Don Irvine Blog - Accuracy In Media

Obama Skips Berlin Wall Anniversary

2009-11-08T20:37:34+00:00

Tomorrow will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and president Obama will be notable for his absence from the celebration.

From FoxNews.com

The president does not plan to travel to Germany to attend the 20th anniversary celebration Monday of the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing heated criticism from those who say he's ignoring a shining triumph of American-inspired democracy.

President Obama squeezed in a trip to Copenhagen last month to lobby, unsuccessfully, for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. He plans to travel to Oslo next month to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that even Obama has said he does not deserve. And this coming week, he sets out on a weeklong tour of Asia.

But the president does not plan to travel to Germany to attend the 20th anniversary celebration Monday of the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing heated criticism from those who say he's ignoring a shining triumph of American-inspired democracy.

"A tragedy," is how former House Speaker Newt Gingrich described Obama's absence.

Some question whether the decision not to go was a nod to Russia, with which the Obama administration is trying to mend relations, or just another attempt to play down the perception of the United States as an exceptional superpower.

For its part, the administration is citing a scheduling conflict. The White House says the president simply does not have the time to go, with the trip to Asia starting Wednesday.

"Obviously we have a lot to work on here and we have commitments for an upcoming Asia trip," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday, noting that a "very senior delegation" of U.S. officials would attend.

That delegation is led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who traveled to Berlin Sunday ahead of the festivities -- the first stop for the secretary on a trip through Europe and Asia.

Obama acknowledged the anniversary of the fall of the wall last week during his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"We are now moving towards the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down and Germany being reunified after so many painful years," Obama said. "And this is a special moment for Chancellor Merkel, as somebody who grew up in East Germany, who understands what it's like to be under the shadow of a dictatorial regime, and to see how freedom has bloomed in Germany, how it has become the centerpiece for a extraordinarily strong European Union."

He said the U.S.-Germany alliance is an "extraordinary pillar of the transatlantic relationship."

But some saw Obama's decision not to travel personally to Berlin as a snub to Merkel, Germany and the history behind the anniversary.

"Barack Is Too Busy," Germany's Der Spiegel magazine declared in a headline last month, writing that Obama had declined Merkel's invitation.

While Obama has traveled to Germany since taking office, he has not as president traveled to Berlin -- the site of his major speech in July 2008 during his overseas campaign tour. During that speech, he acknowledged Berlin's struggle, saying, "This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom."

Why then, critics asked, would the U.S. president not revisit that site to mark the culmination of that dream? After all, he has established himself as an intrepid traveler in office, setting off on a slew of overseas trips during his first 10 months on the job.

On several of the stops he has expressed regret for past American behavior, but the Berlin Wall anniversary was seen as an opportunity for the president to honor an American and Western victory for which the U.S. need feel no regret.

"It is a true shame that the president of the United States -- this man who cloaks himself in the rhetoric of hope -- won't be pausing to remember," Gingrich wrote in a column last week in The Washington Examiner.

The National Review's Rich Lowry wrote that the decision speaks to Obama's "dismissive view of the Cold War as a relic distorting our thinking."

"John F. Kennedy famously told Berliners, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' On the 20th anniversary of the last century's most stirring triumph of freedom, Obama is telling them, 'Ich bin beschaftigt' -- i.e., I'm busy," he wrote. "Obama's failure to go to Berlin is the most telling nonevent of his presidency. It's hard to imagine any other American president eschewing the occasion."

It's not like this anniversary sneaked up on him or anything. The fall of the wall was one of the most amazing events in history for few believed that President Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gates on June 12, 1987 when he said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" would have any effect much less come to pass just two short years later. And yet the president couldn't find time in his schedule to make even a token appearance on Monday.

It is also odd that he would pass up a golden opportunity to be featured on the world stage and to try and restore some of the luster that has disappeared with his domestic agenda struggles and strengthen his ties with Germany as well as polish his image as a "world citizen".

Instead he skips the anniversary, snubs a key ally and makes the U.S. look bad.

Welcome to the Obama presidency.

Post #2446

Deeds Done In By Memo

2009-11-07T23:29:22+00:00

Creigh Deeds who lost the Virginia gubenatorial election on Tuesday by a wider than expected margin received some pretty bad campaign advice.

From the Politico

Back in June, pollster David Petts was the man with the answers.

His candidate, Virginia Democrat Creigh Deeds, had just won a thumping, come-from-behind primary victory to capture his party’s nomination for governor. Petts sent a memo laying out in cool, confident language the strategy for him to win the general election.

The advice: Go negative on the Republican nominee, capitalize on his natural advantage with independents, and be wary of two fellow Democrats—incumbent Gov. Tim Kaine and President Barack Obama.

Deeds ultimately followed many of the recommendations laid out at the end of the 24-page strategy document, obtained by POLITICO.

The Democrat’s 17-point loss to Republican Bob McDonnell was the worst blow-out in a gubernatorial election in nearly a half-century. And few people regard Petts as the man with the answers in 2009.

Instead, Deeds’s once-promising campaign is now being dissected on the autopsy table by journalists and operatives for evidence of what candidates should not do as they approach the treacherous politics of 2010. It’s clear that Deed’s punches on McDonnell barely bruised him, he got crushed among independents, and his clumsy, toe-stubbing dance around Obama helped depress Democratic turnout.

In an interview, Petts dismissed much of what his memo said as “dated” and noted that the Deeds campaign made strategic shifts in the months that followed.

Indeed, what is notable about Petts’s memo is not that it is an especially bad example of campaign advice but that it is entirely characteristic of the genre.

Written casually but with an air of authority, filled with jargon of the sort consultants use, it is little different than thousands of such memos that will be churned out over the next twelve months by the political-advice industry.

They are written with the assumption that politics is a science—influenced by variables that can be measured and producing outcomes that can be forecast—with victory a matter of method.

This pretense is more reassuring to the candidates paying for the advice than what is often the reality: voters are fickle, the factors that motivate them are ephemeral, political operatives are often winging it, and even the shrewdest advice often can’t compensate for a weak candidate running in a harsh environment.

All these realities turned out to be on vivid display in Virginia.

But that was not so obvious back in June.

The recommendations in the memo were gleaned from an internal poll conducted in mid-June by Deeds's polling team of Bennett, Petts & Normington and listed in bullet-point fashion under a header of “Conclusions.” The survey showed Deeds, enjoying a post-primary bounce, leading McDonnell 48 to 44 among likely voters, according a source familiar with the findings.

Told by Petts that his convincing primary win positioned him well with the Democratic base – core Democrats, northern Virginians and African-Americans – Deeds was advised: “The battleground now appears to be for independents outside the DC media market.”

That media market would be the population center of the state, where a third of all voters call home.

Deeds’ advisers had reason for optimism about the vote-rich Washington suburbs. Their candidate had just defeated two local candidates there in the primary and Democrats had surged in the region in recent elections, carrying Fairfax County with 60% of the vote in three consecutive statewide races.

But Deeds, a native of Bath County along the West Virginia border, hardly had northern Virginia locked up. Facing a Republican who grew up in the area before moving to the Hampton Roads region, the Democrat lost the Washington suburbs. He was even was edged out in Fairfax County, which both parties assumed would ne an anchor of the Democrats' coalition this year.

It turned out to be a faulty assumption. Deeds had none of the charisma that Obama displayed on his way to wiinning Virginia last year and ceratinly not the issues since the current Gov. is a Democrat and he couldn't very welll bash Tim Kaine.

Besides bad advice Deeds also suffered from a little bit of self adulation as he grew to believe that he could actually win a statewide race. He had previously face McDonnell for the AG slot and lost that and now had a rematch but for a bigger prize.

The same issues that are dogging Obama came home to roost for Deeds even though he went light on using the president it was still largely his economic policies that are affecting Virginians and they were ready for a change. Just not the type the Democrats were counting on.

Post #2445

The Real Bias is Moderate

2009-11-06T13:10:38+00:00

Forget the charges that there is a conservative or liberal media bias. According t media critic James Poniewozik the real bias is moderate bias.

From TIME

In the argument between the White House and Fox News over whether the cable channel is a conservative mouthpiece, you would think that Fox's viewers would have its back. Not entirely. In an Oct. 29 Pew Research Center survey, TV-news viewers named Fox the most ideological outlet — and 48% of Fox's own viewers called it "mostly conservative" (27% of Fox fans said it was "neither in particular," while 17% said it was "mostly liberal," suggesting that pollsters called G. Gordon Liddy's house more than once).

Now that's not exactly the same as the White House's charge that Fox is essentially a political operation. But it suggests that those "fair and balanced" ads don't fool the people actually watching the stuff. Fox isn't alone, though: the survey showed that far more viewers saw ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and NBC as liberal than saw them as conservative.

All of which underlines the obvious: the news audience, if not news itself, is getting more polarized. But categories like Pew's "liberal," "conservative" and "neither" imply that our society is as simplistic about media bias as we are about politics (when in fact both involve nuanced positions), and they overlook the most significant bias out there: moderate bias.

As anyone following health reform knows, centrism is a political position too. And you see moderate bias — i.e., a preference for centrism — whenever a news outlet assumes that the truth must be "somewhere in the middle." You see it whenever an organization decides that "balance" requires equal weight for an opposing position, however specious: "Some, however, believe global warming is a myth." (Moderate bias would also require me to find a countervailing liberal position and pretend that it is equivalent to global-warming denial. Sorry.)

Often, moderate bias is just the result of caution, but the effect is to bolster centrist political positions — not least by implying that they are not political positions at all but occupy a happy medium between the nutjobs. Meanwhile, conservatives see moderate bias as liberal, and liberals see it as conservative — letting journalists conclude that it's not bias at all.

Moderate bias also grows from a related phenomenon: status-quo bias. Journalists, like anyone, have a built-in bias toward believing that what was true yesterday will be true tomorrow. Establishment news outlets grow cozy and comfortable with other establishments. One reason some journalists insufficiently questioned the run-up to the Iraq war and underestimated the housing bubble was that they listened to their usual, credentialed sources — and the history of the past decade is the history of the experts being wrong.

I only wish there was a moderate bias. It would be far better than the liberal bias that I have lived under for my entire life. There may be moderates in the press but their bias is liberal.

Post #2444

Rep. Grayson Counts the “Dead” in GOP Districts

2009-11-05T13:16:33+00:00

Florida Democrat Alan Grayson upped the ante in his rhetoric war by takig to the House floor to name the number of people who would die without health insurance in Republican districts and blaming those estimated deaths on the GOP representative.

From the Politico

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) is taking the extraordinary step of reading off the number of people he calculates will die as a result of lacking health insurance -- in each district represented by a GOP member of Congress who opposes health care reform.

His approach: Name the district, then name of the Republican, then enumerate the number of people who will die without health insurance based on a Harvard analysis -- suggesting that the members were responsible for the body count.

As he began, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) asked for the clerk to take down Grayson's remarks -- a precursor to a complain about the tactic -- which caused the House to be adjourned for a short time.

When the House reconvened, he began reading again:

"Congressman Joe Wilson, 118 dead."

"Is it really asking too much of us that we keep people alive?" asked the Orlando Democrat, who rose to national attention earlier this year for suggesting the GOP wanted uninsured patients to die quickly. "We know according to the Harvard study we will keep these people alive."

The health insurance reform debate is complex and the Democrats have only made it worse by piling on more government programs into the nearly 2,000 page bill. It's not as simple as Grayson wants the public to beleive. What people want to know is why do the Democrats think the government can run health care better than private industry and how much is this really going to cost everyone not scare tactics by either side about who will live or die.

Post #2443

The Best and Worst of Obama

2009-11-05T11:51:53+00:00

The Politico has compiled a list of the best and worst moves of the Obama administration to date.

Across Washington, political pros are quietly putting together their report cards on the first year of the Obama presidency.

On some issues – like Obama’s diplomatic overtures to Iran – it’s too early to tell whether they’re political wins or losses. On others – like Obama’s failure to break up the big banks – the judgment is hopelessly clouded by ideology. Where you stand, as in so much of life, depends on where you sit.

But on much of Obama’s presidency, there is a surprising bipartisan consensus on what has worked well and what has not. POLITICO spoke to a dozen political insiders and pulled together this list of Obama's ten best, and ten worst, moves of the year.

The list is too long and detailed to post here so you will need to go to the article to see the enitre list. Please post your comments about the list here though.

Post #2442

Gibbs on NY-23: “Anger Can Get You 45% of the Vote”

2009-11-04T20:04:38+00:00

White House press secretary gives the White House line on yesterday's election results.

From ABC News' Jake Tapper

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs today said that Republican gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey do not portend anything for President Obama, but the dynamics and the Democratic candidate's success in the special election in Upstate New York has ramifications for the GOP.

"I think the data from the gubernatorial races demonstrates that voters went to the polls in those two contests to talk about and work though very local issues that didn't involve the president," Gibbs said, invoking exit polls indicating that most voters in those two states said that President Obama was not a factor in their votes.

In the New York race, Gibbs said, "we watched a party pick a candidate and then purge that candidate. And I think the result was an election (in which) that district sent its first non-Republican to Congress since before the Civil War."

Referring to tea party activists and other conservatives supporting Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, Gibbs said the result of the race "proves that anger can get you 45% of the vote."

Gibbs said that President Obama did not watch election returns. He called Democratic losing candidates Creigh Deeds in Virginia and Gov. Jon Corzine in New Jersey, but has yet to call the victors in those two races, Governor-elect Bob McDonnell of Virginia and Governor-elect Chris Christie of New Jersey.

"He wanted them to enjoy their night with their families and supporters but will talk to them today," Gibbs said.

The White House spokesman also took an opportunity to take a shot at the wording of an exit poll question that resulted in almost 90% of respondents in Virginia and New Jersey saying they're "concerned" about the economy.

"There was a question on the exit poll – I think it was worded, ‘are you worried or not worried about the economy,'" Gibbs said. "Ten percent said they weren't worried – I've not the slightest idea who those people are. If the President has been asked by an exit poller yesterday ‘Are you concerned about the economy' he would have said, ‘Yes.'"

Yes the Democrats captured a Republican seat but it that was due more to the failings of the GOP leadership in NY who picked a liberal candidate to run rather than holding a primary to see who the voters preferred. For a guy who had no party support until Scozzafava dropped out Hoffman's showing may be indicative that the Republicans will be able to retake that seat next year.

As for the exit poll question I'm glad to know that the president is concerned about the economy, it's just too bad for the country that he doesn't have a clue on how to fix it.

Post #2441

Bring Back the Copy Editor

2009-11-04T19:58:17+00:00

As newsrooms shrink one little noticed by valuable part of the staff is rapidly disappearing leaving papers with typo strewn copy.

From Editorsweblog.org

Readers who have come to rely on sports journalist Tom Boswell's quality baseball coverage for the Washington Post, might not have been quite so impressed with Monday's offering: His column, covering Sunday's World Series game, was sent to the printers awash with typos, grammatical errors and misspellings; generating a number of complaints.

Some readers asked for full 75 cents refund, whilst one reader hit the nail on the head, writing: "Please, rescue Mr. Boswell from the pressure of the midnight deadline. Give him, and your readers, back your copy editors." Another added: "There is no excuse for such a shoddy product. It's completely unprofessional; more errors than one would see in a high school or college newspaper."

Inexcusable such mistakes may be, but what are the direct causes of such a piece being sent to print?

It would appear that Boswell's typo-strewn column is symptomatic of the Post's various attempts to curb spending. Having recently closed its College Park printing facility and consolidated operations with its other printing plant in Springfield, the paper has been forced to inch deadlines forward in order to ensure the paper reaches commuters setting off earlier and earlier due to worsening traffic, as well as doing away with many copy editors.

Sunday's big game wound up just before midnight, and by 12:25 am - a mere five minutes before the 12:30 am final deadline - the story was written and ready for publication - or so it seemed. The piece had been crafted throughout the game and though editors were aware of the fact that it had only received minimal editing, the only other option would have been to hold it out of the paper, disappointing the large number of fans who follow Boswell's column.

That's not to say that the pressure to meet deadlines hasnt always existed- of course it has - and forms part of the very nature of journalism. It's just that a year ago, had Boswell not met the first deadline he could have still made the publication's more widely circulated second edition, giving him a further 45 minutes to play with. With Monday's deadline met - more or less, Boswell then set about producing a fine tuned version that ran online.

Media analysts and publishers alike have long debated the role of copy editors (sub -editors) in today's struggling industry. Indeed, the Guardian's Roy Greenslade deemed them "a layer in the publishing industry, which can be "eliminated"." Various models have been implemented, reducing the traditional three step article writing process to just two, and thus doing away with subs entirely. Whilst the financial benefits are apparent, it does beggar the question (which Boswell's column no doubt answers) as to the effects of such a move on the actual quality of journalism - which coupled with increasingly tighter deadlines, surely makes for a significant double threat ... and something's got to give.

With newspaper circulation slumping the last thing the Post and other papers need to do is give readers another reason to drop their subscription. But who wants to read a paper riddled with typos when you can get a spell checked copy online for free?

Post #2440

Trib Gives Up AP

2009-11-03T14:26:17+00:00

The Tribune newspapers are experimenting to see if they really need the AP.

From the Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune and other Tribune Co. newspapers plan to utilize as little content from the Associated Press as practical during the week of Nov. 8.

The goal, as the papers review costs and needs, is to see whether severing ties with the news cooperative next fall is a viable option, the Chicago-based media company confirmed Monday.

The trial is scheduled to be conducted almost 13 months after Tribune Co. gave the AP a required two-year warning that it might drop the news service, effective Oct. 15, 2010. Tribune Co. said at the time that it was keeping its options open while weighing what role, if any, the AP would play in its future.

Some content Tribune Co. papers get from the Associated Press, such as sports statistics, will still be published during the experiment. The company also said that if the AP is the only available source for a report considered vital, it will use that AP coverage. But the company wants to see to what kind of void the absence of AP stories and photos would have.

Besides the content provided by the staff of its own titles, Tribune Co. newspapers will draw from such news sources as Reuters, the Washington Post, New York Times, Agence France Presse, Cable News Network, Global Post, Bloomberg and McClatchy newspapers during its AP-less trial. Not all of those sources are normally available to Tribune Co. papers.

Some newspapers have determined that shared wire content that is available to readers from many other outlets is worth less to them than unique, proprietary content, especially online. Coupled with reductions in the space allocated for news in print, papers are weighing whether there’s the same need for Associated Press content as in the past.

"The Associated Press has been working with all members of the cooperative, including Tribune Co., to ensure that the AP news report retains its value to member newspapers and their readers," AP spokesman Paul Colford said in a statement.

The AP Board of Directors in April announced a new $35 million in rate reductions for 2010 for its member newspapers on top of $30 million in rate reductions for 2009 announced a year earlier. AP expected that the total assessment decreases for papers would average a little less than 20 percent, although it would vary widely for members depending on their services levels.

Tribune Co. TV stations will not participate in the experiment, which falls during the November ratings period. Tribune Co. newspaper Web sites also will not be affected, the company said

Thanks to the advent of social media tools the pressure has increased on the AP to prove its relevance and worth as newspapers shrink or fold reducing the customer base for their services.

The AP provides depth and breadth that others will be hard to match. The Tribune may be able to get along without them but will the remaining readers find the paper worth the trouble,

Post #2439

Obama’s Job Search

2009-11-03T11:05:01+00:00

With unemployment remaining stubbornly high President Obama continues his search for job growth.

From the Politico

In the face of increasing heat from Congress for decisive moves to create jobs, President Barack Obama on Monday pushed his economic advisers to come up with job-generating ideas that can be hustled up to Capitol Hill.

With unemployment rising and expected to be in double digits as lawmakers run for reelection next year, Obama conveyed a sense of urgency as he met with business executives, labor officials and economists who sit on his economic advisory board.

“Congress is going to be looking to act,” Obama told the committee during an hourlong meeting in the Roosevelt Room. “To the extent that we have very clear, crisp recommendations that we can present before them and do so soon, the better off we’re going to be.”

While the administration has fended off talk of a second stimulus bill, Obama made clear he’s concerned that the stimulus legislation passed in February won’t do enough to turn the jobs picture around.

“Given the severity of the job losses that took place at the beginning of the year and the need for us to make up a whole lot of job loss, [it] is going to require, I think, some bold, innovative action on our part and on Congress’s part and on the private sector’s part” to boost employment, the president said. “This is my administration’s overriding focus. ... We will not rest until we are succeeding in generating the jobs that this economy needs.”

Panel members told Obama that the administration should look to three areas to spur job growth: exports, infrastructure and energy-efficiency technologies.

While Obama talks almost daily about green jobs and green technology, one panel member argued that such a transition may not benefit the United States unless policies spur American companies to become stronger competitors in the area.

“We’re home to only two of the top 10 solar companies and only one of the top 10 battery manufacturers,” Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr said. “We have to change dramatically. ... We’re now not on a path to be the worldwide leader in those businesses.”

It is now time for Obama to step forward and look to tax cuts and other incentives for businesses to create jobs, The stimulus did absolutely nothing for solving long term unemployment and throwing more money at the problem won't help.

Just don't hold your breath for the White House to do the right thing.

Post #2438

Cable News Partisans

2009-11-02T15:17:49+00:00

Fox news has taken a lot of criticism from President Obama but they aren't really any different than their cable news brethren when it comes to partisanship.

From the New York Times

The Obama White House’s decision to challenge Fox News appears driven equally by strategy and frustration. It is also a test case for politicians in both parties.

That is because partisan fragmentation throughout America’s news media and their audiences has grown significantly. Future Republican presidents will have to decide, as Team Obama has, how to buck or accommodate that trend.

Fox News has attracted the most attention because of its “fair and balanced” challenge to its competitors and its success. But the audiences of its competitors have tilted sharply in the other direction. (This reporter is chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and hosts “The New York Times Special Edition,” a program on MSNBC.)

Press critics worry that the rise of media polarization threatens the foundation of credible, common information that American politics needs to thrive. Will Feltus, a Republican specialist in voter targeting, does not.

If it complicates the choices facing leaders in Washington, Mr. Feltus argues, it also decentralizes political communication in a way that is both inevitable and healthy in the information age. “I feel no hand-wringing about it,” Mr. Feltus said. “People are smart enough to understand what color filter is over the lens.”

Roots of a Trend

The evolution of political news on television, in print and on the Internet has a certain back-to-the-future feel. As the American Revolution approached in the 18th century, wrote William David Sloan and Julie Hedgepeth Williams in the book “The Early American Press, 1690-1783,” journalists “were expected to be partisan — intensely partisan.”

Mr. Feltus charted the rising partisanship of television news audiences using data from Scarborough Research, a partnership of the Nielsen Company and Arbitron Inc.

In audience surveys from August 2000 to March 2001, Fox News viewers tilted Republican by 44.6 percent to 36.1 percent. More narrowly — 41.4 percent to 39.4 percent — so did the audience for MSNBC. The audiences of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central leaned Democratic.

Four years later, amid the Iraq war and President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, the audience data had shifted. Fox News viewers had become 51 percent Republican and just 30.8 percent Democratic, while MSNBC viewers leaned Democratic by 41.7 percent to 40.4 percent. Viewers of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central grew slightly more Democratic.

By 2008-9, the network audiences tilted decisively, like Fox’s. CNN viewers were more Democratic by 50.4 percent to 28.7 percent; MSNBC viewers were 53.6 percent to 27.3 percent Democratic; Headline News’ 47.3 percent to 31.4 percent Democratic; CNBC’s 46.9 percent to 32.5 percent Democratic; and Comedy Central’s 47.1 to 28.8 percent Democratic.

The fact that the cable networks tilt to one side or the other really isn't that surprising. Fox is clearly conservative overall though they have peppered the network with liberals to give the appearance of being even handed. While the White House dismisses this as just sugar coating at least they have aired people with different points of view. That rarely happens on the other cable networks particularly their opinion shows.

Obama came into office promising not just hope and change but what he referred to as the need to heal the country after some acrimony during the Bush presidency.

However by calling out Fox News he and his aides look more like a bunch of whiny kids that didn't get their way. Fox would have been a minor annoyance during his presidency but now they have taken center stage and supplanted more important news. Or maybe given the problems the administration is having with health care and climate change legislation that was the point. Create a new villain and make the administration the victim to garner sympathy.

Based on the results so far all this strategy has achieved is to divide liberals and conservatives further apart which doesn't bode well for the administration or the Democrats.

Post #2437