Responding to "both Likud Party members in Israel as well as their Americans supporters" who "complain that the Obama administration is unduly 'interfering' in Israeli politics"--as exemplified by Ben Smith of Politico reporting that "the administration's escalating pressure on Israel to freeze all growth of its settlements on Palestinian land has begun to stir concern among Israel's numerous allies"--Salon's Glenn Greenwald (6/3/09, ad-viewing required) likens the situation to "teenagers who tell their parents that they are not compelled to comply with parental dictates" and are told that "as long as they seek financial support, then the parents have the right to demand certain actions in return":

Identically, if Israel wants to be free of what it and some of its U.S. supporters call "interference" from the Obama administration, that's very easy to achieve: Israel can stop asking for tens of billions of dollars of American taxpayer money, huge amounts of military and weapons supplies for its various wars, and unyielding American diplomatic protection at the U.N. But as long as Israel remains dependent on the U.S. in countless ways, then Obama not only has the right--but he has the obligation--to demand that Israel cease activities which harm U.S. interests.

Continuing settlement expansions that the entire world recognizes as illegal--what Time's Joe Klein accurately calls "taking territory that the rest of the world, without exception, considers Palestinian"--clearly harms U.S. interests in all sorts of ways, as Obama himself has concluded. He would be abdicating one of his primary responsibilities in foreign policy--maximizing U.S. national security rather than those of other countries--if he failed to demand that Israel cease this activity and if he failed to use U.S. leverage to compel compliance with those demands.

Writing that "Israelis are taking Obama's pressure quite seriously, as are many of his Israel-centric supporters in the U.S," Greenwald encourages "those who want Obama to continue to depart from the Bush administration’s blind support for Israeli actions" to "continue to make themselves heard, since those who desire a continuation of that blind Israeli support certainly intend to"--and we all know which group is sure to get unquestioning encouragement from the big U.S. outlets...

Recapping at TPM Café (5/27/09) how the U.S. "press bent over backward to paint both Bushes as moderate, sensible, nice guy Republicans," Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell writes that "a hard-right [George W.] Bush, whether real or media-created, would have never beaten Gore--not that this one did either." Reminding us that "the New York Times, for example, had been very tough on [President Bill] Clinton on its editorial page," Mitchell says that "once in office, a long honeymoon between press and president ensued," and "just as Bush's approval ratings tanked and criticism was about to spread, 9/11 came along to torment the country, but save Bush." Mitchell then brings us into the present with shrewd insight into a hypothetical:

No one in the media criticized Bush for months, let alone suggested that maybe he had let down the country and invited a terrorist attack, or at least failed to prevent it. (Imagine that happening in the future if the country is attacked again under Obama--watch Fox and Friends howl.) Some have suggested that the New York Times, and others long accused of exhibiting liberal bias, went overboard on backing Bush after 9/11, given a rare chance to wave the flag and promote a war (Afghanistan) without shame for once and bolster their flagging image as super-patriots.

Of course, the problem was: They didn't stop there, and most went along like sheep in the run-up to the Iraq War.

"In fact," Mitchell notes, the date of his piece "marks the fifth anniversary of the day the Times belatedly admitted its failures on Iraq (while refusing to name or punish reporters and editors). It wasn't just a failure on WMD, it was a failure to recognize Bush and his crowd for what they were, individually and collectively."

Noticing how "in the past week, Republican politicians and pundits have been striving mightily to invoke fear in the hearts of the American people," News Corpse blogger Mark Howard has collected (5/25/09) some choice quotes from GOP members "blanketing the airwaves with assertions that President Obama's policies on national security (Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, torture, etc.) will result in another 9/11":

Cheney: "It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe."...

John Boehner: "I think this is a pre-9/11 mentality, and I think it’ll make our nation less safe."

Karl Rove: "They’re doing the wrong thing for our country, they're doing the wrong thing for our men and women in uniform, and they're making us less safe."

But another selection of quotations, from corporate journalists themselves, support Howard's observation that not only are Dick Cheney & Co. "accelerating the rhetoric," they also are "bringing along reinforcements to alert the terrorists that America is 'less safe' and therefore vulnerable":

Joe Scarborough (MSNBC): "I knew by the second day that America was less safe."

Laura Ingraham (Fox News): "I think you can make a pretty compelling case that we're less safe today."...

David Gregory (Meet the Press): "But do you agree with the vice president when he says that the country is less safe under President Obama?"
Newt Gingrich: "Absolutely."

Poking holes in the Brookings Institution's "preening conceit"--"they bequeath their website with an '.edu' suffix... They are 'scholars.' Just ask them and they'll tell you"--Salon's Glenn Greenwald (5/26/09, ad-viewing required) quotes one blogger fundamentally debunking Brookings mainstay William Glaberson's May 22 New York Times contention that, as U.S. president, Barack Obama "has sworn an oath to protect the country": "Barack Obama did not swear an oath to 'protect the country.' He swore an oath to protect the principles upon which the country was founded and the document in which those principles are enshrined."

Looking more broadly at "Beltway world," in which "the Brookings Institution is a 'liberal' think tank," Greenwald explains that

when it comes to foreign policy and civil liberties, these are three of its most consequential contributions over the last several years: (1) the invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq, in the form of Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon (working in tandem, as usual, with the ultra-neoconservative American Enterprise Institute); (2) unquestioning devotion to Israel's right-wing policies, in the form of major funder Haim Saban ("I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.... On the issues of security and terrorism I am a total hawk"); and (3) indefinite, preventive detention with no charges or trial in the form of Benjamin Wittes (with his close associate, Bush OLC lawyer Jack Goldsmith), who also serves at the right-wing Hoover Institution and writes for the Weekly Standard. Only in Washington would such a group be deemed anything other than extremist.

In fact, U.S. journalists see the Brookings Institute as so far from the "extreme" that they have made it the No. 1 most-cited think every single year since FAIR started tracking such things in 1995. See our annual Think Tank Spectrum report by longtime contributor Michael Dolny.

Wondering "why NPR decided it was appropriate to present Cheney's blatantly self-serving propaganda as anything remotely relevant to current policy," NPR Check contributor Brian (5/23/09) blogs about current president Barack Obama and former vice president Dick Cheney recently "attacking the policies of the other administration and defending their own positions in speeches." Even though each was given "in front of friendly audiences unable to challenge them," NPR's Morning Edition of May 22 "presented them as a face-to-face debate between the two men, alternating soundbites from each," and giving

Cheney equal billing with the president in a piece titled "Obama, Cheney: Different Views on National Security." The title is offensive not only because it presents Cheney's views as equally relevant as the current president's, but also because it refers to the crimes of torture, the prison at Guantánamo Bay and indefinite detention without trial as simply "national security." (At least the extended Web version of the "debate" is titled "Obama, Cheney Face Off on Torture.")

In case you've forgotten, Brian writes that, "yes, this is the same Dick Cheney who... has every motivation to cover up the various crimes committed under his reign in the Bush administration. So one might reasonably ask, Who gives a shit what Dick Cheney has to say now?"

Salon's Glenn Greenwald (5/19/09, ad-viewing required) "gives the lie to the collective national claim that we learned our lesson and are now regretful about the Bush/Cheney approach to terrorism":

Republicans are right about the fact that while it was Bush officials who led the way in implementing these radical and lawless policies, most of the country's institutions--particularly the Democratic Party leadership and the media--acquiesced to it, endorsed it, and enabled it. And they still do.

Nothing has produced as much media praise for Obama as his embrace of what [the New Republic's Jack] Goldsmith calls the "essential elements" of "the Bush approach to counterterrorism policy." That's because--contrary to the ceremonial displays of regret and denouncements of Bush--the dominant media view is this: the Bush/Cheney approach to terrorism was right; those policies are "centrist"; Obama is acting commendably by embracing them; most of the country wants those policies; and only the far left opposes the Bush/Cheney approach.

Anyone who doubts that should consider this most extraordinary paragraph from Associated Press' Liz Sidoti:

Increasingly, President Barack Obama and Democrats who run Congress are being pulled between the competing interests of party liberals and the rest of the country on Bush-era wartime matters of torture, detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists.

Beyond quoting Sidoti having "described Obama's embrace of Bush's policies as 'governing from the center,'" Greenwald goes on to note that "her AP colleague Tom Raum said virtually the same thing today":

Internationally, Obama reversed course and is seeking to block the court-ordered release of detainee-abuse photos, revived military trials for terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay and is markedly increasing the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan....

Still, even though Obama may be irritating liberal purists on both national security and domestic policy, he has no real choice but to move toward the middle.

Greenwald quips that "apparently, Bush/Cheney terrorism policies are Centrist. Who knew?"

Media critic blogger Mark Howard (News Corpse, 5/16/09) has a problem with the voluble media controversy over "the fact that Obama’s pro-choice position is in conflict with [Notre Dame] University's Catholic principles"--namely, "neither the Catholic protesters nor the media ever threw similar tantrums when George W. Bush delivered the commencement speech in 2001, after receiving his honorary degree":

Every good Catholic knows that the church is strictly opposed to capital punishment. Since Bush set records for carrying out death sentences when he was governor of Texas, you would think that the same guardians of virtue that are protesting Obama, who has never personally signed an abortion certificate, would have been out in force for a man who presided over 152 executions. But there was nary a peep. There were no bishops signing petitions opposing Bush's appearance. There were no protests on campus. There were no students refusing to participate in graduation ceremonies. And there were no cameras from national news networks circling like buzzards.

If these Catholic Crusaders are truly interested in demonstrating their piety without prejudice, they should immediately call for Notre Dame to revoke Bush's honorary degree. If the press is honestly endeavoring to be objective, they should pose this question to the protesters.

Making clear that he doesn't "fault the pro-life movement's efforts to advance their beliefs through protest and civil disobedience," Howard maintains his own right to "fault the media for the inflated sense of importance they bestow on such a tiny assemblage of adversaries. Polls show overwhelming support for the president's visit to Notre Dame."

Political Animal's Steve Benen (5/12/09) notes a recent Rush Limbaugh broadcast (5/11/09) that makes the racist subtext of the right's critique of Barack Obama virtually explicit:

The [economic] deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps. But in the Oval Office of the White House none of this is a problem. This is the objective. The objective is unemployment. The objective is more food stamp benefits. The objective is more unemployment benefits. The objective is an expanding welfare state. And the objective is to take the nation's wealth and return to it to the nation's, quote, "rightful owners." Think reparations. Think forced reparations here if you want to understand what actually is going on.

So Limbaugh thinks Obama is intentionally creating unemployment in order to boost food stamps, unemployment and welfare as a form of "forced reparations"; he's wrecking the economy, in other words, in order to benefit black people.  If Limbaugh is the voice of opposition to Obama, no wonder that opposition is so concentrated in the states of the old Confederacy.

Two newspapers have flagged some concerns about Barack Obama's popularity, citing a new poll to raise questions about the public's enthusiasm for White House policies so far. Both accounts, though, seem to try to hard to stretch the rather awkward poll results to match their arguments.

In the Los Angeles Times (5/3/09), Peter Nicholas noted that while the public still supports Obama, "the activist government Obama has unleashed is increasingly worrisome to voters, polls show."

He explained:

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that 47 percent of those surveyed believe "government should do more," compared with 46 percent who believe "government is doing too many things." In July, the gap between those who wanted government to do more and those who believed it was doing too much was 11 percentage points.

So there is now a 47-46 split on whether government should "do more" or whether it is "doing too many things." Those are rather vague categories, but the point is that we can see an 11 point shift from February. It's worth noting that the new numbers are about the same as last October, which might suggest that it's hard to put too much weight on one poll question. And this question was only asked of half the sample this time around (which raised the margin of error from 3.1 to 4.4 percentage points).

Today, New York Times reporter John Harwood tried to make a similar point, noting that while Obama is still popular (judging by the "is the country on the right track" polling):

Paradoxically, however, that success may complicate Mr. Obama's task going forward by easing the sense of crisis. And that, in turn, could help Republicans argue that he seeks an excessively costly expansion of government's role.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in February showed that 51 percent of Americans wanted government to do more to solve problems, compared with 40 percent who said government was "doing too many things." Last week, the same survey showed an even split; a 52 percent majority said Mr. Obama had taken on "too many other issues" besides the economy.

Harwood is actually comparing the results of different poll questions. That latter question about doing too much outside economic policy is what he's trying to emphasize, but one look at the wording of that question might give you pause:

"Looking at President Obama's first 100 days, do you feel that he and his administration have had a clear and sharp focus on the economy, or do you feel that President Obama and his administration have been trying to take on too many other issues at the same time?"

The loaded language--has the White House been "clear and sharp"-- seems designed to get a negative response. And it echoes one of the favorite complaints of the Beltway press corps of late--that Obama is trying to do too many things at once. Now they've got a poll to match their anxiety.

The Washington Post editorial page regularly slams Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, so it was no surprise to see it do the same on April 30. Their real point, though, was to suggest that Barack Obama's desire to change the tone of the U.S.-Venezuelan relationship wasn't going to work:

The administration's strategy--to open up a constructive dialogue with Venezuela and avoid being cast as Mr. Chavez's Yanqui foil--is reasonable; it is also the same strategy as was tried, unsuccessfully, by the previous two administrations.

It's hard to imagine that anyone believes that the Bush administration's Venezuela policy amounted to "constructive dialogue." The Bush administration--at the very least--seemed to approve of the April 2002 coup that briefly removed Chavez from power. And Bush policy after that disaster was hardly more "constructive."

Even more curious is the Post's suggestion that President Bill Clinton had similar trouble with Chavez. That sounds implausible; Chavez was elected in 1998 and took office the following year--leaving very little time for Clinton's generous attempts at dialogue to be rebuffed by Chavez. Chavez, for his part, told Post co-owner Lally Weymouth that he "entertained the best of relations with the Clinton administration." (See Extra!, 11-12/06.)

But when it's Hugo Chavez they're talking about, apparently, for the Post editorial page the facts don't matter.

Associated Press reporter Calvin Woodward has a history of straining to catch Barack Obama in factual errors. But today's review of last night's Obama press conference may have hit a new low in absurdity.

In the piece, headlined "Fact Check: Obama Disowns Deficit He Helped Shape," Woodward takes issue with Obama's statement: "Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit.... That wasn't me." Woodward's criticism: "It actually was him--and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years--who shaped a budget so out of balance.... Congress controls the purse strings, not the president, and it was under Democratic control for Obama's last two years as Illinois senator."

Well, if an Illinois senator bears more responsibility for the federal budget than the president, than why is Woodward wasting his time covering what President Obama has to say about the budget? Shouldn't he be interviewing Roland Burris instead?

Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria is giving Obama high marks on his first 100 days in office in the magazine's May 4 issue. What's interesting, though, is when Zakaria explains why. He writes that while the country is more liberal than its been in 20 years, he (predictably enough) zeroes in on Obama's genius in charting a "middle course": no changes to NAFTA, no serious challenge to corporate power ("the old Democratic hostility to big business doesn't resonate so strongly anymore"), no real challenge to Wall Street ("he has steered a careful middle course on the bank bailouts") and no accountability for Bush-era torture ("he does not want to criminalize a policy disagreement") . It's just the sort of thing pundits like Zakaria love to see.

Images of the U.S. media's longtime foe, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, with Obama at last weekend's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad prompted some corporate reporters to take the unusual step of questioning the political motivations behind an official photo-op.  On ABC's World News, Jake Tapper referred to Chavez's gift of The Open Veins of Latin America to Obama as a "stunt" (video available here).

George Stephanopoulos questioned whether Chavez was not just posing with Obama in order to take advantage of Obama's popularity. "You have to wonder who would win a popular vote between Obama and Chavez in Venezuela these days," Stephanopoulos stated in an early Sunday morning ABC News broadcast.

Yet, as even Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer--a Chavez critic--acknowledges in his latest column, "there are no recent polls on Obama's popularity in Venezuela." So just where does Stephanopoulos get the idea that Obama polls so favorably in Venezuela? Why, likely from Obama's own adviser on Latin America!

In an interview with Tapper broadcast on ABC, Jeffrey Davidow--a senior adviser to Obama on Latin American affairs and director of the Summit of the Americas, who is also president of the Institute of the Americas think tank, stated that Chavez

rushed photos of his handshake with president Obama on to his government's website, along with his express desire to be friends. That was for a reason.

There's a sizable population in Venezueala, probably the very, very vast majority of Venezuela Venezuelans, who have a more favorable attitude to president Obama than to him.

Tapper: You're saying president Obama is more popular in Venezuela than Chavez is?

Davidow: Yeah.

What better authority on what "probably the very, very vast majority of Venezuela Venezuelans" want than a White House senior advisor?

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave U.S. President Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano's book The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent at last weekend's Summit of the Americas, the corporate media appeared to be caught off guard.

In its initial report, CNN (Newsroom, 4/18/09) appeared to be completely unaware of Galeano's classic 1971 treatise on the history of European and U.S. imperialism in Latin America, failing to correct Obama's initial mistaken belief that the book was penned by Chavez himself.

Both CNN (CNN Newsroom, 4/18/09) and AP (4/19/09) contrasted the immediate surge in the book's sales on Amazon with its previous "obscurity":

It's gone from obscurity to bestseller overnight. In just hours, it zoomed to No. 14 on Amazon.com's bestseller list, and on Friday, it was ranked number 60,280, making its way to the top of the list very fast.--CNN, 4/18/09

The publicity about the gift of the Galeano book helped propel it from relative obscurity to No. 13 on the Amazon.com list of bestsellers by Saturday night.--AP, 4/19/09

The book may not have ranked highly a month ago on Amazon, but it can hardly be described as "obscure." A classic Latin American history text that was banned by several military dictatorships, with its author "forced into exile as the book grew in popularity," according to the New Yorker, the book boasts more than 50 Spanish editions, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. As demonstrated by Chavez's choice, it still has currency with Latin American political leaders.

Want to know if "the media did a great job" covering Barack Obama's second major presidential press conference? Jason Linkins says (Huffington Post, 3/25/09) you can "just ask the media! Because they'll tell you!"

But "at the same time, the media is also quick to point out that the press conference was 'totally boring!'" Among those bemoaning what Linkins deems "certainly a strange coincidence" is NBC's chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd, who thought that "more than anything else, Obama's news conference last night resembled a campaign TV ad," and asked, "how many times did we hear Obama mention his budget's top priorities: education, energy, healthcare, reducing the deficit?" Linkins' reply:

Indeed, HOW MANY TIMES DID OBAMA TALK ABOUT THE BUDGET? Jesus, it was almost as if he kept getting questions about the budget. In fact, it was ALMOST AS IF Jennifer Loven, Jake Tapper, Ed Henry, Chip Reid and Chuck Todd himself asked a bunch of questions about spending and budgets! Was it like a "campaign TV ad"? Hmmm. I wonder if that's because Obama spent a lot of time, on the campaign trail, patiently explaining his budget priorities, amid approximately a million billion questions about "HOW WILL YOU PAY FOR THESE THINGS?"

Yes. It's the repetition of perennial questions--questions whose answers, offered long ago, were so satisfying to voters that they voted in accordance with their satisfaction--that BORED, thunderously.

Linkins' "look at the breakdown" of questions put to Obama yields "a pattern" in which "'traditional' media outlets brought the repetitive, dull, blunt force trauma, and the smaller, less-called-upon outfits provided the evening's flavor," with questions on such interesting and important topics as violence in Mexico, homelessness and stem cell research.