NewsTrust - Media and Politics - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Obama watched documentary last night? FOX botched this one… | csmonitor.com

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:34:09 -0800

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Whaddaya Mean Obama Hasn't Done Anything?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Esquire - By John H. Richardson - Nov. 03 (Comment) - A blow-by-blow breakdown of the young president's first year reveals that today's frustration stems not from a lack of policy so much as a lack of common ground. Therein lies the myth of the American center.

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The White House’s war with Fox News

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Yorker - By Louis Menand - Oct. 26 (Opinion) - In 2008, half the people who watched the Fox News Channel were over sixty-three, which is the oldest demographic in the cable-news business, and, according to a poll, the majority of the ones who watched the most strident programs, such as Sean Hannity’s and Bill O’Reilly’s shows, were men. All that chesty fulminating apparently functions as political Cialis. Fox News shows should probably carry a warning: Contact your doctor if you have rage lasting more than four hours.

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The Great American Ideological Crackup

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Jon Meachen - Oct. 24 (Opinion) - Which puts the Fox News affair in an interesting light. To the base, the White House looks tough, willing to hit back—all while the base is getting few of the substantive reforms it has fought for. I am not suggesting that the Obama administration has staged the Fox protest as a bread-and-circuses ploy in order to give otherwise dissatisfied Democrats something to cheer, but no matter what the intention, the contretemps has made the White House seem more progressive than it is.

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Rohrabacher: House GOP leadership 'constantly trying to play a political game'

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:01:42 -0700

The Hill - Oct. 19 -

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A Roadmap to Health-Care Overhaul by Christmas

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg - By Albert R. Hunt - Oct. 18 (Editorial) - Over the next couple of months, a sausage factory will seem tidier than the U.S. Congress. The disposition of the huge health-care overhaul will be a messy dance of legislation

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How Fox News Outsmarted the White House - Page 1

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Reuters - By John Batchelor - Oct. 14 (Opinion) - The White House's war on Fox shows its ignorance of the network's true purpose: show business. And Team Obama is giving Murdoch just what he wants. After David Axelrod sneaked into Roger Ailes’ office in New York to powwow on Sept. 30, the White House brain trust of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel decided that it is shrewd and useful to attack Fox News as a Republican tool—or as White House Communications Director Anita Dunn remarked, as “a wing of the Republican Party.” It is a guess that the president is not annoyed by this tactic. It is a better guess that the White House has not had a chance, in its custard pie-throwing glee, to pause and consider why this is a stupid idea—not only unfair to all other networks that will become suspect, but also guaranteed to give comedy skits about Fox an attention around the globe not achieved since Walter Cronkite’s moon-landing moment.

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Why Declaring War on Fox News Could Be a Mistake for Obama

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Magazine - By Chris Rovzar - Oct. 13 (Opinion) - ... if Team Obama ignores Fox, it just gives the network's talent the chance to further caricature him as a socialist, foreign, effete, America-hating Other. It isn't a racist portrayal, necessarily, but is certainly one that gives actual racists a lot of comfort. Not countering that will help Fox viewers conveniently forget that Obama is intelligent and well spoken. George Bush, who certainly wasn't the latter, came across as human and likable in interviews. It was one of his greatest strengths (and for critics, one of his most confounding attributes).

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Fox: a news source in name only

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Leonard Pitts Jr. - Oct. 04 (Opinion) - Fox is in a class by itself. In its epidemic inaccuracy, its ongoing disregard for basic journalistic standards of fairness, its demagogic appeals and its blatantly ideological promotions it is, indeed, unique — a news source in name only. That's not just an opinion: a 2003 study found Fox viewers more likely to be misinformed than those who get their news elsewhere.

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For ACORN, Truth Lost Amid the Din

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Harold Meyerson - Sep. 23 (Opinion) - Actual instances of voter fraud were all but nonexistent. Why you might not know that.

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Editorial: If you thought ACORN was bad ...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dallas Morning News - Sep. 23 (Editorial) - We've all heard plenty about a private U.S. government contractor whose employees were caught behaving unspeakably and which now faces the swift and brutal withdrawal of taxpayer dollars by a Congress demanding accountability. That was ACORN, of

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Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Sep. 20 (Opinion) - Unlike liberal critics of capitalist inequities, of course, Beck and his claque are driven by an over-the-top detestation of government. Washington is always the enemy, stealing their hard-earned money to redistribute it to the undeserving and shiftless poor (some of whom just happen to be immigrants or black). Though there is nothing Obama can do to stop racists from being racist, he could help stanch the economic piece of this by demonstrating how a reformed government can at times actually make Americans’ lives better. That’s what F.D.R. did, and that’s the promise Obama made, swaying some Republicans and even some racists, during the campaign.

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A TiVo Challenge: Watching ObamaVision on a Sunday Morning

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By James Warren - Sep. 20 (Opinion) - Kristol and Obama didn't have a lot in common ideologically but were united by a reflexive penchant for the systematic and analytical. Coming from different ends of the political spectrum, they each embodied an empiricist thrust; by and large looking at policies and wondering, "Does this really work?" In an age in which the provocative (Beck) can trump the smart and correct, one can imagine Kristol, who once called a conservative "a liberal mugged by reality," and Obama actually getting along for hours in some quiet den, shooting the intellectual breeze.

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Slater: Matt Latimer recalls Kay Bailey Hutchison 'purse boys' in new book 'Speechless'

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dallas Morning News - By Wayne Slater - Sep. 18 (Comment) - Former George W. Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer admits being enamored of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison when he arrived as young staffer on Capitol Hill some years ago. "I thought a tough-talking Texas woman would be an ideal Republican presidential candidate someday," he writes in his new book, Speechless, which goes on sale next week. Then he met her.

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Limbaugh: We need segregated buses

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Sep. 17 (Opinion) - On school bus attack that police now say wasn't racially motivated: "I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America."

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A Journalist in Limbo

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By D. Jeffrey Hirschberg - Sep. 14 (Opinion) - On the front lines of the battle against extremism, in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, fiercely dedicated journalists risk their lives every day to report accurate news to audiences besieged by terrorist violence and propaganda. Rahman Bunairee, a 33-year-old reporter for the U.S.-government-funded Voice of America (VOA), is one of those journalists. His reporting from Pakistan on Taliban atrocities long ago made him a target

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Highlights of Obama's Address

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Barack Obama - Sep. 10 (Speech) - The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action. Now is when we must bring the best ideas of both parties together, and show the American people that we can still do what we were sent here to do. Now is the time to deliver on health care.

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Free Speech and ‘Hillary: The Movie’

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Sep. 09 (Interview) - Does the application of campaign finance laws to “Hillary: The Movie” violate free speech rights? What are the implications for electoral politics if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Citizens United?

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The Real Town Hall Story

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By E.J. Dionne Jr. - Sep. 03 (Opinion) - There is an overwhelming case that the electronic media went out of their way to cover the noise and ignored the calmer (and from television's point of view "boring") encounters between elected representatives and their constituents.

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Cheney for President

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By James Taranto - Aug. 31 (Opinion) - As the Obama administration moves toward prosecuting intelligence agents for allegedly overzealous questioning of terrorism in the months following the 9/11 attacks, the Washington Post delivers a timely reminder of why those methods were thought necessary.

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Video: Dick Cheney calls Eric Holder's interrogation investigation political

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Fox News - By Chris Wallace - Aug. 31 (Interview) - WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it. CHENEY: I am.

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Why We Believe Lies, Even When We Learn the Truth

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Sharon Begley - Aug. 26 (Opinion) - The same skewed thinking that supports a Saddam-9/11 link explains the power of health-care myths.

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Change is tough. So liberals can't just leave it to Obama

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Michael Tomasky - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - I must report to you that the mood is somewhat grim these days among American liberals. Some feel President Obama has already sold them out. Others are angrier at conservatives and their deliberate lies about aspects of healthcare reform. But even many in this latter cohort think the White House hasn't been pushing back against the lies hard enough. Either way, expectations are diminished – nerves are fraying, temples are greying.

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Bill Moyers Journal . CRITICAL CONDITION

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Bill Moyers Journal - Aug. 21 (Review) - THE JOURNAL presents CRITICAL CONDITION, a documentary in which ordinary hard-working Americans tell their stories of battling critical illnesses without health insurance. They discover that being uninsured can cost them their jobs, health, homes, savings, and even their lives. The country spends more than $2 trillion a year — over $6,000 per person — on health care, yet is the only major industrial nation without universal coverage. Between 45 and 47 million Americans live without health insurance, and 80 percent of them are from working families who either cannot afford insurance premiums or lose their insurance exactly when they need it most: when they fall ill and can no longer work. America ranks 24th in life expectancy, 28th in preventing infant mortality and 19th in halting preventable deaths.

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Republicans, religion and the triumph of unreason

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Aug. 19 (Opinion) - This tendency to simply deny inconvenient facts and invent a fantasy world isn't new; it's only becoming more heightened. It ran through the Bush years like a dash of bourbon in water. When it became clear that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, the US right simply claimed they had been shipped to Syria. When the scientific evidence for man-made global warming became unanswerable, they claimed – as one Republican congressman put it – that it was "the greatest hoax in human history", and that all the world's climatologists were "liars". The American media then presents itself as an umpire between "the rival sides", as if they both had evidence behind them.

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