Obama 7 - now what?

[Old Pio]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

I'm not passing out any chances. It was all yours to act when it was happening, when George Bush was collecting records of reporters' phone calls, and making accusations about NBC from the WH press room. You chose not to. And yet, you expect me to take a stand on something that barely scratches the surface comparitively.

I guess some abuses toward the Constitution, free speech rights, and abuses toward the media are just perfectly fine in your book.

BTW, what steps have they taken beyond criticism? Asking other media outlets to call Fox for what they are as well? Oooh, how positively criminal of them.

So, why didn't you say anything about George Bush's abuse of the media? Maybe Rush and Beck and Drudge weren't yammering about it 24-7?

I dunno, maybe because Bush isn't president anymore and BNPPWO is. I don't expect you to take a stand on anything, especially if it makes this White House look bad. You have proven yourself quite incapable of even contemplating criticism of this administration, let alone expressing it.

Your prejudice aganst people who disagree with you is evidently total. As I've mentioned previously, I don't watch or listen to Beck or Limbaugh and I'd recommend the same for you. Drudge is only useful for links to legitimate media.

I would advise you not to use the "other guys have done worse than me" defense if you ever get popped for DUI.

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

Humor me. All I've seen are vague accusations without any teeth. On what date, in what way, did the administration violate Fox News' first amendment rights, precisely? Honest question -- I'll be right there on the barricades with you if you can demonstrate a real case rather than just a partisan accusation.

"Chilling Effect" is so broad that it can easily be extended to anything.

I don't do Socratic dialogues on Saturday. The issues here are quite plain. Your implicit position seems to be if there's no actual criminal case to be made here, then who cares? That sets a fairly low bar for the guy who was going to change things and usher in a new post-partisan era.

 

[geezer]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

Rhetoric aside, what are the actual, factual incidents in which the administration has denied Fox News its first amendment rights?

I'm sure it's within the letter of the law, but here's what I understood from brief news stories:
Obama decreed that Fox News wouldn't be allowed to interview federal officials because their network carries opinion programming (O'Reilly, Beck) that is critical of his policies.
The other networks said, ummm no. If you kick out one network, we're all leaving.
So it's left at a stalemate, for now.
Here's the story: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...o_bar_fox_news_from_intervewing_pay_czar.html
oops. That was Fox. Obviously fake. Maybe the LA Times will be more palatable: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten24-2009oct24,0,3009088.column

That's way over the line. The White House is perfectly free to refuse to have its people go on Fox News shows, but it shouldn't tell other news organizations that they ought not to follow up on Fox News' reporting or that they ought to keep their journalists from appearing on Murdoch's networks. The White House, moreover, does its case no favors when it invites pro-Democratic commentators like MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to private briefings with the president, even though their work is every bit as histrionic as Bill O'Reilly's.

 

[rufus]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

I would advise you not to use the "other guys have done worse than me" defense if you ever get popped for DUI.

And again, you miss the point, either because you're so blindingly pastisan obtuse, or because you're willfully doing so.

I'm not using "other guys have done worse than me" as an excuse for anything. I'm using it to question why you remained silent while they were doing so, and yet are so outraged now?

 

[rufus]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

I don't do Socratic dialogues on Saturday. The issues here are quite plain. Your implicit position seems to be if there's no actual criminal case to be made here, then who cares? That sets a fairly low bar for the guy who was going to change things and usher in a new post-partisan era.

Oh that's a regular laugh riot given what we've seen the last eight years.

Have you been asleep for most of this decade?

 

[Slap Shot]

I'm not using "other guys have done worse than me" as an excuse for anything.

That sets a fairly low bar for the guy who was going to change things and usher in a new post-partisan era.

Oh that's a regular laugh riot given what we've seen the last eight years.

Rufie, there is a part of me that thinks it's awesome that Obama called out FOX and its sycophants for being the gross partisan hacks that they are, but they took it too far - legal or not.

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

And again, you miss the point, either because you're so blindingly pastisan obtuse, or because you're willfully doing so.

I'm not using "other guys have done worse than me" as an excuse for anything. I'm using it to question why you remained silent while they were doing so, and yet are so outraged now?

You have no earthly idea whether I "remained silent" or not. I'm not obligated to meet some arbitrary standard of "truthfulness" set by you. You aren't a district attorney nor a priest in a confessional. Your blind partisanship renders you incapable of staying on point--the efforts of your pal BNPPWO to silence critics. The fact that others may or may not haue done something as bad or worse is beside the point. You keep wanting to change the subject. I'm not playing that game with you anymore. You ARE using the "other guys have done worse than me" defense. You're doing it in this post, again.

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

Oh that's a regular laugh riot given what we've seen the last eight years.

Have you been asleep for most of this decade?

Here's a little test. See if you can go 24 hours without thinking, posting or writing the phrase "the past 8 years." Based on what I'm seeing here, since you started slobbering on me, you wouldn't last 24 minutes.

 

[walrus]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

You ARE using the "other guys have done worse than me" defense. .

Thats the change you can believe in. Oh wait, its the same old ****

 

[Patman]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

you know, its not that you're excusing it for the greater good, its that you're not admitting that this was something he promised (transparency, 'post-partisanship', and other stuff) and that its a failure that he reneged upon it.

If Obama had been what he had promised he'd be steamrolling the Republicans and there wouldn't be much of anything we could do to stop Obama from driving over the country over the edge of the cliff. Hell, I ought to be happy that he's an evasive, controlling, aloof, and condescending ideologue. If he wasn't then the tide wouldn't be turning against him. I wonder if the speechwriters giggled to themselves when writing speeches which they full well knew were woven with the finest crap this side of New Jersey.

The fact of the matter is he ran as the white knight and many embraced this as a truism and believed that he would, defacto, would be a contributor to better governance and smart *FILL IN THE BLANK*. All of this has turned out to be bunk so far.

 

[walrus]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

Now THAT's funny!

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

Really good.

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped1025pageoct25,0,4938426.column

Well-known knuckledragger Clarence Page adds his two cents.

 

[amherstblackbear]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped1025pageoct25,0,4938426.column

Well-known knuckledragger Clarence Page adds his two cents.

Not a bad editorial.

On a different subject, I still can't get past claims that Obama is an ideologue. He's no ideologue. The guy's just a politician.

Re: Afghanistan
Obama said what he had to say to get elected. He couldn't appear to be a liberal pansy, so instead of criticizing the Iraq war on principle, he criticized it as an example of misplaced priorities - fighting a war of choice ahead of a war of necessity.

Now he's president, and he's realized that his war of necessity in Afghanistan was also a choice - and one that he'd probably kind of sort of want to take back. Except that it helped get him elected. What to do?

Re: Health Care
There are Democrat ideologues in the House, sure. But not so much the White House. I take the guy at his word when he says he doesn't care about whether the final draft of health care legislation broadens Medicare to include those w/o coverage - or whatever other form of publicly-run option people have come up with. I'm sure he thinks he's doing some good, but it's mostly about getting the political win.

There's no clear political philosophy to his presidency. He was just a better politician than either of his two opponents in the last election.

 

[walrus]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

. He was just a better politician than either of his two opponents in the last election.

So no change you can believe in, say it ain't so

 

[amherstblackbear]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

So no change you can believe in, say it ain't so

"Change we can believe in" = electoral strategy Democrats could believe in. And it worked a lot better than Kerry or Gore's strategy.

So well that most of my Democrat friends literally believed it. They couldn't imagine Hilary C winning the primary, because she was just another politician, more of the same, etc. The Obama/Axelrod team's greatest success was getting Democrats to actually believe they weren't being strategic.

 

[amherstblackbear]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

The one thing Clarence Page is wrong about - and the one point that the Obama folks have - is that the distinction between news divisions and opinion divisions at cable stations is not that clean.

An opinion person can say something stupid that isn't news by itself, but can repeat it so often that it creates a controversy that is news, and that does get covered by the "news" side. Not just at Fox, but at the others, also.

If that is the real problem, then publicly feuding with Fox only contributes to it (by amplifying the very controversies that the White House has a problem with)... Either way, the answer is the same. The White House should dial it back. IMO, of course.

 

[walrus]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

So well that most of my Democrat friends literally believed it. .

My guess would be some still do

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Obama 7 - now what?

The one thing Clarence Page is wrong about - and the one point that the Obama folks have - is that the distinction between news divisions and opinion divisions at cable stations is not that clean.

An opinion person can say something stupid that isn't news by itself, but can repeat it so often that it creates a controversy that is news, and that does get covered by the "news" side. Not just at Fox, but at the others, also.

If that is the real problem, then publicly feuding with Fox only contributes to it (by amplifying the very controversies that the White House has a problem with)... Either way, the answer is the same. The White House should dial it back. IMO, of course.

The correct response to this white house or any white house when conferring "legitimacy" on a major media outlet is: It's NOYFB!

The real effort here is to "encourage" other media entities into ignoring future stories developed by Fox that embarrass the administration. Most media outlets (including the NYT) admitted that they were way slow in getting on to the Van Jones and ACORN stories. Whether BNPPWO wants to admit it or not, these were legitimate stories, especially ACORN, with whom his campaign did nearly a million dollars in business last year for a "get out the vote effort." Given what we now know about ACORN, who thinks the group was scrupulous about making sure only qualified, registered voters got to the polls?