President Obama wouldn’t have to be in continual campaign mode just to be able to get a hearing for policies that the majority of the American people elected him to carry out.
If he always has to fight off media attacks which cast doubt on him before people even get a chance to hear all sides of issues, his credibility is weakened when you must face continual, ridicule and criticism from the Press.
A recent example is when Judd Gregg approached the Obama administration to see if he could be a part of it. He assumed that his own party wasn't going to adopt a policy of total warfare against the newly elected president in a time of enormous economic peril. Between that moment and the current all-out ideological assault on Obama, his position became untenable. His recusal on the stimulus package provoked fury at home and dyspepsia among the GOP who were on television every day, intent on responding to Obama's open hand with their own clenched fist. And the media were only too happy to give Boehner, McConnell, McCain, et al. an open microphone whenever they wanted it.
In contrast, Democrats were only allowed fleeting moments to tell their side and they got nowhere near as much coverage as the GOP, even though the GOP lost the election in both the White House and in Congress.
Gregg withdrew because he was read the riot act by McConnell and told to step away from Obama and the 'liberals' or else. Yet Republicans were on television constantly screaming that they were being denied access to policy making, even though it was THEY who boycotted both Obama and the deliberations on the stimulus package (other than to introduce their own gutted version with old dead horse trickle down recommendations in their own empty version of one). The Democrats hadn't shut them out. They BOYCOTTED the Democrats, but the press reported the GOP lies and portrayed the Democrats as playing hardball politics, when it was the REPUBLICANS who were playing hardball. The Democrats even let key provisions of the bill that they wanted be stricken from the final bill in an effort to win over Republicans. But the Republicans kept saying it was their way or the highway... and the press portrayed Democrats as "muscling the bill" through Congress.
There is a prime example of one-sided, skewed reporting. The public was never told the whole story of the Republicans' intransigence. Instead the press kept saying over and over the Public hated Obama's stimulus bill, even when polls were saying that 70 percent of the public were approving of the job Obama was doing and 70 percent thought Obama had tried hard enough to be bi partisan. You would never have known that, listening to people like NBC's Chuck Todd or ABCs Jake Tapper or CBS's Bob Schieffer.
It’s a sad day when Rush Limbaugh’s talking points get more traction in national news presentations than the new President's own explanations of his policies. Rabid-right wing schlock jocks would love to shout Obama down with all their noise that is disproportionate to their minority percentage representation in the American political spectrum.
Pinch-eyed porkers like Limbaugh have all kinds of undeserved power that they weren’t elected to and they don't feel they need any documentation of facts to back up what they say.
We are in a fight for the future of America. We shouldn’t have to have a slander-jock on Hillbilly Heroin setting national policy. Please defend the sixty percent of the public that voted you in and let’s keep their voice from being drowned out by constant repetition of half-truths and GOP mantras.
There needs to be an antidote to the constant planting of seeds of doubt and always questioning everything you do, parsing, dissecting and twisting the truth. They continually leave out things you say and turn it inside out and present dishonest claims as the truth and then recycle the same trash that never worked for the last 30 years since Ronald Reagan.
This is why we need the Fairness Doctrine. This kind of soft censorship and propagandizing by the mainstream media is not acceptable in a Democracy.
The Public has a right to know all sides, not cherry picked lies surreptitiously presented as 'objective news reporting.’ The broadcast and print media need to be trust busted and the Fairness Doctrine that Reagan took out, forced back on them if one is to hope to have the news coverage at all fair.
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