Posted on 11/12/2008 11:07:12 AM PST by Bob J
I have been amused greatly by opinions on FR that believe Obama will eventually do himself in due to his lack of experience, blunders, mismanagement, marxist tendancies and other assorted goofs and failures as chief executive. I particularly enjoy the comments on how this will inevitably usher in a new Reagan like figure and era.
I need only remind you of the Clinton years. During that time every goofy move of Bill and Hill was heralded as an extraordinary event while failures and scandal were routinely with held from the public. Mediocre economic results were fantastic achievements, the bombing of Kosovo was compassionate nation building, even his unprecedented sexual escapades and adultery in the oval office with an extremely young intern was trivialized down to "it's only sex". He defiled the office and was impeached...he should have been run out of town on a rail but instead he gets rave reviews on his administration, receives 6 figure speaking fees and is floated as a potenetial Sec Gen of the UN.
Thanks to the MSM.
Do you honestly think it will be better under Obama? The left has been out of power in the WH for 8 years and believe Obama to be the second coming of Christ. Every major failure, every idiotic misstep, every scandal will be swept under the rug while the MSM fawns and chants over each and every bowel movement.
Critics will be attacked as racists, negative press reports will be dealt with by expulsion and opponents will be relentlessly pursued and harassed.
It's not going to be better, it will be 10 times as worse. Conservatives need to focus on the real enemy. It's not Obama, Pelosi or the DNC, it's the MSM who put these people into power, push the propaganda and provide the air cover that allows them to destroy this country and everything we hold dear.
If FReepers want to see a return to conservative values and victories we need to focus on improving the terrain on which we battle our opponents.
Balance the media, balance the propaganda and the road will rise up to meet every conservative candidate running for office and every issue/initiative in which engage the opposition. Because until then every time we step up to the plate we have two strikes against us and every swing has to be a homerun.
How could he lose with all that qualifying experience as a prisoner in solitary confinement for five years? All those Sunday talk shows and Dave Letterman appearances, dont they count for anything? Cameos in in movies like Wedding Crashers? And he loses? A polished 72 year old comedian, and he loses.
I just dont get it. s/off
This is my concern. While traditional vehicles for information dissemination (networks, print) are shrinking and moving into other areas (cable, internet), that doesn’t mean they are toothless nor that they would be unable to control those new areas as well.
If Fox News and the internet were going to forever change the left’s grip on propaganda, why did we lose this election?
The people that claim the internet will be our salvation are misguided at best and lazy at worst. The left will simply move to control the internet as they are trying to control talk radio with the fairness doctrine.
It never ends and never will as long as we concede hegemony to them over control of the press, higher education and hollywood.
“But if he doesnt follow through with a Far Left Socialist/Communist takeover and destruction of America, the genetic mutants who NOMINATED him will turn on him in a second.”
So they dump him and annoint a new messiah.
This is my point, the players onstage come and go at the pleasure of the those behind the scenes pulling the strings. Many people on this thread state that Obama will be so bad he will not survive re-election.
And I say IF that happens they will simply promote a new tool to carry out thier objectives.
Even if rookie Obama has all the answers, and I don't think that he does, respected political analysts are saying that winning the presidency this time probably shouldn't be regarded as a win for either party. In fact, just as GW Bush essentially destroyed his presidency with the Iraq War, Obama has arguably already destroyed the next administration with an "Iraq War" that he helped to create.
More specifically, analysts are saying that the delayed banking crisis tsunami is probably going to make fools out of the best people that we could have sent to DC in the next few years. But the Democrats "won" DC anyway and they and Obama are likely going to reap the consequences of his unthinking contribution to the banking crisis in the next several years.
The article at first link below is by Dick Morris. The article at the second link is said to be by Charles Krauthammer, but I haven't been able to substantiate that.
http://www.newsmax.com/morris/republicans_stronger/2008/11/06/148571.html
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2008/112008/11092008/423175
If the title of the second referenced article looks funny on anybody's browser, it should probably read as follows.
Economic tsunami + brilliant Obama = doom
I think you are quite correct.
FDR helped turn a bad recession into the Great Depression with his policies, yet he was re-elected three times. The economy will not affect Obama. Of course it will be blamed on Bush.
And the MSM burials have already happened. Obama himself, on learning that Russia had invaded Georgia, asked for the UN to intervene (for those of you in Rio Linde, Russia has veto power in the UN and can stop any UN action). There’s lots of coverage about the Palin hoax story that she doesn’t know who’s in NAFTA, but the MSM has effectively buried this dangerous blunder by Obama.
Yes, the MSM is in the tank for Zero, just like they were for Bubba, but that didn't help him keep a Rat Congress for more than the first two years. The Republican Congress didn't totally keep him in check (the failure of impeachment was a prime example of that) but we did get welfare reform, DOMA, and significant tax breaks out of him.
The 'Toon was considered the first "black" President, but that was just hyperbole. African-Americans wanted some things from X42, but they mostly got a song and dance (while welfare reform was foisted upon them), and didn't expect much more than that from a white Southern guy. Under Obamunism, they're really looking for "payback" (a/k/a "pie") and don't expect to be patted on the head by one of their own.
Either one of two things will happen, either he will dispense pie in a sufficient quantity to meet their expectations, thus shafting no-longer-guilty white voters, or they will seize upon the fact that he really isn't one of their own, since there is no slavery or Jim Crow in his family tree.
He's about eighteen months away from losing half of his base. Even if I'm wrong, he won't get legions of true believers to the polls to vote for white Democrats. Look how Al Franken has had to scrape to steal votes.
The lamestream media is about to get theirs. They've had one last feeding frenzy at the trough of campaign spending, and while they're grateful to Zero for stimulating that money into their pockets and away from the liquor stores and crack dealers, it's over.
Dead tree media is dying, and we have a myriad of online sources of news, information, and discussion. Further, the eyeballs are now trackable, you cannot simply say to an advertiser "Here's my readership," you have to say, "Here's how much I made from previous advertisers who paid me for click-throughs from my website." That's why we call it dinosaur media, it's food supply is drying up. Craigslist and eBay have replaced the classified ads, and grocery stores have started using direct mailings to get their ads out.
We have ways of fighting Obama that Bill Clinton couldn't even see coming when he was standing on the crest of his bridge to the 21st Century.
Well, Fox has become notably less conservative. The Left has also infiltrated "neutral" resource sites (FactCheck, Snopes, Wiki, etc.) to shape opinion.
But I think the main answer to your question is that people still get most of their information from leftist old media sources. Recent declines notwithstanding, the sheer size of the MSM still dwarfs the new media.
“In fact, just as GW Bush essentially destroyed his presidency with the Iraq War...”
This is what I’m talking about. You just accepted without question the media’s narrative about the Bush presidency and the WOT. The Bush adminsitration is a failure because the MSM says so? The effort in Iraq (it’s not a war, the war ended when we defeated Hussein) is a failure because the MSM says so? The WOT is a failure because the MSM says so?
If we can’t expect FReepers to be resilient against media manipulation and propaganda, what hope have we for the rest of America?
I’m sorry, but it’s posts like this that give me the most pessimistic feeling about “righting” this country.
Bob, I’m like you, man. When you have a MSM so completely in the tank for you, there is no way to lose power or get called on the carpet.
After your last comment to me I am reluctant to mention anything on your thread but Rush mentioned today that the press has WAY too much invested in Obama to ever cover his failures.
And if Obama gets thrown under the bus, they media will just pick a new messiah to thrust on an unsuspecting populace.
That is my point. The players come and go but biased MSM hegemony is forever unless we do something about it now.
Mike Deaver
If the economy does not improve and fast, Obama will go the way of Carter.
When the sheen is gone, they're repackaged as "fighters." Their supporters come to love them in spite of their faults -- indeed they love them because of their faults which make them appear "human" to their acolytes.
It's the "Rascal King" idea that you can see going back to Huey Long or James Curley. The notion behind it is: this guy may steal or sucker punch his opponents, but he's on "our side."
You can see this with Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy. It's going on now with Barney Frank and maybe Murtha. And doubtless it will happen with Obama.
This sort of thing goes on less often with Republicans. Because Republicans have the press against them they're held to a higher standard, and they have to perform or get out. Ted Stevens is the exception which may prove the rule.
Does it ever happen the other way around? Does a "fighter" or "loveable thug" ever become a "saint" or a "messiah"? Something like that happened to Robert Kennedy, but remember, he didn't actually get elected, so the disillusionment didn't have time to set in. Ditto for Mario Cuomo.
Here are the top 20 most trafficked internet news sites. Where is the silver lining? The web may make it possible for alternative news and viewpoints to be available, but the fact is the leftist MSM is already gobbling up a significant majority of internet news traffic.
Yahoo News
CNN - Cable News Network
BBC Newsline Ticker
BBC News
The New York Times
My Yahoo
Google News
MSNBC News
Weather.com
Fox News Channel
Reuters
MSN Video
Washington Post
CNN Money
Yahoo Weather
Bloomberg
The Guardian
Los Angeles Times
Wall Street Journal
The Huffington Post
And look at #20...THE HIFFINGTON POST? While FR dithers websites like HuffPo are building audience like there is no tomorrow.
We are screwed unless we take action now.
For me, the most interesting part was:
"The fact that John McCain got 46 percent of the electorate when 75 percent said the country was going in the wrong direction is quite remarkable."
It showed that Obama's victory stands on very shaky ground. If McCain was a better candidate, or had not made some of the mistakes we're now dissecting, he might have won this thing, when he should have gotten blown out of the water given the financial panic we were in.
Obamugabe's votes were primarily "wishes" from people who used the same set of thinking skills that come into play when they buy lottery tickets. You know the odds are heavily against you, but you plunk down the money anyway, hoping for something magical.
He’s a two-termer. In fact, I believe he will move aggressively in his first 100d to implement sweeping socialist changes to the country while the media gives him the honeymoon. It will be interesting to see when that honeymoon ends, but it will likely be well past my lifetime and yours and your children’s.
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