Archive for March, 2009
March 30th, 2009
 
 Fox News added more material today to its long record of distortions and falsehoods, but it’s doubtful that more than a few of its gullible viewers even noticed.
 To hear the airheads at Fox TELL IT, President Obama’s remarks today about troubles in the American auto industry included no mention of union concessions to help the beleaguered companies survive.
 One can only assume that these people didn’t even watch or read Obama’s speech. Nor did any of their off-camera staffers inform them of the following comments by the president:
 I am announcing that my administration will offer GM and Chrysler a limited period of time to work with creditors, unions, and other stakeholders to fundamentally restructure in a way that would justify an investment of additional tax dollars; a period during which they must produce plans that would give the American people confidence in their long-term prospects for success.
 What we are asking is difficult. It will require hard choices by companies. It will require unions and workers who have already made painful concessions to make even more…
 Let there be no doubt, it will take an unprecedented effort on all our parts - from the halls of Congress to the boardroom, from the union hall to the factory floor - to see the auto industry through these difficult times.
 But the right-wing spinmeisters at Fox News put a totally DIFFERENT SLANT on what Obama said.
 FOOTNOTE: Some of the comments I received in response to a post earlier today on the auto industry (HERE) suggest that the Fox News folks aren’t the only people who reacted to Obama’s speech without having paid it close attention.
March 30th, 2009
Things aren’t quite so bad on the continent, it says HERE.
March 30th, 2009
This is pretty cool:
March 30th, 2009
 
 As a footnote to yesterday’s post (HERE) about the intradenominational squabble among Catholics over the invitation to President Obama to deliver the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, we have this word today from the Gallup polling organization:
The argument of those who protest the extension of the invitation to Obama is that Catholics have a distinctly conservative position on these moral issues [abortion and embryonic stem cell research].  That is certainly the case as far as official church doctrine is concerned, but not when it comes to average American Catholics. The new Gallup analysis, based on aggregated data from Gallup’s 2006-2008 Values and Beliefs surveys, indicates that Catholics in the United States today are actually more liberal than the non-Catholic population on a number of moral issues, and on others, Catholics have generally the same attitudes.
 Here’s the FULL TEXT of the Gallup report.
March 30th, 2009
 
 The Obama administration has forced the resignation of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner (above), triggering an avalanche of updated analyses of the troubled auto industry.
 In THIS CURIOUS PIECE, the author, although he tries his best to argue that Wagoner was almost great as the helmsman at GM, ends up mainly with a list of the man’s failings.
 Meanwhile, the outlook for Chrysler seems grim, as we see HERE.
 UPDATE: David Sirota WONDERS WHY the administration hasn’t forced the resignation of big bank CEOs.
 Sirota asks: “Is it just that there are far more Wall Street worshipers like Tim Geithner and Larry Summers in the Obama administration than auto industry representatives?”
March 29th, 2009
 Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich COMPARES Obamanomics with Reaganomics — trickle up versus trickle down.
March 29th, 2009
 
 President Obama is scheduled to deliver the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame seven weeks from today, but one wonders if the school will still be standing by then.
 The nation’s most prominent Catholic institution of higher learning finds itself caught in a FIRESTORM for having invited Obama, whose views on abortion and embryonic stem-cell research don’t accord with those of the Vatican.
 The controversy has exposed, perhaps even widened, philosophical fissures within the Catholic community that aren’t always apparent to outsiders. Not all Catholics march in lock-step with the teachings of Rome. Indeed, most Catholic voters went for Obama in last year’s election, no matter the thinly-veiled directives to the contrary from the church hierarchy.
 The flap over Obama, which gets more heated with each passing day, seems to have loosed pent-up enmities between the church’s left and right wings. And, from where I sit, as a lapsed Catholic without a dog in this fight but still attentive to the action, the right seems especially eager to do battle — the better to purge the so-called cafeteria Catholics from the ranks.
 Catholic prelates in Phoenix (HERE) and Houston (HERE) have taken to publicly scolding Notre Dame President John Jenkins for the apostasy of his invitation to Obama. Others, no doubt, will follow suit, lest they be perceived by the forces of orthodoxy as moral slackers.
 Among the gathering storm clouds, perhaps the most ominous is the indication that religious extremists like Randall Terry are planning to descend upon Notre Dame like a plague.
 Randall Terry, if you don’t know, makes no bones about his advocacy of a theocratic America. Consider his comments as quoted by the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel:Â
“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…. Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”
 Here are Terry’s thoughts on the controversy at Notre Dame:
March 28th, 2009
 
 Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist whose writings are often cited here at Applesauce, APPEARS ON THE COVER of the latest edition edition of Newsweek, which hits newstands on Monday.
 Krugman, unlike right-wing critics of the Obama administration, argues that the president’s efforts to mend the economy don’t go nearly far enough.
 UPDATE: Here’s the FULL TEXT of the Newsweek story on Krugman.
March 28th, 2009
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 Any notion that Roland Burris has made contradictory statements about his relationship with Rod Blagojevich is purely a media creation, according to the senator’s lawyer.
 The lawyer SAYS there’s a secret memo somewhere that proves Burris’ innocence.
 Ooh, cool! I love secret stuff. I wonder if you need a special decoder ring to read the memo.
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