Murdoch WSJ headline: “Obama Seeks to Snap Gloom“
Not a WSJ headline: “Reticulator seeks to snap towel in locker room”
Feb 252009
Bash the Messenger
Feb 222009
I was concerned when I saw the lead headline on the Sunday Kalamazoo Gazette: “Can the arts community survive?” It’s an article about government funding for the arts.
Then I read more closely and realized that it did not say, “Can the arts survive?” Whew.
Feb 112009
The WSJ editorial page editors are probably not too concerned about being dropped from the list of special reporters who get pre-selected to kiss President Obama’s ring and ask him nice questions at his news conferences, which is probably why they are the ones to comment on the situation:
Presidents are free to conduct press conferences however they like, but the decision to preselect questioners is an odd one, especially for a White House famously pledged to openness. We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors. Mr. Obama can more than handle his own, so our guess is that this is an attempt to discipline reporters who aren’t White House favorites.
Few accounts of Monday night’s event even mentioned the curious fact that the White House had picked its speakers in advance. We hope that omission wasn’t out of fear of being left off the list the next time.
As usual at a time like this, I turn to my Pocket Obama for guidance. I think I found the key to this behavior on page 53:
It’s not healthy for public figures to wear religion on their sleeve as a means to insulate themselves from criticism or dialogue with people who disagree with them.
“What?” you may ask. What did his press conference have to do with religion?
Exactly the point. Sure, he’s insulating himself from criticism and dialogue with people who disagree with him. But he’s not doing it by wearing religion on his sleeve, so he’s doing it the right way.
Feb 102009
The Washington Post says “accused of.”
In the prime-time debut last night for a new president and a press corps frequently accused of being too enamored of him, President Obama faced journalistic skepticism from the opening question.
It could have simply said: “In the prime-time debut last night, President Obama faced journalistic skepticism from a press corps that has been much enamored of him.” But no, it doesn’t take at face value the many statements by others that the news media have been giddy in their support of him.
Contrast that with this statement from ABC news reporters Jonathan Karl and Z. Byron Wolf (which I mentioned in the last post):
The Senate voted 61-36 today to close debate and move forward with a gargantuan stimulus package meant to kick-start the moribund economy with $838 billion in one-time spending and tax credits.
They could instead have said, “The Senate voted to close debate and move forward with a gargantuan stimulus package that the Obama administration claims is meant to kick-start the moribund economy…”. That would have been reporting the facts. But no, they took at face value the claims that this bill is about the economy.
If those claims were true, how would we then explain this description of what’s in the stimulus bill, by Betsy McCaughey at Bloomberg:
But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”
Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.
New Penalties
Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)
Some stimulus. Here it’s at best about saving instead of the spending that is supposedly needed to kickstart the economy. (Never mind the question of whether savings can really be achieved by top-down, one-size-fits-all controls from federal bureaucrats.) If ABC reporters Karl and Wolf had done their homework and had taken items like this into consideration, they would not have accepted at face value the notion that the bill is about economic stimulus.
Feb 092009
Er, no. The supporters may SAY that’s what the bill is meant to do, but that doesn’t mean the purpose is to jump-start the economy. The ABC news reporters would do well to just report the facts, and not accept politicians’ claims at face value.
The Senate voted 61-36 today to close debate and move forward with a gargantuan stimulus package meant to kick-start the moribund economy with $838 billion in one-time spending and tax credits.
Feb 072009
I thought this was a parody of CNN when I first saw it. But apparently nobody else can do a parady of CNN quite like CNN does. Here is the link.
H/T Tom McMahon
Feb 062009
Next we’re going to hear news reporters tell about the remarkable success the Republicans have had in convincing people that the earth is round, not flat.
The president’s tactical turnabout is a response to the Republicans’ remarkable success during the past two weeks both in influencing the congressional debate over the Democrats’ stimulus plan, and shaping a public image of the bill as pork-laden and ineffective.
Feb 012009
Obama nod to mortgage relief targets root of woes
Ah, yes. That will definitely get to the root of things. It’s sort of like getting to the root cause of crime by setting up an academy where young kids can be abused and tormented into becoming sociopaths, as well as instructed in the finer points of lawbreaking. That would be targetting the root cause of crime.
By Mark Felsenthal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s pledge to help housing with a new financial plan spotlights the root cause of the deep U.S. recession and may earn public goodwill as he balances massive bank bailouts with help for homeowners.
Obama promised on Saturday to lower mortgage costs as part of a financial rescue effort he is unveiling soon to boost the battered economy, which has been slammed by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the harshest decline in growth in more than 20 years and the deepest slump in employment since 1945.
Well, at least the writer is honest enough not to say it’s going to do anything to remove the root cause of the problem.
Jan 222009
Two things that made me laugh today:
1. This quote from P.J. O’Rourke:
In the language of politics there is only one translation for the phrase “hope and change,” to wit, “big, fat government.”
2. This item from Google News.
It made me wonder how CBS news knew this.
Was it learned at a news conference? “Mr. President, what did you do on your first morning in office.” “The first thing I did after breakfast was fix my gaze on national security.”
Or was it at an Oval Office photo op where he was photographed staring out the window? “What’s he doing?” “Shhh. He’s fixing his gaze on national security.”
Well, if you have nothing interesting to report, I suppose one can be reduced to writing cliches.
For more fun with the term, you can google for “fixes gaze.” You’ll find that even George Bush was capable of fixing his gaze, whatever it means.
CBS may have been embarrassed by its own headline, because the title is still there if you search Google News, but when you go to the actual link it now says something less silly. Trying to take away our fun, it looks like.
Jan 162009
The NY Times should have added “stimulus packages” to the list, just in case it isn’t clear to people that they’re the same sort of thing:
But Captain Sullenberger’s efforts, like twice checking the soaked cabin for stragglers before fleeing the sinking plane himself, emerged as singularly selfless leadership of a sort that seemed so removed from things like Ponzi schemes and subprime mortgages, corporate bailouts and deflected blame.