Category: Hack Journalism

Well, Now We See the Ron Fournier Influence Over the AP

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Another day, another AP hitjob.

Kos noted that Charles Babington had to have written the piece bashing Obamas speech was finished. 603 words, edited, proofed, and posted online 23 minutes after Obama finished…and he got the length of the speech wrong.

Olbermann condemned the Babington piece, and told him to “find new work”.

The always reliable Editor and Publisher has a good rundown, and includes the factoid that, “Even as Babington was hitting Obama for a lack of specifics, AP was transmitting a second piece by another reporter, Jim Drinkard, that offered a detailed look at seven specific policy proposals in the speech (and expressed doubts about all of them).”

Note that Ron Fournier just wrote a piece Analysis: Palin’s age, inexperience rival Obama’s (no links to the AP…I’m still boycotting them for going after bloggers, see here.

MoveOn.org Targets Ron Fournier for Bias

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He’s head of the AP’s Washington bureau.

He previously interviewed for a job with McCain, and he’s thoroughly in the tank for him, and he’s been in the tank for the ‘Phants for years.

He wrote a mash note to Karl Rove over the Pat Tillman phoney story, when he had done no stories on either Tillman nor Rove.

More details here.

Here’s hoping that he finds a new line of work, because he ain’t a journalist, he’s a PR flack.

The Big Picture From The Big Picture: False Foreclosure Bottom

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Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture notes that the recent data showing a slowing in foreclosures is an artifact of changes in foreclosure law in a few hard-hit states:

  • California requires lenders to wait an additional 30 days after a homeowner misses the first payment before filing a default notice;
  • Massachusetts now gives homeowners a three-months grace period after they default on their mortgage before the lender can file to foreclose. (The law is credited with an 84% drop in foreclosure petitions);
  • New York passed a bill last week that requires lenders to send a preforeclosure notice to certain borrowers at least 90 days before foreclosure proceedings may be initiated;

Of course, the financial press is looking the delays caused by these changes, and running around saying, “Foreclosures are down, the housing crash has finally hit bottom.”

The only place with more false bottoms than financial Journalism is a Beverly Hills plastic surgery clinic.

The only thing that surprises me is that he links to an article that actually points out this fact, though it does have the prize quote, “Some cynics say the laws are designed to give the appearance that the housing crisis is easing ahead of the November elections.”

We cynics prefer to call ourselves the, “Reality Based Community.”

Wanker of the Day: Bob Kerrey

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And not just because he spoke for Attribution on a Politico dot com concern troll piece:

“The idea that Obama was going to win in a blowout was always preposterous,” says former Nebraska senator and onetime presidential hopeful Bob Kerrey, an Obama backer. “A big piece of this, of course, is whether white people are going to support a black guy. … If [Obama] is a tall, skinny white guy named Paul Jones, it’s a different story.

…

“John McCain is a known quantity,” says Bob Kerrey, who thinks Obama will ultimately prevail. “You don’t look at John and say, ‘Who the heck is he?’. He’s a veteran, he’s a guy who got pretty banged up in Vietnam. He can deal with crisis. There’s some uncertainty about Senator Obama.”

…

“Fairly or not, folks think he’s pretty liberal and nobody wants a pair of Pelosis running things,” says a New York-based Democratic consultant.

Adds Bob Kerrey: “The country’s still pretty divided … people may want a divided government. They want change, but I’m not sure that the Democratic agenda has the support of a majority of Americans.”

Can we trade this “mother SHUT YOUR MOUTH!“* to the Repubicans?

Seriously, he’s almost as bad as Lieberman.

*In memoriam of Isaac Hayes.

Economics Update

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Well, the jobless numbers came out, and they suck. The weekly numbers rose by 7,000 to 455,000, a 6 year high, when predictions were for a drop to 433K, and the 4 week moving average, which is less noisy, rose to 419,500, a 5 year high.

At least our misery has company, with the ECB holding rates steady, saying that “risks to economic growth were starting to materialize”, which is a signal that Euro zone rates will remain steady.

Of course, our relentlessly optimistic financial press has to try to make s%$# into Shinola in housing, where they are touting a 5.3% month to month gain, which as Barry Ritholtz so eloquently notes, this is unmitigated crap, and driven by seasonal differences more than anything else, and the numbers are down year over year.

Additionally, we do not know how many of these are short sales in lieu of foreclosure.

We also have retail experiencing major suckitude now that the rebate checks have run out. To the degree that people are spending any more, it’s on necessities, and they are running up their credit cards to do this, because the banks are cutting back on HELOCs.

Meanwhile, oil rose on supply concerns after Kurdish rebels blew up a Turkish pipeline, though gasoline is down for the 21st straight day.

In the world of insurance, the largest US insurer, American International Group wrote down more than $11 billion in holdings, and is making noises about selling more shares to raise capital.

Gaaahhhhh!!!!!!!!

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We have a winner in the wanker press competition, coming, not surprisingly, from the Wall Street Journal.

Writer Amy Chozick is suggesting that with much of the American public overweight, that Barack Obama might be too fit to be president!!!!

But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

So, this is the new meme of the Kule Kidz inside the Beltway, huh? as opposed to this adulatory coverage of Bush and Rice about their “intense” exercise regimes.

So, is Obama too skinny, or too black?

Why Amy Sullivan is a Complete Idiot

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Amy Sullivan has always been a one note pundit: The Democratic party must reach out to religious voters, and protect them from those evil radical secularists who would make fun of them.

The problem there is very basic: there are no radical secularists in the leadership of the Democratic party.

For that matter, I believe that there has been one atheist who has ever served as a member of Congress, so she is talking about people who do not exist.

Now, she is prattling on about how Obama is making overt evangelical religiosity work for him.

First, she claims that Obama has “pivoted to announce that an Obama administration would fix, expand and elevate the faith-based initiative”.

Except, of course, if these organizations take federal money, Obama won’t allow them to discriminate on the basis of religion, and they will be subject to federal accounting and auditing standards, which has always been the case until Bush set up his own “faith based initiative.”

The purpose of Bush’s program was to ensure that there was neither fiscal accountability nor discrimination protection, so it is a complete refutation of Bush’s program.

In fact, what is implied is that he will sweep up massive numbers of white evangelicals in so doing, even though the religious right demand that they be subject to no fiscal accountability and be given the right to discriminate.

The core message of the politicized right wing evangelical is hostility to integration and to minorities.

Similarly, when she lauds Bush’s “Compassionate Conservativism”, she does not understand, or more likely refuses to understand that this is a dog whistle to the religious right, referring to Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion, which says that “true compassion” is not giving charity, because, “Compassion means tough love in which those who give must demand self-help from those who receive,” which means let “black babies starve”.

The religious Evangelical does not begin with Roe v. Wade and abortion, bur rather with Green v. Connally, which revoked the tax exempt status of discriminatory private religious schools.

So we can run a poll on religious affiliation vs. candidate support, and you can see that Obama is polling lower than either Kerry in 2004 or Gore in 2000. (h/t Talkleft on the poll)

Barack Obama has no chance of picking up white right wing Evangelical voters, and the votes he picks up from black Evangelicals and Hispanic Catholics are because the Republican party is implacably hostile to them.

Amy Sullivan is a one trick pony, but her pony is a dog, and I’ll call her my “Wanker of the Day”.

What a Bunch of F&%$ing Whiners

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Yes, we are now seeing hand wringing from the pampered self-centered Washington press corps.

The example given is when Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee write a piss-poor article on polling about Obama, Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race, and he’s offended, when the Obama campaign launches a point by point rebuttal that makes him look like a complete pratt.

If you don’t want to look like a pratt, stop being one.

The press needs to get over itself.

More Media in the Tank for John Sidney McCain III

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Well, in the aftermath of CBS’s selective editing, we have Howie Kurtz, “Mr. Conflict of Interest”, alibiing for CBS deliberately mis-editing the interview.

Seriously, someone is in the tank for McCain…Hell, everyone in the media has this “man crush” for McCain, which is why this is not wall to wall 24/7 news right now, because they “know” McCain, and they “know” it’s not fair to hold him to his word.

The Sick Old Man Can’t Even Get the Facts Right on His Signature Issue

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John Sidney McCain III barely graduated from Annapolis, 894 of 899, and then only because because daddy was a high ranking admiral.

Now, he gets the escalation in Iraq wrong, claiming that the so-called “Anbar Awakening” was the result of the “surge” even though it pre-dated Bush’s first mention of escalation in Iraq by 6 months.

Of course, this is Katie Couric’s CBS, so when the gaff was made, they edited it out, because by the rules of the “kule kidz” in the press corps, any gaff by McCain is an honest mistake, and the public must be shielded from seeing the “straight talker” when he shows himself to be a complete pratt.

Micheal O’Hanlon Can Go Cheney Himself

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So, the Washington Post conducted a poll on the war, and talked to some so-called experts.

One of them was the wanktacular Michael O’Hanlon:

To say you’re going to get out on a certain schedule — regardless of what the Iraqis do, regardless of what our enemies do, regardless of what is happening on the ground — is the height of absurdity,’ said O’Hanlon, who described himself as ‘livid.’ ‘I’m not going to go to the next level of invective and say he shouldn’t be president. I’ll leave that to someone else.’

(emphasis mine)

  • This guy is not a Middle East expert.
  • He’s not a terrorism expert.
  • He does not speak Arabic.

His “expertise” is in military budgeting, and he has gotten a lot of face time on the air because he’s from the so called “center left” think tank, the Brookings Institution, and he loves the war in Iraq.

I understand that when the war in Iraq is over, he won’t be quoted 2-4 times a month by the national press, but that is no reason for him want Americans and Iraqis to keep dying.

Not also that the poll is wanktacular too, it says it’s about the candidates positions, but the question is, “Obama has proposed a timetable to withdraw most U.S. forces from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office. McCain has opposed a specific timetable and said events should dictate when troops are withdrawn. Which approach do you prefer – a timetable or no timetable?“

That is a question designed to get a higher number (it’s 50%-49% in favor of the time table) than any other question, but it allows the Post to claim that people are evenly split, when “not worth fighting” wins 63% to 36%, and that success in the war is not necessary to win the war on terror (60% to 34%).

Magazine’s ‘satirical’ cover stirs controversy – Yahoo! News

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Well, the New Yorker just put our a new issue, and the cover is something else.

David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, defends the cover as “Satire, Meant To Target “Distortions And Misconceptions And Prejudices” About Obama.”

So a cartoon showing Barack Obama in Muslim garb, with a flag burning in the fireplace, bin Laden’s portrait on the wall, fist bumping with an AK-47 toting Michelle Obama is satire.

It may have been intended as such, but it’s not satire…or at the very least, it’s so poorly done that the satire is invisible to the observer, even one who is familiar with the magazine.

Interestingly enough, I think that the strongest critique, albeit an unintentional one, is a comment made by Jonah “Doughy Pantload” Goldberg in the National Review Online, he says that, “It’s almost exactly the sort of cover you could expect to find on the front of National Review.”

Well, yes it is, but the long term racism of the National Review is well known. William F. Buckley was supporting segregation into the 1970s.

We expect the National Review to be this stupid and racist. We don’t expect the New Yorker to be this stupid or racist.

Old Pinko’s Says

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Or more accurately, to what Old Pinko links to on Tim Russert.

I know nothing of the man as a person, but as a journalist, some of the reviews are out from some people in the know, and they are not pretty.

I’m sure that Olbermann will take the opportunity to make them “Worst Persons in the World”.

In a related nowt, it also appears that Olbermann will have a special comment tomorrow, where he promises to address (that means alibi) his disgraceful behavior excusing Obama’s sellout on Telco Immunity.

I’ll have a review of it tomorrow night.