President Obama rolled through my hometown region yesterday, and I love seeing Youngstown-Warren’s Channel 33’s coverage of his declarationthat Friday’s job report was “a step in the right direction,” another head-shaking bit of bad spin that ranks with “The private sector is doing fine.” Cluelessness does not play well in Mahoning and Trumbull Counties, and outright deception fares even worse. If the president had given a full-throated endorsement of the energy boom sweeping the region, that might have been music in many ears but of course he didn’t and won’t because his EPA is in an all-out effort to kill tracking before it sets back the Green cause by a century.
The sad story about the restaurant owner who died a few hours after meeting the president is appropriately not the source of much commentary, but I can’t help wondering what the coverage would have been had such a sad incident followed a visit by George W. Bush even as I wonder how 41 months of 8% unemployment would have played in the W-era MSM, or the “This is a good looking woman” line. No matter. Voters know the wheels are coming off the president’s bus, and Mitt Romney’s “kick in the gut” rhetoric is exactly right.
The story on the jobs report by the Washington Post’s Dan Balz has a crucial line: “A quick turnaround doesn’t appear likely.” That is an ominous tolling-of-the-bell for the president’s re-election campaign, one echoed by the New York Times’ Catherine Rampell. As Mitt Romney amps up the focus on the job-killing impacts of Obamacare and the looming tax hikes, the president’s whiney rhetoric about how he inherited a mess will sound increasingly like the refrain of losers everywhere. James Pethoukokis helpfully reminds us that the president and his team promised us a rate of 5.6% unemployment in June of 2012 if we passed the Stimulus in 2009, as the Pelosi-Reid Congress dutifully did. Promise broken. Malaise alert. But not in this MSM. This MSM is quickly and quietly moving on to the next story.
Again, no matter. The voters know. And the sense that we must make a change and a fundamental one is growing.
Of particular interest in this context is Jeffrey Anderson’s brief account of his recent visit to the Reagan Ranch with his daughter. (The Weekly Standard is hitting on all cylinders these days, as this story on microtasking from Jonathan Last illustrates. The revolution in work is upon us and chance are the president doesn’t know because he doesn’t appear to read much from the other side’s best offerings.)
The economy according to Obama:
Adding 350,000 jobs in a month? A sign of the policies of failure.
Adding 80,000? A step in the right direction.
And the deluded followers lap it up. I suppose the S&P’s downgrade was a step in the right direction, too.
How would they cover Fast and Furious? How would they cover Solyndra? How would they cover the $5 trillion increase in our national debt (remember 0-bama used the term “unpatriotic for $4 in 8 years fighting the war on terror)? How would they cover marriage as being between a man and a woman (as it is)? All these and his lies to get elected would be covered completely different. Is is disgusting and pathetic that our MSM is so dishonest in this regard.