Wouldn't it be fascinating if media members that helped this President pass ObamaCare against America's wishes came to the conclusion this was his biggest mistake?
On Sunday's "The Chris Matthews Show," the Huffington Post's Howard Fineman and the Washington Post's David Ignatius both told a somewhat startled host that Obama spending so much of his time and political capital on passing healthcare reform was his worst decision to date (video follows with transcript and commentary):
For days, Bush hating media members have concocted a variety of mostly nefarious theories why former President George W. Bush opted not to join Barack Obama at Ground Zero Thursday.
The Washington Post's David Ignatius on this weekend's "Chris Matthews Show" claimed, "The reason that Bush didn’t go is the photograph of the two of them together would have locked the reelection of Barack Obama in 2012" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius (a foreign editor and business editor of the Post in the 1990s) asked a bizarre question on the badly-named 'PostPartisan" blog: "Is Darrell Issa the new Joe McCarthy?" Clearly, the Post knows that when a liberal blurs you with McCarthy, they mean you are a life-wrecking, fact-mangling monster fueled by demons like ambition and alcohol. The headline is designed for web traffic, since the normally calm Ignatius concluded: "Issa doesn't come across as a McCarthyite." But Issa calling Team Obama "corrupt" was deeply upsetting to the Posties. Wrote Ignatius:
It was scary, frankly, to hear Issa describe the executive branch under President Obama as "one of the most corrupt administrations." What on earth was he talking about? This is an administration that has often tied itself in knots with petty ethical rules. Issa's comment bordered on demagogy.
When you see the righteous gleam in Issa's eye, recall other zealous congressional investigators who claimed to be doing the public's business but ended up pursuing vendettas. I think of Robert F. Kennedy's ruthless pursuit of labor "racketeering" when he was chief counsel of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. And, more chilling, I think of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's use of that subcommittee to probe what he imagined was Communist Party subversion in America.
NBC's Andrea Mitchell this weekend named the Tea Party as her Person of the Year.
Two others on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show" disgustingly chose WikiLeaks' Julian Assange (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Chris Matthews on Friday said Sarah Palin brags about her lack of knowledge and doesn't read the paper.
In a discussion about Tea Party candidates on the syndicated program bearing his name, Matthews echoed the typical liberal media elite nonsense about such people all being illiterate idiots (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Dan Rather this weekend smacked down the entire panel of the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show" over the press hyping Pastor Terry Jones's threats to burn Korans on the ninth anniversary of 9/11.
"Media in general bear some responsibility here by running so hard with this story so early and putting such comments as you just said not only on the air, but high on the air, giving it play," Rather said.
When everyone on the set - including Matthews, Katty Kay of the BBC, Andrea Mitchell of NBC, and David Ignatius of the Washington Post - disagreed with him, Rather pushed back, "We do have a responsibility, however you want to describe us, as gatekeepers."
He continued, "We could do a better job of putting it in perspective, putting it into context" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
On Sunday’s syndicated Chris Matthews Show, after host Matthews asked if electing a President whose middle name was "Hussein" had "opened a door to better relations with the Arab and Islamic world. Or has it opened a door to more xenophobic American negativity?" the panel mostly agreed that Obama’s election was more of a "net plus" for America’s relations with the world's Muslim population. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius had a dissenting view that "President Obama raised expectations that there would be a different kind of America. That in itself could be dangerous."
After former CBS News anchor Dan Rather argued that "I think it's opened the door to both, but, on balance, and in the main, it's still a net plus in terms of the country's reputation," the BBC’s Katty Kay agreed and implicated President Bush in damaging America’s relations with the Muslim world. Kay: "I agree that it's a net plus, particularly when you compare it with what came before and the invasion of Iraq and how much of a problem that was for America's relations with the Middle East."
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell concurred: "I agree because after the invasion of Iraq and with this President and his multicultural background, it is a net plus."
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius then weighed in with a more pessimistic take:
It was deceptive. At a White House dinner with Muslims celebrating Ramadan, Barack Obama finally weighed in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy. Incredibly, he lectured Americans about the religious freedom of Muslims “that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan.”
Those were prepared remarks, a clear and very deliberate effort to skirt the issue. But this time, it was blatantly sophomoric, too.
Of course there is a legal “right.” That doesn’t make it the right thing to do. After causing an instant national uproar, Obama saw the need to flinch. The next day, he suddenly announced to CNN that “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there.”
President Barack Obama’s endorsement Friday night of building a mosque near Ground Zero has driven the establishment press corps to find nobility in pursuing conviction even in the face of public opposition, not something MSM journalists admired about the previous President, while suddenly becoming very concerned about protecting private property rights – all while hailing Obama’s “great global message.” [MP3 audio here.]
“I thought the speech Friday night was a model of political courage, in the sense that he said what he believed knowing that it was going to cost him,” hailed Washington Post Associate Editor David Ignatius on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour. Picking up on Matthew Dowd’s suggestion Obama was echoing George W. Bush’s “it’s my way or the highway” attitude, Chrystia Freeland, global editor-at-large for Reuters, argued:
Another way of talking about that is leadership, conviction, having your beliefs and not governing according to polls. And I think if you ask most Americans what kind of leader you want, if you ask people in the world what kind of leader do you want, you want someone who governs according to conviction....for American leaders to say in the face of, you know, some political pressure from their voters, to say actually we believe sufficiently strongly in diversity, in private property rights for our Muslim citizens, I think that's a great global message.
David Ignatius, an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, thinks a value-added tax (VAT) may be just the ticket to get the United States out of its deficit mess.
That's what he argued in a column on April 29:
"President Obama could champion the cause of deficit reduction. He could insist that the new bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that began work this week consider a VAT and other aggressive measures to keep our debt from reaching crippling levels by the end of the decade," Ignatius wrote.
He made it clear that VAT is the "right" answer, but was worried that politicians "vaporized its political prospects" earlier this month when the Senate voted 85 to 13 that the VAT was a "massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income."
Ignatius warned that politicians are "afraid of being right too soon," and suggested that VAT is an example of that maxim.
It's been more than nine months since President Obama has held a prime time press conference, and you would think those that cover him would be outraged by it.
Well, think again, for that's certainly not what came out of a panel discussion about this issue during this weekend's syndicated "The Chris Matthews Show."
Quite the contrary, rather than criticize the Commander-in-Chief for refusing to face them in an unscripted environment that he couldn't control, NBC's Chuck Todd, MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell, the New York Times's Helene Cooper, and the Washington Post's David Ignatius actually made excuses for him (video embedded below the fold with transcribed highlights and commentary):