State of the Union

ABC on Tuesday introduced Barack Obama with an opening that looked and sounded more like a movie trailer for an action film. As dramatic, pounding tones played throughout, an announcer began, "The State of our Union. We heard this, just two years ago." Then, images of the President, firework-style graphics and people crying appeared onscreen. A clip from 2008 showed Obama proclaiming, "…

NewsBusters for years has chronicled the staggering idiocy of comedian Bill Maher. On Tuesday's "Situation Room," we got a hand from Wolf Blitzer when he marvelously countered Maher's complaint that CNN's decision to air Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's (R-Minn.) Tea Party response to the President's State of the Union address was depriving Democrats of equal time (video follows with…

ABC’s Christiane Amanpour hailed President Obama’s State of the Union address as “very Reaganesque,” but in October, holding herself up as some kind of protector of Reagan’s legacy, she discovered “a long and venerable tradition of conservatism in this country” exemplified by Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley and “all of that sort of intellectual conservatism,” yet now, she feigned distress…

The consensus from last night seems to be that Obama learned little from the midterm shellacking his party was handed in November. Despite paying lip service to spending cuts, deficit reduction, and market economics, Obama wholly embraced big government liberalism throughout the speech. The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes summed it up thusly: Less than three months after voters across the…

How can a Dem president tell that his SOTU was a for-real floperewski?  When even Andrea Mitchell pans it.  Yet that's precisely what NBC's chief foreign affairs correspondent did on Morning Joe today.   What was particularly unkind about Andrea's cut was that she criticized both the form and the substance of the speech.  After observing that Pres. Obama's oratory lacked "energy" and "…

"News is about stories," Rachel Maddow intones in this MSNBC "Lean Forward" promo. "It's about finding all the disparate facts and then finding their coherence. Doing this right takes rigor and a devotion to facts that borders on obsessive. ... At the end of the day, though, this is about what's true in the world." Just as the purpose of this promo is to convince MSNBC viewers and…

Gotta love the mantra of the activist old media leading up to the State of the Union address. Two very predictable and horribly flawed themes are being pushed as we speak. 1) Obama will announce a laser-like focus on jobs. 2) Unity - America wants unity and Obama will work to unify.

Talking to New York Senator Chuck Schumer on Sunday's Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer said of a video statement released by President Obama on Saturday: "If I didn't know better and had my eyes closed I might have thought that was President Reagan talking." Schieffer specifically referred to Obama's call for spending cuts, noting: "It sounded very much like a speech that a Republican would…

 On Sunday’s Good Morning America on ABC, during a discussion of President Obama’s upcoming State of the Union Address, as guest Mike Paul of MGP and Associates PR argued that Obama needs to talk about forming a "partnership" with businesses and cutting taxes, co-anchor Dan Harris fretted that there would be "political risk" in Obama getting too close to business. Harris: "Isn't there some…

  On the January 23 World News Sunday, ABC News Senior Washington Editor Rick Klein used President Obama’s euphemism for spending as "investments" as he and anchor Dan Harris discussed how Republicans will likely respond to Tuesday’s State of the Union Address. Although the setup piece by correspondent David Kerley did allude to Obama’s word choice to call his plan "cut and invest" as having…

New York magazine's John Heilemann said this weekend that President Obama is the only serious adult in the deficit reduction conversation now going on in Washington. This deliciously came seconds before Heilemann told other guests on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show," "I have been dispirited by the lack of strategy on the part of the White House since the midterm elections...specifically…

The Washington Post has added a new conservative blogger to its stable, one that NewsBusters readers should be familiar with. Only three days into her new position, Jennifer Rubin has made it clear she has no intention of toning down her criticism of mainstream media darlings like New York Times columnist David Brooks:

CNN.com's opinion page has clearly sided with those supporting President Obama's proposed repeal of the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy barring open homosexuals from the ranks. During the first five months of 2010, the website has published four columns pushing for the repeal and none from supporters of the policy. Two came from the executive director of a homosexual activist group…

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of…