Obamamania has swept the world — or so the Leftmedia would have us believe. Before the Anointed One uttered a word at his inauguration, The New York Times and The Washington Post were headlining polls that purported to show overwhelming support for the new president. The Times said, “Poll Finds Faith in Obama, Mixed With Patience.” Even the UK’s Daily Mail got into the act: “Obama can save us, says America as polls show wave of optimism sweeping the nation.” The Mail must have stopped with polling at NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN offices.
One couldn’t watch so much as the AFC championship football game on Sunday night without the halftime report by Katie Couric on what Barack Obama had for dinner (we couldn’t hear what she really said since the TV was muted). And while the morning shows found time last Friday to discuss such things as “Obama thongs,” President George W. Bush’s farewell speech was almost entirely ignored. All told, Obama’s inauguration received 35 times the coverage that his predecessor’s did. Indeed, the media’s behavior would make Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels proud.
As for new policy, considering Obama’s reforms in his first three days in office, we find little reason for optimism. Among his first acts behind the Oval Office desk was a phone call to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. Obama soon set to work with other agenda items such as issuing an executive order to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year, as well as preventing CIA interrogators from using lawful techniques not found in the Army Field Manual, which assumes honorable combatants. Items to follow may include re-banning offshore drilling, getting Congress to allow open homosexuals to serve in the military by rescinding “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” calling for a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, and working to make the expired federal “assault weapons” ban permanent.
Meanwhile, Wall Street was not optimistic Tuesday either, dropping 300 points, or four percent, to below 8,000 — the worst Inauguration Day drop in history.
For the inauguration itself, Washington, DC, officials reported that 1.8 million people came to the Mall and the surrounding areas for the ceremony. But how many were actually there? Washington officials claim to have gotten their 1.8 million number from The Washington Post, but the Post said that its analysis “concluded that about 1 million people were on the Mall.” An Arizona State University journalism professor tallied only 800,000 using satellite images.
What we do know is that the word “historic” was used approximately 1.8 million times during inauguration coverage, particularly in The New York Times. Oddly enough, the Times’ own style manual says, “Use [the word historic] with caution for a current event, because history’s verdict is rarely predictable by journalists, and the word suggests hyperbole.” Perhaps someone should have looked that one up beforehand.
However many Obamaphiles showed up, there was certainly enough trash to go around. Estimates are that visitors left 130 tons of garbage — and that was just on the Capitol steps! Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh dubbed it “Hurricane Latrina.”
Tags: Hurricane Latrina, News, Obama, Politics, Propaganda
Conservative Libertarian Outpost 
January 23, 2009 at 17:04
great article!
In addition Obama is now chipping away at the freedom of the press, biting the hands of the media which got him elected.
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January 24, 2009 at 12:56
Obama is a storm we’re going to have to weather, or so it looks like from his first days in office. His administration has the idea that these sorts of self-abnegating policies are a priori correct, when in reality they are the same as jumping off a bridge. Jimmy Carter failed to gain reelection, we know that, so possibly Obama will fail also, when the fancy theories that his decisions are based upon are given the lie by reality (just as with Carter), and the voters turn him out, fair and square.
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January 24, 2009 at 18:11
True enough Tony. I forget how old you are, but, in any case; Most of America was so demoralized at the time for so many reasons that I dearly hope and pray that we do not go into the vortex of national depression that was rampant during the Carter years. Many, including a lot of people that I greatly respect are fond of saying that George Bush led a failed Presidency, and in fact, the worst one in history. Not for my two bits, not at all. In my lifetime, Jimmy Carter takes the blue ribbon.
Can we, as a nation weather this storm called Obama? I hope so. Yet, I hear, and see the seeds of a full blown revolution brewing. Just take a look at the sales of “military style” weapons, books on military science and basic training, and guerrilla warfare. This is not the kind of “change” that a lot of people were expecting.
I need to get back to work on my book about America’s Balkanization. I might be able to make a dollar or two before our currency is on a par with Zimbabwe’s! 😀
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January 25, 2009 at 16:20
I agree Carter was the worst. I do not think, either, that Bush’s presidency was a failed one. I think he did a magnificent job in the war on terror. The “mistakes” of the occupation were understandable, I believe, since this was the first time we’ve really engaged jihad in the field, as a war theatre, and no longer as if we were prosecuting an isolated crime. Also, those “mistakes” had a sort of serendipity to tehm, in that they drew in al Qaeda. Al Qaeda rolled the dice on this war, and lost. That wouldn’t have happened if the occupation had been “perfect.”
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January 25, 2009 at 16:37
My point is that the 4,000+ death toll would have been worse, if things had gone by the book: over the course of the next generation, the death toll would have accumulated higher, it’s just possible to assert. I know that others, who do also support the war, have serious and compelling criticisms of the prosecution of the war. But it worked out, even with the mistakes: the al Qaeda of September 11, 2001 is gone forever. May it rot in Hell for eternity.
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