Barack Obama is not only fearmongering, he's doing so dishonestly.
Throughout the two year Presidential campaign, we heard President Obama rail continuously against his rivals, whom he accused of using the "politics of fear" and whom he termed "fearmongers." He began to beat that drum as far back as August of 2007. In a speech in Washington, he noted, "Freedom must mean freedom from fear, not the freedom of anarchy."…
Article comments
76 - Dr Dreadful
Dan the Miller,
I can't verify independently if your claim is true, so I e-mailed Devin Nuñes, my local Republican congressman, for his views on the stimulus package. He replied, 'Oh, yeah, it's great. Just peachy. I'm really optimistic about this package.'
Of course, conveying sarcasm with just the written word is a difficult trick, and one which I suspect many members of Congress have not mastered.
77 - Hope and Change?
"Barney Frank He's unbelievably smart and witty"
Oh yes he is a genius that guy...
Barney Frank vouched for the “soundness” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said “I do not see” any “possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury.”
----- SEE PROOF THAT BARNEY IS ONE OF THE SMARTER DEMOCRATS
Moreover, he said that the federal government has “probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing.”
----------IF WE TOOK BARNEYS ADVICE THE BANKING COLLAPSE WOULD HAVE BEEN BIGGER----PURE GENIUS THAT BARNEY
Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for “riding to the rescue” when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans. He too said that they “need to do more” to help subprime borrowers get better loans.
---THANK GOD WE HAVE SUCH SMART DEMOCRATS WRITING THE BAILOUT SPENDING BILL...
Hope and Change???
78 - Hope and Change?
Hey why doesnt PBS do a special on Gay Prostitues?
Barney has so much expertise plus his smarts and wit...it would have to be a big hit!
In 1990, The House Ethics Committee recommended Frank be reprimanded because he "reflected discredit upon the House" by using his congressional office to fix 33 of Steve Gobie's parking tickets.
Frank confirmed that he paid Gobie for sex, hired him with personal funds as an aide and wrote letters on congressional stationery on his behalf to Virginia probation officials, but Frank said he fired Gobie when he learned that prostitution clients were visiting the apartment. [11]
Its so clear to see how Barney is one of the more ethical amd smarter Democrats...er um you know!
79 - Ruvy
There used to be a guy here called "Just One Man" (or just one moron) who would follow me around like a lost pup, peeing on every damned thing I said. This guy Hope & Change is all that JOM could have been and wasn't; bright, witty, funny, nasty as all hell - and he doesn't pee on my comments!
Thanks dude!
80 - handyguy
Bright and witty may be in the eye of the beholder, but I get the impression that most other posters here, left and right, find H&C more annoying than anything else.
I would say rather that he is borderline -- often over the line -- homophobic and racist. His posts might be slightly, but only slightly, less wince-inducing if he bothered to spell and write in actual English grammar.
But more than that, he could try posting something that actually makes a point other than clownish disruption.
81 - Baronius
Frontline unbiased? Look, it's fine if you like Frontline. I like National Review. But they have a political agenda that runs through all their work. If Frontline is unbiased, then tell me what they've done over the last two years that you think was neutral.
82 - handyguy
"Neutral" is also in the eye of the beholder. But I do believe the quality of the investigative journalism on Frontline is very high.
If the conclusions they came to in some of the documentaries, about Iraq and Cheney's conception of executive power, came off as unfavorable to the Bush administration, it's just possible that it's because the administration earned criticism. And most of the time, high-ranking officials were invited to be interviewed and declined to appear or comment.
Conservatives often claim bias in reporting; I'd say they're complaining about not finding a conservative bias, more than actually detecting a liberal one.
This is, I know, an unending and unresolvable argument. So be it. But even your suspicion of bias shouldn't keep you from watching as excellent a program as Frontline.
Then we could discuss the putative bias afterward.
83 - Hope and Change?
Bright and witty may be in the eye of the beholder, but some posters in here lack the intellect or objectivity to see beyond their left wing nonsense and white guilt. [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
Just saying er...um...you know
84 - handyguy
Not sure what you're driving at, H&C. I am happily and openly gay and have discussed this [when relevant] on other threads here. So, your point is ... what, exactly?
Congratulations on getting through an entire post without a major spelling goof. Hope that wasn't too exhausting for you, and it's a welcome change.
85 - Glenn Contrarian
handy -
Here's another unsolvable argument: We all know that if a media personality says something that in any way makes the Republicans look bad or is in any way against conservative dogma, then that media personality is OBVIOUSLY biased against the conservatives.
After all, you well know that the Republicans do not make a habit of examining their own actions. That's why, after eight years of "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" (Dick Cheney), all of a sudden they're "guardians of fiscal restraint"...and the hypocrisy of their one-eighty shift doesn't even occur to them....
86 - Hope and Change?
I guess that explains you pen name as well as your fixation with me...
87 - Hope and Change?
Glenn....so your blamimg republcans for the Scamulus plan?
Gee..how much longer can the Democrats go on blaming others for their incompetence?
88 - Cindy
H&C,
Hey, someone put a message in this video for you.
I would tell you where it is, but I bet you can figure that out yourself!
89 - handyguy
For those interested in reading a very entertaining and information-packed article about Barney Frank -- rather than the slanderous cartoon version recently posted here -- I recommend a recent profile by Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker.
H&C is fond of citing scandals -- but only those involving Democrats, of course.
As Wonkette often points out, with rude and hilarious unfairness, it sometimes seems that a prerequisite for getting high-profile jobs in the GOP seems to be having a furtive gay sex life:
Larry Craig, Charlie Crist, Ken Mehlman, Mark Foley.
90 - handyguy
H&C, one certainly need not be gay to find you annoying, pernicious, and ridiculous.
I had adopted a policy of ignoring you, and I think I am returning to that policy as of right now.
91 - Dr Dreadful
Baronius,
Unbiased and neutral are not the same thing at all.
92 - Hope and Change?
Handy...
1. Jeffrey Toobins piece is historical revisionism and only proves the point that The New Yorker is another example of why print media is dead....zero credibility. If you would read the artilce its seems barney is more concerned with his weight than being an honest polictician and soing whats right...
2. Gee it seems have some sort of problem with only gay republcans...Larry Craig, Charlie Crist, Ken Mehlman, Mark Foleys and no problem with barneys male prostitute friends...very strange!
3. Who made you the F@%KIN arbitrator of what is right and wrong? It seems that under king barrys facsist rule we can see that real intolerance is on the left and not on the right..
Your policy to ignore me is pathetic..."The truth you cant handle the truth!"
PS Cindy, ask your doctor for an extra strenghth Rx of Fluconazole and/or Fetoconazole it should take care of that chronic problem you are suffering with!
93 - El Bicho
"This guy Hope & Change is all that JOM could have been and wasn't; bright, witty, funny, nasty as all hell"
Yes, they are so very different. Astute observation. Where are the comments posted where he is "bright, witty, funny" because I have yet to run across them? How can one have difficulty spelling and still be bright? Or is "the other side of the isle" when he meant "aisle" the part you find funny?
94 - Hope and Change?
Bich....I meant the other side of the "isle" -An island, especially a small one.
Geesh....funny how some liberals think they are smarter than others just because "there spellin is gooder"!
Really now....can those who voted for King Barry and STILL BELIEVE IN HIM...really be that stuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuupid?
95 - Cindy
H&C! I see you found the message!
96 - handyguy
Now I understand: It's satire!
He takes the most simple-minded dittohead rhetoric and makes it so extreme and cretinous that it becomes comedy of the absurd -- thus subtly demonstrating how repellent it is!
And we all thought he meant it! Such a clever boy.
97 - Hope and Change?
hanky you must be "splaining" your posts???? It sure sounds like it...read the following realllll slow...
-simple-minded
"Duh...Hope amd Change...Duh...Hope amd Change"
-extreme
"If we dont do this right now the world will end", King Barry
-cretinous
"We dont want to give jobs to white construction workers" Robert "The Plane,the plane!" Reich
-comedy
"Now that aeverything else has failed King Barry announces that he will use "Dancing with the Stars" to select his next Head Of Commerce
-absurd
"This bill will create 4 million jobs" King Barry
-repellent
"I trust Nancy Pelosi ahd Harry Reid with this countrys ecomomy and the economic fate of our children"
H&C
98 - Baronius
My mistake, Dread. Poor semantics.
Handy, my suspicion of bias hasn't kept me from watching Frontline. Watching Frontline has provided me with evidence of bias. Did you see the Atwater slur? Or that pathetic "controversial" look at long-since-discredited Bible theory? So let me repeat my challenge, now phrased better: name something that Frontline has produced in recent years that wouldn't inspire a viewer to be more liberal.
99 - bliffle
Here it is tuesday morning and the "Frontline" doc airs tonight. Has anyone seen a preview? Or is everyone guessing?
I've watched several Frontline presentations and they are pretty good. For one thing, they are grownup, that is, they deal with important subjects as if their audience were comprised of grownup people.
The investigative reporting is excellent. They dig down below press releases into what really happened.
I expect that they will apply the same reportorial skills and standards to the Obama administration.
Anyway, I suspect that tonights Frontline will be a valuable addition to what we know already and will help focus ideas about the underlying currents in the political/financial world.
100 - Hope and Change?
"I expect that they will apply the same reportorial skills and standards to the Obama administration." LOL LOL
Does anyone want to vote on this statement?
Considering Barney Frank is one of the stars of the show...I say they give congress a pass, Greenspan a pass, Frank and Dodd a pass BUT........ blame Bush and greedy private sector CEOs.
101 - Roger Nowosielski
Greenspan shouldn't get a pass.
102 - Dr Dreadful
name something that Frontline has produced in recent years that wouldn't inspire a viewer to be more liberal.
By 'in recent years', Baronius, do you mean since 2001?
The purpose of investigative journalism, when done well, is to hold those in power accountable. For the past eight years, those in power have happened to be Republicans. I would expect shows like Frontline to be critical. I'm not sure how that translates into a liberal bias.
I'll have more time for that sort of argument if Frontline and similar shows fail to focus the magnifying glass on the Obama administration with any degree of consistency. Give it time, though. Doing a show like that now would be a bit like firing someone for poor job performance while they're still in training.
103 - Baronius
There are two assumptions that you need to make in order to view Frontline as objective. First, that Republicans are always wrong. Second, that no Democrats' mistakes are worth reporting on.
Eliot Spitzer, the City of Detroit, the New York Times, the public school system, unions: are none of these institutions worthy of investigation? Where are the bad abortionists, and the bad national health care systems? How about Greenpeace - there have been stories about their questionable accounting for years, but as far as I know, not on Frontline. (Maybe they have snuck some in there. I think they did something about the UN peacekeepers five years ago, so it sometimes happens.)
For that matter, I'd like some non-political shows. Because that's the third Frontline assumption: not simply that the Dems are always right and the GOP is always wrong, but that there is nothing else to talk about. I'd like to see a story about a good defense contractor, but I know that's never going to happen. At least give me something about Scientology, college recruiting scandals, or internet gaming scams. A story without a moral about the goodness of liberalism.
104 - bliffle
DD is correct.
Investigative reporting usually puts the current power in a bad light (because they have the power to do wrong, QED). So the immature will make the wrong conclusion and impute wrong motives to the reporters.
105 - Baronius
I appreciate that role, Bliffle. But I don't recall the Clinton administration being under the same scrutiny from PBS, nor the Pelosi speakership receiving the same criticism as that of Gingrich. And as I noted, the criticism is always from the same direction - Bush is never criticized for expanding the government's role in health care, for example. Also, there are many institutions in power, in the US and around the world, but Frontline always investigates the Republican/capitalist ones.
106 - Dr Dreadful
Well, Baronius, Frontline's website has a complete list of reports broadcast since the show started, so you can look through and judge for yourself.
Things like Spitzer and Detroit are IMHO a bit parochial for the sort of remit Frontline gives itself. I'd agree with you about public schools and unions. I'm not sure what you'd like investigated about the New York Times: that sort of thing seems a bit self-referential to me - journalists investigating journalism...
A lot of the other issues you mention are, again, somewhat outside the scope of Frontline, and are more the sort of thing you'd expect to see on 60 Minutes or 48 Hours. (Which, by all accounts, also used to do the sort of hard-hitting journalism Frontline does - no more, alas.)
Any good investigative journalism is subjective. The measure of impartiality is whether liberals in positions of power are examined as harshly as conservatives in positions of power. One of the most important jobs of the press in a free society is to hold the government beast accountable, regardless of whether it's an equine or a pachyderm.
I browsed back through the shows of the Clinton era and there were a number of reports critical of the incumbent administration, especially during the Balkan crisis. There were also many documentaries which investigated peripherally political topics, like big business malpractice. Since big business traditionally allies closer with the GOP than with the Democrats, I don't see that as evidence of political bias.
And unfortunately, good news just isn't news - at least, it's not investigative news. So no surprise there.
As for non-political reports, there were several broadcast last year, on topics including the young generation in China, a climbing disaster on Mount Everest, the dangers of the iron pipe foundry industry, and teens and online networking.
One final thought: perhaps the reason liberals don't get as much attention from Frontline at the moment is simply that they aren't anything like as naughty as conservatives? ;-)
107 - handyguy
Baronius --
Maybe you just object to a nonfiction film having a point of view? If so, I don't agree or understand.
I don't think of Frontline as strictly a show about politics. As has been pointed out, it's a show made by grown-ups for grown-ups. It can also be as tense as a thriller, as with the show on Cheney's views about executive power. [Maybe a little too much doomy thriller music in that one, too.]
The Atwater show seemed perfectly fair to me, and actually a little too sympathetic toward super slimeball Atwater. I'm not sure why you objected so strongly to it. They certainly interviewed a lot of his friends and sympathizers. It wasn't presented as a hit piece, but they didn't pretend Atwater was a benign presence. He wasn't!
The show about health care in other countries was excellent - and not partisan...far superior to Michael Moore's Sicko. [Moore has a point of view of course, but he's more interested in cheap effects than facts.]
The show about the early Christians was just phenomenally well done [is that what you are referring to as discounted Bible theory?!] -- it was a documentary about academic research, not about religion per se. I haven't seen the one about Hugo Chavez, but I doubt it is propaganda -- though it might have a point of view.
And, um, does Frontline inspire you to be more liberal? If so, interesting! If not, I imagine other viewers are capable of having balanced responses also.
What would be an example of a film that you approve of as being properly 'neutral'/objective?
Some of the most extraordinary documentary films ever made have a point of view: Taxi to the Dark Side and The Power of Nightmares to name two recent ones. They certainly wouldn't be better films if you drained them of their point of view.
Also The Sorrow and the Pity. And Spike Lee's film about Katrina, When the Levees Broke. Unbelievably powerful stuff. If it inspires anyone to be more humane and caring [forget liberal for a minute], thank God!
108 - Hope and Change?
"Spike Lee's film about Katrina"
Yes a great film that proves the point that if you depend on government to take care of you, you are gonna die...
The Scamulus bill is the whole countries Katrinas...we are sitting here waiting for the morons in DC...to save us and our money! Wake up!!! it aint gonna happen!
King Barry is starting to look like Mayor Nagin!!
109 - handyguy
If you mean what you said about Lee's film being great, that's an indication that you just possibly have some actual feelings and some empathy.
It wouldn't hurt you to display more of those in your writing, and fewer crude, feeble insults.
110 - Roger Nowosielski
You are getting quite a compliment here, H&C, whether you realize it or not. Are you going to live now up to everybody's expectations?
111 - handyguy
Alert: Someone else seems to have joined the ranks of the fearmongers!
Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Tuesday the current global recession will "surely be the longest and deepest" since the 1930s and more government rescue funds are needed to stabilize the U.S. financial system.
112 - Roger Nowosielski
What's Bernake's view?
113 - bliffle
Roger asks:
"#42 " ...
In that case, compared to items number 3 & 6 in your #39, the present package is chickenfeed.
It makes one wonder then: What the stink is all about? "
Power.
114 - Roger Nowosielski
Power and smokescreen!
115 - handyguy
Well, since Ben Bernanke co-invented Tarp, and since, according to Pelosi, Frank and others, Bernanke joined Paulson in an emergency evening meeting with Congressional leaders to warn them that they needed to hand over $700 billion, immediately, or there might not be a banking system left by Monday...
I would say he has already expressed an opinion.
He's also supposed to be something of a scholar on the Great Depression, and is obsessed with preventing a recurrence.
116 - jungle warrior
sounds to me like Clavos has "small man's syndrome"
117 - Roger Nowosielski
Could you explain that?