Archive for June 6th, 2008
June 6th, 2008
A newly released independent STUDY of media coverage of the primary campaigns shows that the controversy over Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, “was by far the dominant media story of the entire campaign.”
So much for the bogus theory that the media have been soft on Obama.
Over the first five weeks of the year, Hillary Clinton dominated news coverage in two of those weeks, John McCain in two others and Obama in only one.
The Illinois senator got lots of good coverage when he won 10 primaries and caucuses in a row, but that was soon replaced by the negative stuff on Rev. Wright and other matters.
June 6th, 2008
OK, it’s over. No need to hold an election. Bob Dylan has ENDORSED (scroll down to the end) Barack Obama for president.
What Bruce Springsteen DID for Obama on the primary trail Dylan will do for him in the general election. Don’t try to disagree. Things like this are cosmic.
I’ll let the poet explain it himself:
June 6th, 2008
Those of us who live in Illinois, one of the bluest of America’s blue states and the home state of Barack Obama, are going to experience only vicariously any of the ground-level politicking in the presidential campaign of the next five months.
There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind about where Illinois’ 21 electoral votes are going in November. Consequently, neither the Obama team nor John McCain’s campaign are going to put much effort or money into our state. So, there’s not likely to be much radio or TV advertising for either candidate in local markets in Illinois. We’ll have to content ourselves with the ads we catch on national networks. (But, of course, I’ll be posting a lot of them here.)
One consolation: Perhaps some of the so-called down-ticket races in Illinois — contests for Congress and the state legislature — will be made more interesting by the Obama factor. Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s previously safe Republican seat already has fallen into the hands of a Democrat whose special-election campaign prominently featured ads in which Obama touted the candidate. Obama’s coattails — or the fear of them — could make a few other Illinois races more fun to watch than otherwise would be the case.
Still, it disappoints me to think that neither Obama nor McCain are likely to attend rallies in these parts this summer and early fall. Nor are their supporters likely to knock on our doors or otherwise regale us about their candidates’ qualifications.
Oh, well. Wisconsin isn’t far away.
June 6th, 2008
The New York Times, in an otherwise spot-on EDITORIAL today, beats around the bush (so to speak) on whether President Bush and his gang lied to the American people during the run-up to the war in Iraq.
In commenting on a Senate Intelligence Committee report issued Thursday, the Times says administration officials ”knowingly twisted and hyped intelligence…ignored dissenting views and telegraphed what answers they were looking for…knew they were not giving a full and honest account of their justifications for going to war…took vague and dubious intelligence reports on Iraq’s weapons programs and made them sound like hard and incontrovertible fact…glossed over inconvenient facts.”
But, then, the Times offers this weasely and illogical conclusion: “We cannot say with certainty whether Mr. Bush lied about Iraq. But when the president withholds vital information from the public — or leads them to believe things that he knows are not true — to justify the invasion of another country, that is bad enough.”
Incredible! The editorialists at the Times seem strangely unable to understand that when the president leads Americans “to believe things he knows are not true,” he’s lying.
As the saying goes, if it walks like a duck….
POSTSCRIPT: Here’s another ANGLE on something I mentioned yesterday — namely that the Iraqis want us to get our troops out of their country. If we refuse to accede to the wishes of Iraq’s elected Parliament in this matter, then ours is an army of occupation. That kind of thing doesn’t sit well with the Arab world.
