Monday, January 28, 2013

Obama Complains About Media Bias!


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At what point does the ridiculous become absurd? When is it okay to call President Obama out on his complete and total foolishness? Since I am the one writing this post, this is my opinion. We are far past the point where Obama should be called on the carpet for the foolish statements he makes. His latest published gripe about the media really makes me wonder just how out-of-touch the President really is. Is he so naive that he believes the trite nonsense he is spouting? If we are to believe what he says, the media is biased, but it is against him and his friends in the liberal Democrat Party. Chew on this for a moment or two.
(New Republic) One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates. If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.
I think John Boehner genuinely wanted to get a deal done, but it was hard to do in part because his caucus is more conservative probably than most Republican leaders are, and partly because he is vulnerable to attack for compromising Republican principles and working with Obama.
The same dynamic happens on the Democratic side. I think the difference is just that the more left-leaning media outlets recognize that compromise is not a dirty word. And I think at least leaders like myself—and I include Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in this—are willing to buck the more absolutist-wing elements in our party to try to get stuff done.
Excuse me while I gag on the last bit of that quote. He thinks Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are willing to buck the more radical elements of their party to get things done? Seriously, they are the more radical elements of their party. How are the going to buck themselves? The answer to that is simple. They will no more buck the radicals than they will stop breathing.
To the main point that I wanted to highlight, it seems President Obama seriously believes the media is biased against him and his agenda. How any sane person could reach that conclusion is beyond me, but here is what he had to say about that.
President ObamaWell, no, let me be clear. There’s not a—there’s no equivalence there. In fact, that’s one of the biggest problems we’ve got in how folks report about Washington right now, because I think journalists rightly value the appearance of impartiality and objectivity. And so the default position for reporting is to say, “A plague on both their houses.” On almost every issue, it’s, “Well, Democrats and Republicans can’t agree”—as opposed to looking at why is it that they can’t agree. Who exactly is preventing us from agreeing?
And I want to be very clear here that Democrats, we’ve got a lot of warts, and some of the bad habits here in Washington when it comes to lobbyists and money and access really goes to the political system generally. It’s not unique to one party. But when it comes to certain positions on issues, when it comes to trying to do what’s best for the country, when it comes to really trying to make decisions based on fact as opposed to ideology, when it comes to being willing to compromise, the Democrats, not just here in this White House, but I would say in Congress also, have shown themselves consistently to be willing to do tough things even when it’s not convenient, because it’s the right thing to do. And we haven’t seen that same kind of attitude on the other side.
Until Republicans feel that there’s a real price to pay for them just saying no and being obstructionist, you’ll probably see at least a number of them arguing that we should keep on doing it. It worked for them in the 2010 election cycle, and I think there are those who believe that it can work again. I disagree with them, and I think the cost to the country has been enormous.
You should go and read the rest of the transcript of the interview, especially the part right below the last quote. You may find it humorous to know Obama still claims the more conservative part of the Republican Party is to blame for the failure to reach a deal on the fiscal cliff. This, coming from the man who told John Boehner that America doesn’t have a spending problem. Total unreality is what that is.
So, in his perfect world, President Obama would want the media to lay most of the blame for the gridlock in Washington at the feet of the Republicans. At the risk of sounding completely sarcastic, I thought that’s what they were already doing. The President must be listening to a different media talking heads than we see. Maybe he has his own private channels he watches?
This is where it becomes unbelievable to me. Does President Obama really believe the media should be placing even more blame on the Republicans, or is he just blowing smoke? I find it hard to believe he does and tend to think we are seeing more smoke and mirrors. You have to give Obama credit, he does know how to get his point across. Maybe this is what he is doing, giving instructions to his friends in the media on how he wants them to cover his second term as President.

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