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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (595723)	12/15/2010 3:51:17 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1585078

Poor, bitter, Dave! A BELIEVER in the "work ethic"!

To: i-node who wrote (595723)	12/17/2010 12:24:31 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1585078

The new comeback kid By Charles Krauthammer washingtonpost.com Friday, December 17, 2010; If Barack Obama wins reelection in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on Dec. 6, the day of the Great Tax Cut Deal of 2010. Obama had a bad November. Self-confessedly shellacked in the midterm election, he fled the scene to Asia and various unsuccessful meetings, only to return to a sad-sack lame-duck Congress with ghostly dozens of defeated Democrats wandering the halls. Now, with his stunning tax deal, Obama is back. Holding no high cards, he nonetheless managed to resurface suddenly not just as a player but as orchestrator, dealmaker and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama. Compare this with Bill Clinton, greatest of all comeback kids, who, at a news conference a full five months after his shellacking in 1994, was reduced to plaintively protesting that "the president is relevant here." He had been so humiliatingly sidelined that he did not really recover until late 1995 when he outmaneuvered Newt Gingrich in the government-shutdown showdown. And that was Clinton responding nimbly to political opportunity. Obama fashioned out of thin air his return to relevance, an even more impressive achievement. Remember the question after Election Day: Can Obama move to the center to win back the independents who had abandoned the party in November? And if so, how long would it take? Answer: Five weeks. An indoor record, although an asterisk should denote that he had help - Republicans clearing his path and sprinkling it with rose petals. Obama's repositioning to the center was first symbolized by his joint appearance with Clinton, the quintessential centrist Democrat, and followed days later by the overwhelming 81 to 19 Senate majority that supported the tax deal. That bipartisan margin will go a long way toward erasing the partisan stigma of Obama's first two years, marked by Stimulus I, which passed without a single House Republican, and a health-care bill that garnered no congressional Republicans at all. Despite this, some on the right are gloating that Obama had been maneuvered into forfeiting his liberal base. Nonsense. He will never lose his base. Where do they go? Liberals will never have a president as ideologically kindred - and they know it. For the left, Obama is as good as it gets in a country that is barely 20 percent liberal. The conservative gloaters were simply fooled again by the flapping and squawking that liberals ritually engage in before folding at Obama's feet. House liberals did it with Obamacare; they did it with the tax deal. Their boisterous protests are reminiscent of the floor demonstrations we used to see at party conventions when the losing candidate's partisans would dance and shout in the aisles for a while before settling down to eventually nominate the other guy by acclamation. And Obama pulled this off at his lowest political ebb. After the shambles of the election and with no bargaining power - the Republicans could have gotten everything they wanted on the Bush tax cuts retroactively in January without fear of an Obama veto - he walks away with what even Paul Ryan admits was $313 billion in superfluous spending. Including a $6 billion subsidy for ethanol. Why, just a few weeks ago Al Gore, the Earth King, finally confessed that ethanol subsidies were a mistake. There is not a single economic or environmental rationale left for this boondoggle that has induced American farmers to dedicate an amazing 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop - for burning! And the Republicans have just revived it. Even as they were near unanimously voting for this monstrosity, Republicans began righteously protesting $8.3 billion of earmarks in Harry Reid's omnibus spending bill. They seem not to understand how ridiculous this looks after having agreed to a Stimulus II that even by their own generous reckoning has 38 times as much spending as all these earmarks combined. The greatest mistake Ronald Reagan's opponents ever made - and they made it over and over again - was to underestimate him. Same with Obama. The difference is that Reagan was so deeply self-assured that he invited underestimation - low expectations are a priceless political asset - whereas Obama's vanity makes him always needing to appear the smartest guy in the room. Hence that display of prickliness in his disastrous post-deal news conference last week. But don't be fooled by defensive style or thin-skinned temperament. The president is a very smart man. How smart? His comeback is already a year ahead of Clinton's. letters@charleskrauthammer.com

To: i-node who wrote (595723)	12/17/2010 12:36:38 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1585078

Is There a Snitch at Fox News? DOES MEDIA MATTERS HAVE MOLE IN ENEMY CAMP? By Mary Papenfuss, Newser Staff newser.com Posted Dec 17, 2010 3:23 AM CST (NEWSER) – Fox News had better watch its back now that a snitch is apparently feeding memos to the media exposing it as more of a conservative propaganda machine than a news operation. Two memos leaked to Media Matters revealed orders from the top directing staff to put a right-wing spin on issues of the day. Now America's "most influential right-wing media outlet is facing up to the chilling prospect of having a whistleblower in its own newsroom," notes the Independent. It could be even more cloak-and-dagger. "Liberal website Media Matters has an informant planted at Fox leaking memos, crows Contact Music. One of the memos ordered reporters to use terms implying skepticism of global warming, another dictated terms when referring to the federal health care bill (such as referring to the "so-called public option') which polled poorly with Americans in research conducted by the Republican Party. Both memos came from Bill Sammon, managing editor of Fox News' DC operation. The Union of Concerned Scientists yesterday blasted Fox for its "unscientific" take on global warming. "Emails now suggest that this bias comes directly from the executives responsible for their news coverage," said a statement from the organization.

To: i-node who wrote (595723)	12/17/2010 1:05:57 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1585078

Extended exposure to Fox News makes voters stupid, university study finds By Stephen C. Webster rawstory.com Thursday, December 16th, 2010 -- 4:53 pm The troublesome record of spin by conservative television station Fox News has long been a cause for concern to many Americans, who frequently allege that the nation's most viewed "news" network has the effect of dumbing down voters. Turns out, they were right. A University of Maryland study (PDF) published earlier this month found that people in the survey who had the most exposure to Fox News were more likely to believe falsehoods and rumors about national and world affairs when compared to those who paid attention to other news outlets. In a summary carried by Alternet, the following falsehoods were most relayed by Fox News viewers: 91 percent believed the stimulus legislation lost jobs; 72 percent believed the health reform law will increase the deficit; 72 percent believed the economy is getting worse; 60 percent believed climate change is not occurring; 49 percent believed income taxes have gone up; 63 percent believed the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts; 56 percent believed Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout; 38 percent believed that most Republicans opposed TARP; 63 percent believed Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear). The poll's findings seem to sync with those of an NBC News survey (PDF) taken during the height of America's health care reform debate, where Fox News viewers were found to be most likely to have believed wildly inaccurate interpretations of the legislation. While Fox News and parent company News Corporation have long been criticized cheerleading Republican causes and conservative-allied business interests, it has been under more intense criticism of late over high profile donations to Republicans, deceptive video editing on multiple programs and even on-air GOP fundraisers. Though the station claims to run "news" programming during the daytime, liberal watchdog group MediaMatters recently revealed a leaked email that shows one of the network's top editors ordering anchors to use terminology favored by conservatives. In a follow-up, the media blog released a second leaked email showing the same editor, Fox News Washington, DC managing editor Bill Sammon, directing staff to cast doubt upon climate data, even when it was not in question. The revelation was hailed by former Vice President Al Gore, a champion of climate change activism, who argued it proves the spin coming from Fox News is straight from the top. And it doesn't help that one of their most-watched opinion hosts, conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck, is prone to making up outrageous falsehoods to scare viewers. The network has big plans to expand it's brand into the future: According to anchor Chris Wallace, the 2012 Republican presidential primary elections will be "a production of Fox News," not unlike the Fox network's American Idol. Virtually all the leading GOP candidates are paid contributors for the network, and over 30 Fox News personalities have endorsed Republicans in the past. The Obama administration, similarly, has called Fox News "a wing of the Republican party."