Which will be talk of Free Republic for about 12 hours then we will return to the same hold "Why doesn't Bush do this, why doesn't Bush do that". It's just simply amazing. What is it going to take for Freepers to wake up to the fact the Dinosaur Media is the enemy? Bush can give 10,000 speeches lambasting his foes, it will do no good since the people who SHOULD be his echo chamber will be back to the same old defensive posture 12 hours later. Your media savvy SC. Go do the search. You can NOT find any support for Bush at all. Even the people who SHOULD be on his side spend more then half their time whining. The ONLY pundits who seems able to keep their eye on the ball are Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt. There is a REASON Ronald Reagan gave us his 11th Commandment. There is NO gain to us when we spend most our time shooting at ourselves. The Dinosaur media knows and exploits our weakness for intramural bloodshed. That is why people like McCain and Hagel and Wills get all the air time. WE should know better but they lies are being screamed so loud so often that even FREEPERS are starting to be the Dinasour media's Echo chamber.
The President doesn't have a way to overcome the media as Reagan did. He can't demand air time like Reagan....the media has caught onto that and won't give time for speeches.
I think the reason that the President gives speeches during the day is that he is pretty sure to get coverage on cable; at night Fox would probably not pre-empt O'Reilly, given their recent track record, and MSNBC and CNN also can't be depended upon for evening coverage.
Those who should be dependable in defending the President are not. Many of the pundits (and we all know who they are) are more concerned with getting air time and book sales than in defending the President. The pundit coverage of Katrina was disgusting. Most jumped immediately on the "blame Bush" bandwagon.
And the Senators are even worse. Although there are some great senators who should be out there talking, they aren't invited to the shows. Instead, we get the same group of over-the-hill Bush-bashers, and thus the Republicans have low approval ratings as well as the President. I mean, if all I knew about Republicans was gleaned from watching Lugar and Warner, I would have a low approval rating for Republicans myself.
We REALLY need to think about how to counteract this problem, and I don't mean by letters to the editor. TV watchers don't read letters, for the most part. The doownturn in approval is with people who only watch the news.
President Bush is well-liked. That is hy he isn't shown much on network television. When people see and hear him, they like him and his numbers go up.
How can we get better people on the talk shows? How can we get more coverage of the President and the troops? THOSE are the questions that need answers. I still say teaming up with Angelina Jolie isn't a bad idea.
One of the interesting things about Freeper. Amazing how many times a bad news story gets posted and reposted and how often I will find a important story a week old that no one though to post. When I do post a good news story it gets maybe 20 responses but a bad new thread will generate hundreds of hand wringing post about "Why doesn't Bush DO something"?
Why is it so many people who supposedly are "on our side" do nothing but dwell on the negative and NEVER help spread the positives?
Also find it curious that when the positives are brought up the usual crowd has to find SOMETHING negative to say.
What do you all think you accomplish with that behavior?
The Iraq story: how troops see it (MUST READ!) The Christian Science Monitor ^ | 11/28/05 | Mark Sappenfield Posted on 11/27/2005 2:50:12 PM PST by Valin
BROOK PARK, OHIO - Cpl. Stan Mayer has seen the worst of war. In the leaves of his photo album, there are casual memorials to the cost of the Iraq conflict - candid portraits of friends who never came home and graphic pictures of how insurgent bombs have shredded steel and bone. Yet the Iraq of Corporal Mayer's memory is not solely a place of death and loss. It is also a place of hope. It is the hope of the town of Hit, which he saw transform from an insurgent stronghold to a place where kids played on Marine trucks. It is the hope of villagers who whispered where roadside bombs were hidden. But most of all, it is the hope he saw in a young Iraqi girl who loved pens and Oreo cookies. Like many soldiers and marines returning from Iraq, Mayer looks at the bleak portrayal of the war at home with perplexity - if not annoyance. It is a perception gap that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops' individual experiences. Yet as perceptions about Iraq have neared a tipping point in Congress, some soldiers and marines worry that their own stories are being lost in the cacophony of terror and fear. They acknowledge that their experience is just that - one person's experience in one corner of a war-torn country. Yet amid the terrible scenes of reckless hate and lives lost, many members of one of the hardest-hit units insist that they saw at least the spark of progress. "We know we made a positive difference," says Cpl. Jeff Schuller of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, who spent all but one week of his eight-month tour with Mayer. "I can't say at what level, but I know that where we were, we made it better than it was when we got there." It is the simplest measure of success, but for the marine, soldier, or sailor, it may be the only measure of success. In a business where life and death rest on instinctive adherence to thoroughly ingrained lessons, accomplishment is ticked off in a list of orders followed and tasks completed. And by virtually any measure, America's servicemen and women are accomplishing the day-to-day tasks set before them.
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