Category Archives: Media Criticism

Why Barack Obama Is Scared As Hell Of Paul Ryan

Because as Iowahawk says, the president has to fear the math.

I wish that the debate was between Obama and Ryan, rather than Obama and Romney. Because Ryan versus Biden is going to be Godzilla on Bambi. Except Bambi didn’t have hairplugs.

[Sunday morning update]

Watch and tremble, Democrats. Lines around the block to see Romney-Ryan in North Carolina, while the donks are worried about filling their convention hall there.

It’s not 2008 any more. And considering what happened in Wisconsin earlier this year, I suspect it’s going to look a lot more like 2010.

[Afternoon update]

I don’t know about the “hope” part, but this is definitely change: “Only $51 to enter an Obama fundraiser in Chicago, but the room is only half full.”

I think they may run out of money before the election. It would seem fitting that his campaign’s finances are run pretty much the way they’ve been governing.

How Disconnected With Reality Is Barack Obama?

This disconnected: he actually believes (or at least claims to) that the press is biased against him:

…overall, this president still benefits far more than most of his predecessors from a press that generally likes him, agrees with his policies on most key issues, and deeply hopes that he will be re-elected in November. Few incumbents have ever had this kind of support from the Fourth Estate; few challengers have ever had such a hard time getting a break from the media as Governor Romney.

Moreover, some of President Obama’s complaints are unsettling. As he sees it, the liberal narrative is “the truth”, competing narratives are “factually incorrect”, and the press has a duty not to treat truth on an equal basis with falsehood. By this standard, any article that doesn’t heap scorn and disdain on those who disagree with him is biased; “balance” is an illusion when it comes to subjects about which liberals are passionately convinced that they are right.

It just isn’t that simple. Political disagreements are often about values and context—about which facts are important and should move policy rather than about whether side A or side B is right about some specific point. There’s a totalitarian impulse and a deep hostility to the concept of public debate lurking not far below the surface here, and it’s a little unsettling that President Obama seems to think there are a lot of public policy issues on which the liberal viewpoint is True and the conservative viewpoint is Dumb.

As he notes, Leftists are the descendants of the Puritans. It’s just a different religion. And it’s frightening to have a commander-in-chief this deep in delusion.

The Lies Of The Left

We shouldn’t be surprised at the latest vile ad:

…we’re dealing with something in the Obama campaign that we haven’t seen much at the top of American life, except in the worst moments of the Clinton era. We’re dealing with a president who is entirely without any sense of ethics, honor or morals. He has lived a lie for most if not all of his life, hiding his true political convictions in gauzy language that makes him appear reasonable and moderate. Having lived a lie, what’s one more lie, in the service of keeping himself in power? What’s one more lie if, in Obama’s mind, it accomplishes the “good” of keeping Romney out of power?

The danger for the Obama camp is that they risk going over a tipping point. There is a point at which the negativity becomes absurd, and instead of depressing the opponent’s vote, angers the opponent’s supporters and draws the undecided over to the opponent’s side. No one can really put a finger on where that point is, but it’s real and we saw the effect of reaching that point in the Texas Senate run-off last week. The Dewhurst campaign went too far into negative territory, no one really believed their last-minute attacks, and the backlash ended up ensuring that Cruz would win running away. Obama risks the same dynamic hitting him.

I hope so. I’d like to think that there are limits to the tolerance of the American people for politicians who blatantly and obviously lie to them, but my faith in that was shaken by the Clinton administration.

[Update a few minutes later]

Obama and damage done:

What many of our youth, and foreigners, think they know about America and American history, comes from movies and TV shows. Hollywood bombards us with the viewpoint that rich evil conservative white men (RECWM) are behind all of our troubles, and those of the world. Our heroes should be the brave lawyers who sue corporations; the brave journalists who expose the nefarious plots of the RECWM conspiracy; the brave activists who stand up to the “violent” gun nuts of the Tea Party; the gutsy abortion clinic workers who live in fear of their lives; the brave public servants, e.g., cops and perky assistant district attorneys, who protect us from the RECWM who, of course, are what all of us fear to encounter when we are in a dark parking lot. We should stand in awe of people with PhDs regardless of whether what they say corresponds to the reality we see, because they know what’s good for us. They are the “experts.”

Obama has captured this movement and its view, and represents and promotes it better than anybody else in living memory. Unlike Carter, Obama is not incompetent in promoting his hatred for America’s traditional values and in embedding it into our institutions, e.g., the ruinous Obamacare, the rapid expansion of the federal dole, the insistence on apologizing for our successes, the disastrous “stimulus” spending, the glorification of the “victim” culture, promotion of envy and cynicism, and denigration of individual effort and success (“You didn’t build that!”) That is the real threat posed by what Obama represents. Overcoming that threat will take years of sustained effort. It begins, of course, with voting Obama out of the White House next November, but does not end there.

You know a president is bad when he makes you nostalgic for Jimmy Carter.

The Depravity Of Nancy Pelosi

Jonah Goldberg is fed up:

The dishonesty and/or stupidity of all this is really quite breathtaking — and obvious. First of all, you could cut government funding down to 1950 levels and still have money for food safety. But this is what liberals do. They metaphorically lash children to the fenders of government so that the budget cutting blade must slice through them first. Then, after insanely putting them in harm’s way, they proclaim it is the sane budget cutters who seek to harm children. In fairness, sometimes liberals hold the young human shields in reserve and put firehouses, historic monuments, and old-age homes outside the budgetary walls of the fiscal keep. And, again, they declare that the fiscally sane want to get rid of fire fighters and the Washington memorial — and not, say, the Export-Import Bank or agricultural subsidies.

And too many people buy their BS, judging by polls. What’s most infuriating, of course, is that their partners in crime in the media don’t call them on it.