If there was currently a Democrat in the White House, would they have left out this line?

Each period also was followed by a change in the party controlling the White House.

We also have a system of federal government with 3 equal (supposedly) branches. I haven't looked it up, but was "each period" also followed "with a change in the party controlling".......the Congress? And if so, would they put an "and" in the question to add that bit?

Freaking-Out Fram and Put-Upon Putman then lament that "a
barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is
moving in the right direction." It's a wonder, given the tenor of press
reporting during at least the past two years, that it's as high as it
is. (emphasis added)

These polls might as well be called "damage assessments."

Shoot 'em all; let God sort 'em out! - Marge Simpson

No, it's an endorsement. 

By Jack Z. Smith
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Published on: 06/19/08

http://www.ajc.com/print/content/printedition/2008/06/19/smithed.html

The United States, with 304 million people, is the world's biggest energy glutton and is growing at nearly 3 million people annually, with immigration a major factor. It would be laudable if America spent far less money on ill-fated foreign adventures such as the Iraq war and instead focused overseas expenditures on family-planning programs, reduction of poverty and disease, agricultural development, improved water systems and enhancement of women's rights. In a future presidential administration, that actually might happen.

quoted almost verbatum the words regarding polar bears, and gas prices.

He was attempting to slam McCain on This Week.

Kay from Texas was his counter part and really I wish they'd choose someone from our side who can throw a punch. She just too timid for me.

Anyway, these two stellar reporters are strutting the democrat talking points and if they feel desperate, I'll send them directions to Lovers Leep

Uh-oh. You quoted 286 words from that AP story. Since they will now charge you $2.50 per word for quoting AP, you now owe them a total of $575.

The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.

Yes.  It began with the WELFARE STATE.

They speak the truth but not as intended.

RRAM Tough! 

Tom. Geeze - what mess. For fun, two items caught my attention:

1. Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather ..? 

For the record, it's neither, you dimwits.

2.. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.

No, I have a better question to ask these folks. In addition to other relief and benefits received from the state, local, private and federal agencies, our federal government has already handed out a check - a federal tax free cash grant - to 110,929 folks. The average check was in the amount of $58,868. This money is not a low interest loan - it is a grant, intended to cover uninusred losses and to help folks rebuild. Additionally 10's of thousands of other folks received substantial cash grants from the same program to help those who no longer wished to live in the area to other areas. See: The Road Home Program. (for the record - it is my belief that the entire national MSM has been successful in keeping this massive federal handout out of all of the news. Has a single national story been run, which lays out these facts? I doubt it. In other words - the MSM decided they did not want the voters to know of this historic government program to help those folks down their rebuild. So, they censored the news. Period.

The Question is: What did these folks do with the money, and/or why is the local authorities not letting them rebuild?

And in summary, just where were these dimwit journalists in the fall of 2000? An historic stock market crash. Thousands of companies going out of business - millions of Americans were loosing their jobs, their paycheck, their health insurance, their life savings. A trillion of projected federal and more in state budget surpluses were to quickly disappear - as a result (Pain - on the human front left behind by the departing administration); CA Energy Blackouts. Afghanistan overrun by the Taliban. Millions dying in the HIV/Aids Pandemic in Africa, which the Clinton admin. was ignoring (unlike Bush). Millions more were dying in numerous civil wars and genocides in Africa - after Rwanda (which the Clinton admin. was ignoring). The Iraq Sanctions regime had come unglued, and the US/allied bombing had greatly escalated. And many years after Hurricane Andrew and the historic Mississippi flooding of 1994, locals understood that their government had abandoned them.

This writer worked as a reporter for nearly eight years. The Fram-Putman article appalls. It belongs on editorial pages, where one expects opinion; in the Worcester, Mass. newspaper, it ran atop Page One. It relentlessly presses a case that people feel bad, it lists reasons why they do, and makes the point party changes at the White House have followed similar down-in-the-dumps moods.

The article does not mention the equally relentless series of AP articles that have appeared in the last eight months, making a case that the U.S. is in bad shape, economically, and likely its condition will worsen. Since consumer confidence affects consumer spending, and since the AP has ignored positives affecting the economy, one can argue that consumer spending drops and negative attitudes follow from the AP's enterprise reporting to discover negatives. I wish I had access to Nexis; I'd like to compare how the AP covered a real recession, earlier in this decade, with what it's done in the past year. 

The article skipped the reality that, after all, fewer than 6% of Americans are unemployed. Not everyone has the job he or she wants, but a bad job is better than none and many will get better jobs. Nor did it mention the positive changes in Iraq that the Petraeus Surge helped to bring about. It skipped the remarkable success that the U.S. has had in integrating huge waves of immigrants. Many of them have leadership positions in their communities; the son of immigrants from India is leading a Southern state as governor and doing a good job. It avoided the huge numbers of whites who voted for someone with a black African father and a white American mother. (I think they voted wrongly, but one ought to give Americans some credit for not being as bigoted as leftists imagine.) 

This was a prosecution of the United States, with "expert" witnesses chosen to buttress the case, written implicitly to push many Americans to choose Barack Obama as our secular savior. This was journalism as propaganda, free advertising for a political choice that likely will give this country a leadership closer to Fidel and Hugo in ideology and policy than Franklin and John.