Month: March 2009

Looks that way. Looks like some of the “Pro-Obama” media and the not-so “Pro-Obama” media are beginning to see, what the rest of America is seeing as well.

Via an opinion piece at the D.C. Examiner:

Did you feel it? The political ground shifting beneath President Barack Obama since his speech last week to Congress? It’s been  downhill since and I’m not referring mainly to the Dow Jones record-setting dive. The pivot point of the shift was the speech, or rather what the speech did to the evolving public narrative of Obama.

Let’s review:

* Since the first of the year, Rush Limbaugh’s audience has exploded , according to Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, even as his daily assaults on Obama have intensified. The conservative Talk Radio maestro has become quite possibly the most listened-to radio personality in America since before Paul Harvey (God rest his soul).

Demand for his air time has suddenly become so intense, Limbaugh told The Examiner’s Byron York earlier today, that his network sold 80 percent as much advertising in January 2009 as it did in all of 2008, and expects to sell-out the year by the end of March. That was before Obama and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel launched an explicit counter-attack against Limbaugh that seems only to be making him bigger.

* Glenn Beck’s eminently forgettable presence on CNN has been transformed, according to The Los Angeles Times, by his move to Fox News where his main theme has been variations on this question – Wake Up! Wake UP! What in Heaven’s name does Barack Obama think he is doing to America? Beck has a tough time slot from which to win big ratings because he’s in the middle of evening drive-time. Even so, in a very short period of time at Fox, his audience has grown to the point that it is now exceeded only by those of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.

Via The Washington Post:

Washington has spent the past couple of weeks debating whether Barack Obama’s ambitious agenda and political strategy are more comparable to those of Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. Oddly, hardly anyone is talking about the ways in which Obama is beginning to resemble the man who just vacated the White House.

Most Americans are eager to forget about George W. Bush. But just over seven years ago, Bush found himself in much the same position as the new president today — leading the country through what was universally considered a national emergency. In the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, Bush’s approval rating soared above 80 percent at home. London, Berlin and even Moscow rallied behind him. A front-page analysis in The Post in late November said that “President Bush [has] a dominance over American government . . . rivaling even Franklin D. Roosevelt’s command.”

Then, according to today’s established wisdom, Bush squandered his chance to lead. Three cardinal errors are commonly cited: The president failed to ask a willing nation for sacrifice, instead inviting consumers to shop and heaping on more tax cuts. Rather than forge a bipartisan response to the crisis, he used it to ram through big, polarizing pieces of the Republican Party’s ideological agenda — from asserting presidential powers to breach treaties to eliminating protections for federal workers. Worst, he chose to launch a war of choice in Iraq, thereby shredding what remained of post-Sept. 11 national unity and diverting attention and resources from the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

That brings us to the first weeks of the Obama administration, set against the background of a scary and steadily deepening global economic crisis. Last month, in his first address to Congress, Obama warned the country that fixing the huge problems in the financial markets and housing and auto industries would require a historic effort. “None of this will come without cost, nor will it be easy,” he said. “But this is America. We don’t do what’s easy. We do what is necessary to move this country forward.”

Minutes later, Obama spelled out what he proposes this to mean for 98 percent of Americans: “You will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime. In fact, the recovery plan provides a tax cut . . . and these checks are on the way.”

So much for summoning the country to sacrifice. Obama has been no more willing to ask average Americans to pitch in, even once the recession is over, than Bush.

Via Forbes:

To see what is in front of one’s nose,” George Orwell famously asserted, “needs a constant struggle.”

Congratulations this week to three journalists who have finally taken up that constant struggle: Christopher Buckley, David Gergen and David Brooks. All three used to insist that Obama was some species of centrist or moderate. Now that Obama has proposed the most massive expansion of government in the history of the republic, each has recognized that just conceivably he might have been mistaken.

A humorist–and, I should disclose, an old friend–Christopher Buckley exercised his acute comic sense during the presidential campaign, judging John McCain so thoroughly risible that the nation could hardly do worse by electing Barack Obama. Now Buckley has developed a sense of the tragic. In electing Obama, he admits, we may indeed have done worse–a lot worse.

“The strange thing,” Buckley wrote last week after listening to Obama address Congress, “is that one feels almost unpatriotic, entertaining negative thoughts about Mr. Obama’s grand plan. … One thing is certain, however: Government is getting bigger and will stay bigger. Just remember … that a government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.”

“Just remember”? Coming from someone who just remembered, the exhortation might strike a lot of people as rich. But never mind.

Now a commentator for CNN, David Gergen served in a number of administrations, first working in the White House all the way back in the 1970s. To the extent that he possesses any coherent ideological outlook–a fine question to ask of someone who took jobs from both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton–Gergen seems to share Alexander Hamilton’s view that the federal government requires, as Hamilton expressed it, “energy in the executive.”

During the campaign, Gergen praised Obama as a man of action. Now Gergen argues that Obama is displaying a little too much action.

“We are in the midst of a global crisis … that demands intense focus and daily leadership by the president …,” Gergen wrote this past week. “But … [Obama’s] … ambition for reforms in other areas do not allow him to give the economy his full attention.” The financial industry is reeling, Gergen asserted, “because there is still no clear-cut set of policies about how the government will rescue banks.” And “it is stunning that [Treasury] Secretary Tim Geithner does not yet have a deputy secretary or any undersecretaries named, much less on the job.”

Energy in the executive is one matter. Zealotry in the executive is another.

It is, in fact, a refreshing thing to see the media actually doing it’s job, rather to sit and act like the state owned Russian media for a change. Unfortunately, all of these people, left out Dana Milbank, who early on, had the, ahem… shall we say, courage?… to write critically about the Obama campaign and found himself eviscerated by none other than Obama cheerleader Keith Olbermann.

Of course, there will always be the eternal believer, that, no matter Obama does, will always believe that he is the savior of the world, that he will be crucified by the mean old media and will be raised again to take the American people to the “Promised Land”.  Whatever that is. 🙄

Of course, there is also the blogging world. Yes, that’s right, we’re usually the first to break the stories, and usually the last to get any credit. Just as well, we do deserve a bit of credit for not falling in the tank for the President, and actually using a semblance of a brain, when it came to writing about this new Administration. However, some within the confines of the Independent Conservative News and Commentary Blogosphere and not-so-Blogosphere, bordered on material worthy of the National Enquirer. But there were others, and there’s just too many to list here, who really did their jobs, and basically told, what is essential to the American people and to the fundamentals of this fine Republic and its continuance as a free and democratic society; the truth.

There is a famous line, in a movie of the title, “A Few Good Men”, and it goes something like this:

“You want answers?”

“I think I am entitled to it.”

“YOU WANT ANSWERS!!”

“I WANT THE TRUTH!”

“You can’t HANDLE the truth!”

The new higher ratings of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and even Bill O’Reilly have, and for good reason; proven that little lie very wrong. People can, will and want to handle the truth.

Others: Power Line, The Volokh Conspiracy, Macsmind, Wake up America, TigerHawk, Wizbang, PoliGazette, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS,