Headline Change at Thrush’s Politico Pity Party: From ‘Obama: Hey guys, I’m Still Here’ to ‘Obama: Hey Guys, I’m Still Relevant’
The email announcing the supposedly momentous occasion of another column by the Politico's Glenn Thrush arrived in my mailbox with the following headline and subhead: "Obama: Hey guys, I'm still here -- The president's press conference brimmed with frustration and was filled with tantalizing promise."
On clickthrough, I learned that the online website's massagers-in-chief changed those items (but not the underlying URL, which reflects the email) to the following in the published article: "President Obama: I’m still relevant -- Obama finds himself hemmed in by the familiar constraints of partisanship and world events." Thrush's text identifed another problem supposedly hemming Obama in, complete with a slavery analogy: "the shackles of his own commitments." Poor guy; he has to deal with the world as it is, not how he'd like it to be, and those darned things he promised to do to get elected and reelected. Gosh, life is just so unfair, isn't it? Excerpts following Thrush's theme follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
MSNBC’s ‘Tweet Of The Day’ Highlights Politico’s Thrush Making Crack About Minimum Wage, Rand Filibuster
A daily feature on MSNBC’s Jansing & Co. is the ‘tweet of the day’ in which host Chris Jansing showcases a tweet from a politician or a member of the media that is topical to a major news event. Most of Jansing’s featured tweets are from liberal journalists, and on March 7, things weren’t much different.
Following coverage of Senator Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) 13-hour filibuster over the nomination of John Brennan for CIA Director, Jansing featured a tweet from Glenn Thrush, White House Reporter for Politico, who snarked that: "I have it on good authority that millions of Americans, not just Rand Paul, stand on their feet for hours & hours, some for minimum wage."
Politico’s Thrush Cites Obama’s SOTU ‘Spending Proposals,’ Omits His Claim That They Won’t Increase Deficit ‘By a Single Dime’
Last night in his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama claimed: "Nothing I'm proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime." Even considering the inclusion of "should" as a wiggle word, that's a laughable claim.
Politico's Glenn Thrush is one among what will surely turn out to be a legion of pundits and reporters who will ignore Obama's deficit promise while extolling "his new spending proposals" (while describing them as "relatively modest"). It was a speech Thrush said "could have been comfortably delivered by JFK, FDR or LBJ." Sorry, Glenn, but JFK and LBJ, hardened libs that they were, would not have countenanced such a speech in the context of four consecutive annual deficits of over $1 trillion and a national debt that's over 100 percent of the nation's annual economic output. Several paragraphs from Thrush's vain attempt to make Obama's speech some kind of seminal moment follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
Politico Posts Two Stories Touting ‘Ghost of Hurricane Katrina’ Hanging Over GOP Convention
On Monday night, Politico posted two stories with the same theme: Tropical Storm Isaac seriously threatens to ruin the Republican convention and remind voters of Republican incompetence during hurricanes. Does anyone think this outfit is fair and balanced?
In the story “GOP fears ghost of Hurricane Katrina at RNC 2012,” Politico's Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman just keep skipping over the Democratic mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic governor of Louisiana as they predict the most damaging political scenario they can hope for, er, imagine as the storm spared the GOP convention site in Tampa:
Typical Politico Spin: ‘Money Shouts’ Is Lesson of Wisconsin Recall
Politico's Glenn Thrush insists that there's "Only one takeaway from Wisconsin: Money shouts." "Cash doesn't talk in 2012, it shouts, and Wisconsin was a sonic boom that's breaking glass in Chicago," Thrush groused, adding that "Conservative groups outspent unions and progs in Wisconsin by an estimated SEVEN-TO-ONE."
Although it's a predictable left-leaning take on yesterday's results, it's incredibly insulting to Badger State voters, not to mention completely illogical in light of exit polling data.
Scott Walker yesterday garnered some 53.2 percent of vote yesterday to his Democratic opponent's 46.3 percent, a difference of 6.9 percentage points. Walker's 53.2 percent share of the votes is 0.9 percentage points better than his 52.3 percent showing in 2010. In other words, Walker did marginally better in the recall than he did in the regular election.
Money may shout, but shouting doesn't move people to polls and certainly didn't produce a dramatically different result for Walker than his initial victory two years prior. To see that, Thrush needs only look at exit polling data about union voters and their choices for governor.
The 2012 recall electorate was actually slightly more disposed to be favorable to Barrett, the Democratic challenger, because 33 percent of the voters were union members, compared to only 26 percent of voters in the 2010 gubernatorial race. In both elections, however Walker garnered 37 percent of those union voters.
So after more than a year of Big Union propaganda being "shouted" at union members in the Badger State, union voters failed to decisively move into the Barrett column. Big Union money and union boss peer pressure failed to make that voting bloc a powerhouse for Barrett.
By contrast, non-union voters voted for Walker by 60 percent to Barrett's 40, up from the 56-43 split in 2010. It's a healthy bump in non-union voter support, but hardly what you'd expect from all the "shouting" of Super PAC cash that liberal journalists see as the bogeyman.