Obama

After three so-called “recovery summers,” the economy has yet to recover under President Barack Obama. Unemployment stands at 7.8 percent, but would be far higher if more people were looking for jobs. GDP was downgraded to 1.3 percent and the national debt is $16 trillion.

Looking back, the broadcast networks have consistently depicted past summers as times of economic renewal, despite an ongoing economic downturn.

Summer 2010 was touted by all three broadcast networks as a “Summer of Recovery” until it became apparent that the economy was not recovering. There was a half-hearted media effort to label the summer of 2011 as a “Summer of Recovery” as well, but that was also abandoned. Facing the reality of a slow recovery, the major networks instead turned to arguing that the recovery would have been much worse without Obama.

A calendar that compares Barack Obama to Jesus Christ may not get too much media play. It could be an uncomfortable reminder of the time when journalists, such as Evan Thomas, compared the President to "God." 

One of the hottest selling items at the Democratic National Convention is a 2013 calendar titled "Keep the Dream" that features 16 flattering photos of the First Family and their dogs. In honor of the President's birth month, a picture of Obama's birth certificate was used for August. The caption read "Heaven Sent" and proceeded to quote John 3:16 underneath, as if he were the actual Messiah.

Maybe President Barack Obama watched a little too much of the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday night. The language seems to have rubbed off.

Paul Bedard at U.S. News and World Report caught an interesting exchange on CNBC this morning about Obama's use of "ass" in an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer. Obama asserted to Lauer that he wanted to know "whose ass to kick" over the oil spill in the Gulf.

Squawk Box co-host Becky Quick criticized President Obama for using "the A word" on the Today show, saying he set a bad example for kids.

"If you're the president of the United States and you go on the Today show, which is a morning show, where you're going to have a lot of kids who are sitting around watching this, I think you choose your words a little more carefully," Quick said.

"I think using the a-word on the Today show when you're talking to Matt Lauer, yeah, that disturbs me," Quick said.

Quick said that it's "silly" to use inappropriate language to prove that you're mad.

(h/t Paul Bedard)

Maybe it’s just happy coincidence. Maybe Hollywood really is taking White House suggestions for its scripts. Or maybe liberal group think has evolved to the point where they don’t just think the same things, they think them at the same time.

Whatever the case, just a day after President Obama’s “surprise announcement” in his State of the Union speech that he intends to overturn the military’s “Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell” policy, the issue surfaced again in prime time. And the inclusion of propaganda in a TV drama was even more incongruous and gratuitous than Obama’s sop to his left wing.

The Jan. 28 episode of Fox’s forensics-based crime drama, “Bones,” centered on the murder of a gay man, and the writers took the opportunity to inject some standard talking points about the inequity of gays being unable to marry and the threat of physical violence from straight men.

Media sources seemed to be thrilled that Obama is promising to save or create millions of new jobs. The only problem is they seem to purposefully fail to mention that these will primarily be government jobs. From Libertarian Republican:

 A check of all the major mainstream media sources this morning, finds that not a single one of them are using either the phase "Government Jobs," or "Public Sector," in their reporting on Obama's 2.5 million Jobs Program.

The AP is typical of the style of reporting: