Well, I'm getting pretty close to cancelling The Washington Post - again

[DancingBear]

On the front page today was this little gem:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/19/AR2005121900924.html


Bush's Support Jumps After a Long Decline

More Americans Upbeat on Iraq, Economy


President Bush's approval rating has surged in recent weeks, reversing what had been an extended period of decline, with Americans now expressing renewed optimism about the future of democracy in Iraq, the campaign against terrorism and the U.S. economy, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

<snip>

The Post-ABC News poll suggests that the massive turnout in last week's elections in Iraq, coupled with a public relations offensive in which the president delivered five speeches and held one news conference in 19 days, have delivered a substantial year-end dividend to a president badly in need of good news.

(note: The rest of this article paints a less than rosy picture for El Chimperor, but of course everybody sees the headline, and that's what counts).


Then, inside the main page was this gag-inducing homage to our great leader:

President Takes the Offensive With Press

News conferences have never been President Bush's favorite venue, which is probably the main reason he's held fewer than any modern president. But any discomfort he felt yesterday was for the most part well concealed.

In the face of repeated skeptical questions on the Iraq war and whether he acted within the law in ordering a domestic spying program, Bush apparently decided that a passionate offense was his best defense. In a morning event in the White House East Room, he answered questions for 56 minutes, sometimes conveying humor, sometimes impatience, but never anything less than full confidence in his own answers.

<snip>

or most of the time, Bush's mood was casual and crisp. He admonished reporters to refrain from long questions and -- amid concern that he is overreaching on his own powers -- joked that he had signed an executive order to ban them. On the question of domestic surveillance in fighting terrorism, Bush acknowledged civil liberties concerns and said he would ask the same questions if he were sitting in the reporters' seats.

<snip>

The morning's dominant impression was of a president who feels so strongly about his own presidential prerogatives that he was ready to take on all comers who might disagree. He said that as commander in chief he has responsibility for defending the nation against an extraordinary threat, and that he needs extraordinary tools to do so.

article at: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/19/AR2005121901

I must have seen a different press conference - I saw a blithering idiot who thought he was at a fratnerity party.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

1. Here we go - again

It's in the house, but I haven't looked at it yet. Now, maybe I should just send a flaming arrow its way.

I cancelled it, too, during the 2000 campaign, and it's entirely possible that, yes, it's time to ditch the sycophantic sonofabitch of a rag again.

Thank you for the heads up.

I got this horrid feeling that Fuckface is gonna skate on this spying thing. I just got this feeling.......

[DancingBear]

Well, the Post is certainly doing its part

Gee, raise your hand if you think George and the Post editiors have had the proverbial "come to Jesus" meeting with regards to what they print...

[OldLeftieLawyer]

12. The Pentagon Papers

Katharine Graham, Ben Bradlee, and a couple of sets of balls.

How times have fucking changed.

Bradlee's head must explode every day. I wish he were still there.

[DancingBear]

14. Don't we all n/t

[savemefromdumbya]

2. the Post is too frightened

bound and gagged by White House

[asjr]

8. I am at a loss to understand what has

happened to make the MSM capitulate. What on earth is hanging over their collective heads to make them so pliant with the WH? (rhetorical question) We do not get the truth from anyone. Have they been denied access unless they print "positive" news? This country resembles Nazi Germany in so many ways.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

16. Read what Helen Thomas,

that grand old babe, that American icon, one of our national treasures, had to say about the MSM today:

"Mediachannel.org gave its first Truth in Media award to Helen Thomas, the Dean of the White House press corps, who has been denigrated by the Bush Administration for asking too many embarrassing questions.

"In accepting the award in New York on December 13, Thomas observed: "The great journalism we have known is in a state of demise. And even more unfortunate is the timidity and lack of nerve on the part of reporters these days to call them as they see them.

"No reporter with eyes and ears wide open could have mistaken the fact that President Bush wanted to go to war from the moment he stepped foot in the White House and nothing would stop him...

"... I believe the press could have stopped the mayhem before it started by not defaulting on its one weapon - skepticism. It would have called on reporters to demand every day news conferences to pin the president down and to show how bereft his reasons were to go to war.

But reporters were holier than thou caught up in the intimidating - and for some exciting- atmosphere of patriotism and then war itself."

They're not "journalists." They're suckass stenographers.

And they're as responsible as that ratbastard in the White House for the state we're in today. They want all the protections that the Constitution affords journalists, without doing the actual job. I thoroughly despise them all. Airheads and sycophants.

[asjr]

17. Thanks, Helen is a goddess. That gal knows

more than anyone.

[savemefromdumbya]

20. I was talking to a BBC correpondent

and they said that the media here dares not to publish anything really bad against the White house. Ask why? because they won't get anything out of the WH if they upset them. I guess these guys have to sell newspapers - with no news they will be out of a job?

[Spinzonner]

3. Well, at least he didn't take off his shoe and pound the podium

[ProfessorGAC]

4. Worse Yet, It's Untrue

A compilation of the most recent polls indicate no statistically significant change. So, the article is not just syncophantish, it's flat out wrong.
The Professor

[MrTriumph]

5. Bush was testy and confused; not confident

x

[second edition]

6. These numbers just mean they polled those who don't really

have a clue about what is going on and have attention spans of 30 seconds. They caught a sound bite or two and were asked the polling question in such a way as to get the best possible response.Or maybe they feel sorry for him. He has been crying a lot lately. It's a shame we can't reach these people and get them thinking.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

7. OK, I live overseas and only saw excerpts of the news conference

But Bush's syntax structure during his responses seemed even more mangled and garbled than usual -and that's an achievement considering that he has set a record for absymal performances in public. His responses were as cliched and jingoistic as ever and he kept repeating answers that would have been appropriate two years ago but looked horrendously out of place in the modern context -to me he appeared to have lost all sense of reality. And he didn't look "casual and crisp" -he looked appalling

[Jacobin]

9. It's too scratchy for toilet paper

What other use could one possibly have for that PNAC rag?

[DancingBear]

11. I think I'm old - I just want to read the newspaper each day

Sadly, I can't find a one that is worth any value these days - at least one I could get daily here in Virginia.

[lonestarnot]

10. Do you have a contact for the author of this crap?

[DancingBear]

13. Yes

The "support jumps' article - Dan Balz and Richard Morin (and no, I did NOT make these names up)

The "takes offensive' article - Michael A. Fletcher

[lonestarnot]

15. Thanks Dancing Bear, wouldn't happen to have an email address would

you?

[DancingBear]

21. Not at the ready, but I have the phone number for the national news desk

[phone]

I'm sure someone there can give you an email addy for the abovementioned "talented" writers.

P.S. The Ombudsman's number is [phone]

[lonestarnot]

26. Thanks Dancing Bear! Just saw this.. busy at work

[Strong Atheist]

18. After Katherine Graham died,

it took a hard turn rightward ...

[stickdog]

19. Do we have a "free press" or a "freep press"?

I suggest the latter.

[McCamy Taylor]

22. WaPo and NYT compete. WaPo wants the next "Judy Miller."

[hootinholler]

23. Casual and crisp?

I've seen better casual and crisp in the animatronic Hall of Presidents in Disneyworld!

-Hoot

[blm]

24. Who wrote the article?

This is so typical of the Suckup Post.

[Sick_of_Rethuggery]

25. I no longer foam at the mouth about (corporate) media treachery...

Reality will (eventually) show them up for the goon-squad enablers that they have become.

The events of the last few months (Katrina's shake up of their conscience, even if briefly, the possible chink in the armor of the chimperor, indictments galore, elected Dems' newfound attention to center-left media and the confidence that that gives them, tremendous, simmering resentment in the populace anywhere to the left of the extreme right) have all taken their toll on both the media and the junta credibility.

In this climate, it almost does not matter what the fluff (such as misleading headlines) surrounding the actual news is: the sheeple are awake enough to see through it. (Well, at least, the numbers of the awakened sheeple is increasing very slowly but very surely :-))