using the metaphor of an outstretched hand to an unclenched fist.
Already, there are signs that some of those foes were listening, sensing an opening for improved relations after eight combative years under President George W. Bush. Fidel Castro is said to like the new American leader, and North Korea and Iran both sounded open to new ideas to defuse nuclear-tinged tensions.
After eight long years of conflict under George W. Bush, Obama will restore the amicable relations with Cuba, North Korea and Iran that previously had prevailed since the Kennedy, Truman and Carter administrations. What a change!

The change even extends to gustatory matters, as Mary Clare Jalonick made clear Saturday:

Visiting one of his favorite Chicago restaurants in November, Barack Obama was asked by an excited waitress if he wanted the restaurant's special margarita made with the finest ingredients, straight up and shaken at the table.
"You know that's the way I roll," Obama replied jokingly.
Rick Bayless, the chef of that restaurant, Topolobampo, says Obama's comfortable demeanor at the table--slumped contentedly in his chair, clearly there to enjoy himself--bodes well for the nation's food policy. While former President George W. Bush rarely visited restaurants and didn't often talk about what he ate, Obama dines out frequently and enjoys exploring different foods.
It turns out that top chefs have "many suggestions to improve food policy," most of which involve treating small farmers more favorably and agribusiness less so. But Bayless "says the Obamas could make a world of difference if they just publish what they are eating every day. 'Everyone's going to want to be like the Obamas,' he said."

Even if true, that may prove a mixed blessing for foodies. Topolobampo's Web site recommends calling two weeks in advance for reservations. If Obama follows Bayless's advice and the public follows Obama's, pretty soon Topolobampo will be so crowded that no one will be able to get in.

We return to Sidoti's dispatch for one final example of the change President Obama has already wrought:

In a mix of symbolism and substance, Obama used a host of executive tools to put his stamp on the country without having to go through Congress, making statements from the bully pulpit and signing White House directives.
It's about time we had a president who believes in a strong executive branch!

Be Diverse, Just Like Us
See if you can guess where the following sentence comes from:

As he moves from representing a liberal Midwestern state into the Oval Office, Mr. Obama needs to move beyond some narrower views suited to his old constituents and embrace his role as a president of a powerful, diverse and complicated country.
If we told you this was from a New York Times editorial, would you believe us? Of course not--and you'd be right not to. Yet we adapted it from the following sentence, which did appear in a Times editorial:

As she moves from representing a conservative upstate district into Hillary Rodham Clinton's office, Ms. Gillibrand needs to move beyond some narrower views suited to her old constituents and embrace her role as a senator of a powerful, diverse and complicated state.
The Times is liberal, so it hopes Sen.-to-be Kirsten Gillibrand becomes more liberal. That's fine--and, since New York state as a whole is more liberal than Gillibrand's House district, it may suit her political interests to tack to the left. But there's something slightly nauseating about the Times's dressing up its ideological preferences in the obviously insincere language of diversity.

The Golden Egg
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised some eyebrows with this exchange on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanapoulos":

Stephanapoulos: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?
Pelosi: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those--one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.
It reminds us of that Monty Python sketch in which the Catholic father announces that he can no longer afford to raise his 63 children and, as a consequence, is selling all of them for medical experimentation.

In the real world, however, while it is true that prosperity tends to be correlated with lower fertility, the latter is an effect rather than a cause. Today's unplanned pregnancy is tomorrow's consumer of baby products and next month's worker and taxpayer, so that subsidizing contraception, whatever its merits, is the opposite of an economic stimulus.

Unless, of course, this is what Pelosi has in mind:

These days, more men and women are trying to survive the bad economy by selling their sperm and eggs.
According to the Northeast Assisted Fertility Group , the number of women filling out applications to donate eggs has doubled. The number of women asking about donating their eggs has jumped by about 30 percent at some egg-donor agencies.
Providence's WPRI reports that women make as much as $10,000 for selling their eggs. It doesn't say what sperm goes for, but we suspect it's considerably less--which means Pelosi's stimulus-through-infertility policy also helps answer Robert Reich's objection.

See No Evil
A curious story from Wichita, Kan., crossed the Associated Press wire yesterday:

Police say two people were killed and seven wounded in a shooting during a wake at a house in Wichita.
Sgt. Ronald Hunt says all the victims of Saturday night's shooting were adults. He did not know their ages or genders.
Hunt says one victim is in critical condition, while as many as four others are in serious condition.
Police say the shooting occurred around 9:30 p.m. on the ninth day of the wake, which was being held for an elderly woman buried earlier Saturday.
Deputy Police Chief Robert Lee could not say how many shooters were involved but says some of the shots came from outside. Police won't say if they believe the shooting is gang-related.
Officers had trouble communicating because many of those at the house did not speak English.
Police are looking for a pickup truck seen leaving the home.
Supposedly no one has any clue who the perpetrators or the victims were, except that the AP hints the shooting might have been gang-related and tells us that "many of those at the house did not speak English." Did they speak any other language? The AP doesn't say.

We had a hunch, which we explored by checking the local paper, the Wichita Eagle. It had stories on the shootings Sunday and Monday, but the only additional detail came was this, from the Sunday story:

[Neighbor John] Kemp said that the woman who the wake was for and her husband ran a restaurant in the neighborhood.
"They were doing well," Kemp said.
That restaurant was closed Sunday afternoon.
Hmm, we have an old couple who ran a restaurant, a gathering of non-English speakers, and hints of gang activity. It sounds as though an ethnic community in Wichita is plagued by violence--though which ethnic community it is, is a closely guarded secret.

Well, closely guarded by the Eagle and the AP, anyway. KSNW-TV, the local NBC affiliate, was able to dig up (although not to spell properly) the fact that somehow eluded the eagle-eyed Eagle reporters: "The crowd was made up of Laotion-Americans and Laotion immigrants."

This did not surprise us, because the story, as vaguely described as it was by the AP and the Eagle, reminded us of a scene from "Gran Torino," the new Clint Eastwood movie, which involves a Laotian gang in an inner suburb of Detroit. It says something about the state of journalism in Wichita that people who see Hollywood movies are better informed than people who read the local paper.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123299188671616299.html

[Coito ergo sum]

It even boils down to the smallest details, which will rarely, if ever, get any criticism, and media folks will rush to Obama's defense.

It’s one thing for a supposedly combative press to fawn over a presidential candidate—and now a president. Who wants to devote precious column inches to Barack Obama’s ties to radical bomber Bill Ayers when Sarah Palin’s wardrobe demands investigation? Why shoot ordinary photographs of the president when you can portray him as a haloed Byzantine saint? But now the New York Times has gone too far: it is attempting to rewrite the history of English grammar in order to flatter the president.

Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman, writing in the paper’s op-ed section today, point out that Obama often makes a common grammatical error, using the word “I” when he should properly use “me”—as in the phrase “a very personal decision for Michelle and I.” But it turns out, the authors continue, that the president isn’t really guilty of grammar crimes. “For centuries, it was perfectly acceptable to use either ‘I’ or ‘me’ as the object of a verb or preposition, especially after ‘and,’” they write. “It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that language mavens began kvetching about ‘I’ and ‘me.’”

O’Conner and Kellerman are utterly wrong....

Unfortunately, the New York Times’s motive for printing the op-ed is also clear. How disappointing to hear that Barack Obama—just like his predecessor, whose linguistic slipups the media pounced on—doesn’t speak English perfectly! How delightful to find two experts willing to argue that Obama’s mistakes are actually remnants of a purer, more natural form of the language! And how sad, for those of us who love both America’s press and its language, that English itself has become the latest sacrifice to the cult of Obama.

Would such a defense be mounted regarding George W. Bush's usage of "nukular" pronunciation....? Of course not. Not by the mainstream media.

[Coito ergo sum]

Suppose Sen. John McCain, rather than Sen. Barack Obama, won the presidency but made the same decisions and pursued the same goals to turn around the economy.

The following is a hypothetical front-page story:

After more than 50 days in office, the new President, even to some of his supporters, seems overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems he faces. Though he calls the economy job one, he confounds critics and supporters alike with the most audacious, ideologically driven agenda since the Great Depression, if not in the history of the republic.


He plans to change the role of government in virtually every aspect of society -- from education to health care to job creation to research and development to fighting "climate change" -- all of which call for drastically higher taxes and spending.

Since the President took office, the Dow Jones industrial average has plummeted, and unemployment keeps rising. Yet one of his top economic advisers recently said, "The fundamentals (of the economy) are sound" -- an assessment that drew sharp criticism during the campaign, when the economic picture looked better.

The President expects his plans to "create or save" millions of jobs. But by saying "create or save," he virtually protects himself against failure. During a recent hearing, a senator asked the secretary of Treasury, "What's a saved job?" The secretary gave a vague, meandering response about a "rise in unemployment avoided."

The President promised to end earmarks but signed a pork-laden stimulus bill that he proclaimed "free of earmarks." Then days later, the President signed a $410 billion continuing operations budget that contains almost 9,000 earmark projects.

The President's stimulus package, the constantly changing bailout package and this year's budget threaten to triple the annual deficit. The President's new budget (ironically entitled "A New Era of Responsibility") shows a total federal debt swelling more than 50 percent from 2008 to 2011 -- almost equaling 2011's gross domestic product -- and continues rising through 2019, the last year in the budget. Yet the President insists that he crafted the recovery plan "not because I believe in bigger government. I don't."

http://townhall.com/columnists/larryeld ... st_50_days

[kiki5711]

[Gerald McGrew]

Newspapers like catchier headlines.

Which was exactly my point.

I'll take this nonsense seriously when you worry - once - about the endless stream of pro-Obama news articles,

And now the kryptonite for conservatives....data.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/23 ... s-20120423

But hey, if the data doesn't tell you what you want, there must be something wrong with the data, right?

or even when you express an ounce of concern that mainstream journalists don't seem to care that Obama goes on Late Night television programs, but rarely has a White House Press Conference.

Um...probably because it's literally the last 2 weeks of the campaign. That's kinda what presidents running for reelection do at this point...campaign.

The Washington Post is biased to Romney, you're trying to say?

Oh FFS. You really need to go get yourself checked.

[Warren Dew]

A most excellent suggestion:

Dem's amendment would give 29 more electoral votes to popular-vote winner
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... oral-votes

Some of my thoughts on the subject of the Electoral College from the previous election thread: http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 35#p626661

I wonder what Republicans might think about this if Romney wins the popular vote despite losing the Electoral College, as happened to Al Gore in 2000?

I don't know about Republicans, but this Romney supporter realizes it would be a bad idea. Right now, vote fraud by a political machine can only affect one state's electoral votes. If we used a national popular vote, vote fraud in a single state could affect the entire election.

It would be good for Democrats, though, since they're better at vote fraud.

[Santa_Claus]

What I don't understand is that if many Americans hate the Federal Govt so much (and IMO they do have a point - especially as I don't see it ever being reformable) why no great movement for individual States to secede?!

(I appreciate that teh federal Govt says it is no longer "legal" to do that - but they would say that wouldn't they!....when it comes to seccession the legal don't come into, it's politics and boots on the ground).

Whilst 1 or 2 States might not be able to standalone - all of them could do so collectively! (with a new Federal Govt structure - kinda like the EU!).

[Tero]

And such a book, with that title, has objective information?

[Tero]

The undecided voter, last panel:

[Ian]

Why every "moderate Republican" here has to explain themselves.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y0aydhF ... re=related[/youtube]

[Coito ergo sum]

A most excellent suggestion:

Dem's amendment would give 29 more electoral votes to popular-vote winner
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... oral-votes

Some of my thoughts on the subject of the Electoral College from the previous election thread: http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 35#p626661

I wonder what Republicans might think about this if Romney wins the popular vote despite losing the Electoral College, as happened to Al Gore in 2000?

I don't know about Republicans, but this Romney supporter realizes it would be a bad idea. Right now, vote fraud by a political machine can only affect one state's electoral votes. If we used a national popular vote, vote fraud in a single state could affect the entire election.

It would be good for Democrats, though, since they're better at vote fraud.

This is why I favor a decentralized voting system.

One problem really is that we stopped growing Congressional Districts at 435. The 538 Electoral Votes comes from 435 Congressmen for the States, 100 Senators, and 3 EVs for Washington DC. The House of Representatives used to expand as the population expanded, but then they stopped doing that and they just move the Electoral Votes now as population changes among the States.

We should have thousands of Representatives, so that it would bring down the average sized district to about 70,000 to 100,000 people. And, then there should be additional electors, too, to match, so that there would be thousands of electors. That way each elector and each representative is responsible for a more manageable number of people. Each District would be smaller and counting the votes easier on a district by district basis, and fraud harder to carry out on a scale that mattered.

[Coito ergo sum]

Why every "moderate Republican" here has to explain themselves.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y0aydhF ... re=related[/youtube]

I find that quite curious.

If you elect MItt, you're not just electing him, you're electing every right winger that he's pandered?

O'RLY????? So, can we say the same thing about Obama? If we elect him, we're electing every left winger he's pandered to?

And, we aren't oblivious to Mitt's history. Maybe Maher is, but I'm not. I know as much and more about Mitt Romney than was known about Obama in 2008. Obama came out of nowhere in 2007 as some amazing, clean, well-spoken black politician, serving his first term in Congress, and he was anointed by the media as qualified to be President and not only was his religion "off limits" but his entire background was off limits because it would be racist to look into it.

[Ian]

YES, really!

The "Oh yeah, well goes same to you" argument does not work here, Coito. Obama's past is well documented, and he hasn't changed his stances on anything in order to pander to some far-left fringe in the Democratic Party, except perhaps for his stance towards gay marriage/civil unions - hardly any comparison at all. Romney, on the other hand, remains ideologically incoherent. The man has at one time or another taken every side of every issue I can think of. I'm not saying this about the GOP nominee by default, btw - I never would have said the same thing about McCain. I'm talking about Romney.

And I'm perfectly happy with many Democrats in Congress - they don't have a record of being anti-intellectual, anti-science, pro-religion, etc cetera. And they don't view compromise as verboten. They have not signed pledges to never work with the other side regarding taxes. You keep saying you're standing up to the lunatic elements of your party in your own way, but you're nevertheless supporting them whether you want to admit it or not. I think you're in denial as to how pervasive and how powerful they are.

The best thing that could happen to the far-right-infested GOP would be for it to experience a disastrous loss next week followed by equally disastrous infighting over the next few years, forcing all the loonies back into the closet and returning control of the party to the reasonable elements. The pendulum would finally start swinging back twards the center. Right now, "reasonable" is not a word which can possibly used to describe the GOP.

[Coito ergo sum]

YES, really!

The "Oh yeah, well goes same to you" argument does not work here, Coito. Obama's past is well documented,

Yes it is -- Weather Underground -- Reverend Wright -- etc.

and he hasn't changed his stances on anything in order to pander to some far-left fringe in the Democratic Party, except perhaps for his stance towards gay marriage/civil unions - hardly any comparison at all.

Yes, but we were told the "communists and socialists" that he said he surrounded himself with were not relevant and we can't hold him to those he surrounds himself with, and those that support him.

Romney, on the other hand, remains ideologically incoherent. The man has at one time or another taken every side of every issue I can think of. I'm not saying this about the GOP nominee by default, btw - I never would have said the same thing about McCain. I'm talking about Romney.

People say this, but they don't provide clear examples. What are his worst offenses here? Provide his own words, and don't compare what Democrats have accused him of with what he is saying now.

[Coito ergo sum]