Obama Watch

ABC News's Jake Tapper noticed an interesting trend with President Obama.  He hasn't been around to take any questions from the press lately.  In fact, he has evaded the national press corps  for more than two months.  However, as Tapper noted on his blog today, Obama did have time to talk to "reporters from People Magazine and Entertainment Tonight."  In addition, "during his three-day Iowa bus tour this week, for example, he conducted three interviews with local radio stations, including a sports talk radio show, and a roundtable discussion with columnists from three Iowa papers, in addition to sitting down with People and Entertainment Tonight. On July 12, he did an interview with Charlie Rose for CBS This Morning."

Obama's "last news conference was at the G20 in June, when he answered six questions from three reporters on the European debt crisis, the conflict in Syria, and the notion of politics stopping at the water’s edge. The White House press corps has not formally been given the opportunity to ask questions of the president on U.S. soil since his appearance in the Briefing Room on June 8 (when he said “the private sector is doing fine.)" 

Affirmative-action lovers were thrilled that CNN's Candy Crowley would be the first female to moderate a presidential debate since Carole Simpson's sneering turn in 1992. Crowley deserves the opportunity after being in the field of political news for decades, and is the closest thing the current crop of moderators has to a Tim Russert type in being able to question firmly both sides of the aisle.

However, Crowley still fits within the CNN media-elite mold of liberalism, and not just with her unfortunate channeling of "some Republicans" on Saturday who anonymously felt the Paul Ryan pick "looks a little bit like some sort of ticket death wish." Below are a list of some of Crowley's more liberal moments on the CNN airwaves:

Rep. Paul Ryan's 100 percent rating by the pro-life National Right to Life Committee and his support of the "Protect Life Act" are evidence of the Wisconsin Republican's extremism on abortion and as such, should hurt the appeal of the Romney/Ryan ticket with women voters, MSNBC's Alex Wagner argued on the August 14 edition of her noon Eastern Now with Alex Wagner program.

Of course the 100 percent pro-choice record that Barack Obama has with NARAL Pro-Choice America might strike centrist voters as equally "extreme," but Wagner failed to note Obama has never deviated from the NARAL line. What's more, as a state senator, Barack Obama voted AGAINST an Illinois state version of the "Born-Alive Act" which was designed to punish abortionists who kill babies who were born before the abortion procedure was finished in utero. Nothing says pro-abortion extremist like voting against a bill to penalize infanticide, especially considering that a federal version of the bill passed the U.S. Congress in 2002 without any votes in the negative. [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

Last weekend in a meeting in Minneapolis, the Democratic convention's platform committee unanimously voted to plow ahead with a pro-same-sex marriage amendment that will call for the repeal of the Bill Clinton-signed Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). News of this development broke yesterday. The exact language of the platform plank is yet to be hammered out but should be available in a few weeks.

At a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., yesterday, the Coalition of African-American Pastors announced that unless and until President Obama recants his position for same-sex marriage, they will counsel members of their respective congregations to not vote for Obama as his position on the issue counters biblical teaching.

ABC, CBS, and NBC all failed to cover either development on their July 31 evening newscasts or August 1 morning news programs.

CBS and NBC on Friday night aired full stories on the very weak 1.5 percent second quarter GDP rate, down from an anemic two percent in the first quarter, yet – incredibly – ABC’s World News, which had time to champion how First Lady Michelle Obama brought her “Let’s Move” campaign to London where she “indulged in some Olympic daydreaming,” didn’t consider newsworthy the bad news for President Obama.

Instead of relaying the bad news about Obama-nomics, fill-in World News anchor Josh Elliott trumpeted: “Now to your money and the giant rally on Wall Street. The Dow up nearly 200 points, closing above the all important 13,000 mark. Something that hasn't happened in nearly three months.”

The media are desperately at work spinning Barack Obama's "you didn't build that" comment because it was a "complete rejection of the free enterprise system" by the president, reveal the "soul" of the administration's approach to the economy, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity during last night's "Media Mash" segment.

"It's so huge that ABC, NBC, and CBS ignored it for four days," but "one of the beautiful things about the new media" is that "you can't keep these things in the tube anymore... so the media finally had to cover it," the Media Research Center president noted. "And how did they cover it? Damage control for Barack Obama. Spin, spin, spin." [see video embedded below page break]

In an unprecedented move, the Media Research Center believes that the Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) recent call to action is not extreme enough.
 
According to the Daily Caller, CAIR is upset with President Obama for refusing to produce campaign swag specifically designed for Muslims. He has catered to many niche groups by creating "Jewish Americans for Obama" bumper stickers, "LGBT for Obama" pins, "African Americans for Obama" and "Latinos for Obama" t-shirts and even "My Two Dads Support Obama" baby onesies.  But no "Muslims for Obama" offerings exist and CAIR objects to their exclusion.  

The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission  (CPSC) is taking a company to court to make it stop producing their popular Buckyballs magnetic desk toy, even though the company markets the product to adults and includes warnings that the toy is unsafe around children.

That's right, it's a desk toy marketed to adults, the vast majority of whom will keep them at their desk at work -- a generally kid-free environment -- and yet the Obama administration is trying to shut production down. Reporting the story, the Washington Post's Dina El Boghdady began today's article with a dry recitation of the lawsuit and waited until halfway through her story to get to the company's strong reaction (emphasis mine):

Of course President Obama is the "perfect American" to tingle-prone Chris Matthews, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox News's Sean Hannity, because liberal media personalities like Matthews refuse to report on Obama adminstration failures and scandals.

"He makes the point that you and I have been making for months about this campaign," the Media Research Center founder noted on the July 19 Hannity. "Whether it's Tony Rezko or Jeremiah Wright or anything in Barack Obama's past, they refuse to cover it, therefore, he's clean as a whistle.... [I]f you're not going to cover anything negative, of course he's clean as a whistle." [MP3 audio here; watch the full "Media Mash" segment below the page break]

If Mitt Romney hadn’t brought up President Obama's "you didn't build that" crack about business owners, the mainstream media wouldn’t have reported on it, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto on his Your World program today.

"This was a bombshell story. Now look at the coverage.  You cannot-- this is a classic example of the two-sided nature of this campaign where the so-called news media are concerned," the Media Research Center founder noted.  "When Barack Obama said what he said it took NBC 94 hours before they reported it. It took ABC and CBS another 24 hours before they reported it." [MP3 audio here; watch the full segment below the page break]

President Barack Obama's now-infamous "you didn't build that" line about entrepreneurs is an "astonishing" example of how the president reveals his true antipathy against the free enterprise system when he's speaking off-the-cuff sans teleprompter, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox Business Network anchor Stuart Varney on the July 19 edition of Varney & Co.

"This is a man who said that he wanted to redistribute wealth. This is the man who has given signs of this all throughout his administration," the Media Research Center founder added. "I'm going to stick my neck out, the last person" who attributed the success of the free enterprise system to government, not business owners, "was Karl Marx," he added. [watch the video below the page break]

Donnie Box, a steelworker in Missouri who lost his job and is the focus of an anti-Mitt Romney advertisement being run by a Super PAC that supports President Barack Obama, now says he will not vote to re-elect the president in November.

"I could really care less about Obama," the lifelong Democrat says in an article written by Mike Elk on the In These Times website before criticizing the president as "a jerk, a pantywaist, a lightweight, a blowhard. He hasn’t done a goddamn thing that he said he would do," he complained, adding:

Media coverage of both the "Fortnight for Freedom" events sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and the competing "Nuns on the Bus" campaign, reveal interesting results.

A total of 141 dioceses, involving tens of thousands of Catholics, participated in the USCCB events; it ended with a crowd of 5,000 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on July 4. Although Bill Moyers wrote that "a bus filled with nuns" participated in the "Nuns on the Bus" campaign, in actual fact a total of two nuns made the entire bus trip; there were never more than six at any one time on the bus. No matter, CNN did eight stories on the nuns, and none on the bishops; MSNBC did six on the nuns, and one on the bishops; and CBS News did two on the nuns and none on the bishops.

The Jurassic Press is missing much in their reporting on the $50 billion bailout of General Motors (GM).  The Press is open channeling for President Barack Obama - allowing him to frame the bailout exactly as he wishes in the 2012 Presidential election. 

The President is running in large part on the bailout’s $30+ billion loss, uber-failed “success.”  And the Press is acting as his stenographers.  An epitome of this bailout nightmare mess is the electric absurdity that is the Chevrolet Volt.  The Press is at every turn covering up - rather than covering - the serial failures of President Obama’s signature vehicle.

As I noted yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yesterday refused to call a vote on extending the Bush tax cuts, even though President Barack Obama days earlier urged passage of such tax cuts as soon as possible. Predictably, however, the July 11 editions of the network evening newscasts  -- ABC's World News, the CBS Evening News, and NBC's Nightly News -- all ignored the development. Ditto with the network morning shows today.

Each evening newscast did, however, note the House vote to repeal ObamaCare, the first such vote after the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate as a tax.