Posted by Tina
We’ve all noticed the old media treatment of our new president…no honeymoon for him!
The ruthless nature of these disgruntled reporters is annoying, especially when they try to assert that Obama was treated as badly. So I thought it was terrific, and worth passing on to you, when I read Philip Wegmann’s piece in The Washington Examiner tonight. He provided an example of the softball approach in Obama’s first press conferences:
When Obama called on Jeff Zeleney back in May 2009, the New York Times reporter didn’t get the president on the record about the state of national security or the worsening fiscal crisis. Instead, the writer wondered if the leader of the free world felt magical.
“During these first 100 days,” he asked, “what has surprised you the most about this office? Enchanted you the most from serving in this office? Humbled you the most? And troubled you the most?”
Pretty tough, huh? What a joke!
But there’s no bias in the press…right?
Trump took quite a few minutes out of his day today to answer questions from the press. His questions were not the stuff of little girls and fairy dust.See here. But he handled it beautifully. I’m sure his demeanor was not what they expected. He was open, honest, and he spoke to them as you would with any person in a friendly chat. At one point he attempted to help them…Trump to reporters, “The American people don’t believe you anymore.” Thus began a straightforward conversation…sooooo refreshing!
Oooooo…just stumbled over related video at Gateway Pundit of Obama attacking Fox News while his media sycophants “cackled” (scroll down). Theirs was a game played at our expense. That’s all changed now.
First Trump pulled the curtain back to expose the media, now he launches a whole new era: Respect yourselves, and this office, or find yourselves out in the cold.
Well, if Obama had up-ended the lives of many thousands, and damaged the economy, his second week on the job, I expect they would have been a little harder on the man. You are being unconscionably dim, Tina, and obsessing over a past that becomes more and more unreal as the weeks pass.
As to that press conference … I just finished “The Swans of Fifth Avenue”, a novelization of Truman Capote’s relationships with his society ladies, wherein Truman, with great restraint, informs a magazine editor that he does not (though she might, as a philistine, think otherwise) have the name, rank and serial number of every homosexual in Manhattan.
Quiz: The parallel in today’s press conference was … ???
Damaged the economy? Are you nuts? Obama oversaw eight years of less than 2% growth. Under his watch we saw the wealthy get wealthier like we haven’t ever seen before! He just about disappeared the middle class and made the ranks of the poor skyrocket. We never got a recovery from the recession that ended in 2009. Instead we got deep malaise.
And as far as up-ending lives goes take a look around Libby…the lives of people all over the planet are up-ended because of his eight years.
And you are living in La La land if you think the press EVER seriously challenged or questioned this man. They defended, they deflected, they covered for him….and they accused and demeaned anyone who did of despicable things.
The past doesn’t become “unreal” except for those who prefer to forget or lie about it.
There is no parallel.
“There is no parallel.”
I refuse to believe you are that dense. You know you’re not … or you would have said nothing at all.
It was mortifying. As a fellow citizen of Anglo-Saxon descent, I just wanted to melt into the ground. It was the sort of thing my grandmother would have said, and she’s been dead for twenty-four years.
Insults don’t allow me or any of our readers to wander around in your head. I know it’s difficult for you to grasp but your thoughts are unique only to you. We all have our own experiences of the presser. So, if you’re going to draw a parallel, DRAW IT! Then we an discuss it. Or are you afraid?
No … I think I’ll let Alec explain it to you tomorrow night, because the bit will be re-enacted, with embellishments … I am absolutely certain.
Please show me a graph to support your claim that poverty has skyrocketed under Obama. According to this graph poverty rose consistently during the Bush administration and continued to do so until 2010. Since then poverty has been on a downward trend.
Your claim that there has been “no recovery” since 2009 is also ridiculous, and no fact supports it.
http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-united-states
There’s poverty and then there’s poverty. Compared to some other nations around the world there isn’t a single American that lives in poverty. So the word has different meanings depending on context. We are looking at conditions in America. The conditions we’re living in started before Obama but Obama’s policies have done nothing to improve conditions and a lot to make it difficult for many Americans to meet ends. Graphs don’t really work to explain conditions because the government changed how it measures poverty.
January 2014, Mother Jones (see charts):
March 2013, Motley Fool examines the declinign middle class in America (see chart):
July 2013 PBS:
January 2014, Washington Times
Do you deny that middle class and poor people have lost ground…lost opportunities for advancement and struggled greatly in the last eight years?
Some people got healthcare (a good thing) but it was at the expense of others.And Obamacare imposed
job killing regulations and taxes that led to job opportunities that can’t be measured because they never came to pass and new job creation in the part time sectors. Meanwhile prices for food and other necessities rose.
How do you assert a good economy given these factors and the stagnant 2% growth on average over eight years? (3-4% is a closer average in past economies) Also 2% is not “recovery” and imagining that it is is just plain naive.
Perhaps you have a better way to describe the economy under Obama that includes these factors?
I didn’t assert that we had a good economy, I asserted that your claim that “poverty skyrocketed under Obama” wasn’t true. Since you weren’t able to find any evidence that it was true, I take it that you now understand that it wasn’t?
Oddly enough I was just reading this little snipet from the Washington Times, “Fifty years after President Johnson started a $20 trillion taxpayer-funded war on poverty, the overall percentage of impoverished people in the U.S. has declined only slightly and the poor have lost ground under President Obama.”
No room to reply directly to “Bryan” so will do it here.
Skyrocketed IS an appropriate word. This is the United States of America, not some third world nation. Poverty, in American terms, did skyrocket, especially when you consider what should have happened to repair and bootstrap the economy after the housing crash and recession. Obama (Keynesian policy) KILLED private sector support and opportunity for the middle class, the poor, and a new generation of workers. He can brag about growth but his growth was not enough to say it’s working well.
July 2013, The Week, “Why 4 out of 5 Americans are struggling to make ends meet”:
December 2016, Marist Poll, “More than One-Third of Americans Having Trouble Making Ends Meet”
This is failure. it’s failure that should have been acknowledged at least four years ago and the president should have pivoted…corrected.
He didn’t because he does not care about individual Americans doing well and climbing the ladder of success. he cares about the state and state control in people lives. His agenda was working fine to make more people dependent and the federal government more powerful.
So please, stop the nit picking and get the larger picture which is undeniably true.
“Poverty, in American terms, did skyrocket, especially when you consider what should have happened to repair and bootstrap the economy after the housing crash and recession.”
No, Tina. For something to “skyrocket,” it has to go up. As I already showed you, poverty did not go up during Obama’s tenure. It went down. You haven’t provided any evidence to contradict that. That you think the poverty rate didn’t go down enough does not justify the claim that poverty “skyrocketed,” but it is fascinating watching you try to justify that anyway.
She’ll never get the answer
Wealth Inequality
Below are government figures that show the trend of growing wealth inequality.1
Share of Total Net Worth by Percentile of Wealth Owners, 1989-2013
…Even more striking is that from 1995 to 2013, the poorest half of the population, after experiencing its share of the nation’s wealth peaking in 1995 at 3.6%, underwent a more than 2/3 decline in their portion. It fell in 2013 to a paltry 1.05% of all wealth.
Despite the last few years of “recovery,” the share of wealth held by the bottom 50% of the U.S. population declined from 1.15% in 2010 to 1.05% in 2013. This is less than half of where it stood in 2007, before the great recession, when the share of the country’s wealth held by the poorest 50% of the population was at 2.5%.
In 2008, Obama spoke of hope for a better future. If the wealthy hoped for a greater share of the nation’s wealth, their hope was fulfilled while the wealth conditions of most everyone else have declined.
These changes in wealth holdings were clearly described by Federal Reserve Board head Janet Yellen who began a speech on October 17, 2014 noting:
“The distribution of income and wealth in the United States has been widening more or less steadily for several decades… This trend paused during the Great Recession because of larger wealth losses for those at the top of the distribution and because increased safety-net spending helped offset some income losses for those below the top. But widening inequality resumed in the recovery…” (emphasis added). 2
This widening inequality and greater concentration at the top was presumably more pronounced after 2013 when the value of the stock market rose with the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching its peak at over $18,300 in May of 2015. Today, wealth inequality is probably back to where it was in 2013 since the stock market has recently gone down to 2013 levels.
Poverty
While wealth inequality has increased, the number of people living in poverty has also generally increased. Below are figures from 1981 to 2014 for the number of people deemed to be poor and their percentage of the population.3 This percentage has been 15% or higher for three years of Obama’s presidency, from 2010-2012. It had reached that level only three other times since 1981.
These numbers show that the rate of poverty since 1981 was lowest in 2000 at 11.3%. During the time George W. Bush was president, with exceptions, it steadily increased from 11.7% in 2001 to 13.2% in 2008. 5 As might be expected, the rate increased during the great recession peaking at 15.1% in 2010.
As of 2014, some six years after the beginning of the recession and during a period of “recovery,” the rate of poverty remains high at 14.8%. In fact, according to these government statistics, the rate of poverty for every year Obama has been president is higher than it was for every year during George W. Bush’s presidency.
The percent of people below 125% of the official poverty rate has also been higher every year under Obama than during Bush’s presidency, and has been over 19% every year from 2010 through 2014. The highest level it reached under Bush was during the start of the recession in 2008 when it was at 17.9%.
What is most disturbing is the percent of the population living in extreme poverty, or having an income at 50% or lower than the poverty level.5 Every year that Obama has been president, the percent of the population at that level of income has been over 6% and, as of 2014, consisted of over 20 million people. When George W. Bush was president, the percent was always under 6%. The last time it was over 6% was during the first year of the Clinton presidency. 6
Even the record during Reagan’s presidency may be viewed as more favorable than Obama’s. During the time Reagan was president, the official rate of poverty peaked at 15.2% in 1983. Thereafter, it gradually declined to 13.0% in 1988.7 By contrast, the rate of poverty during Obama’s time in office has always been more than 14.3% and was 14.8% in 2014, or almost 2% higher than it was at the end of Reagan’s presidency.
A quip that was made about Reagan is that he liked poor people so much that he acted to increase their numbers. During his first three years, the poverty rate and the number of people deemed to be impoverished increased, reaching its peak in 1983. Thereafter, from 1983 to the end of Reagan’s presidency in 1988, the number of people deemed to be poor declined by over 3.5 million ending at slightly below the total during the first year of his presidency.
In contrast to the record of Reagan’s presidency, during the time Obama has been president and statistics are available, 2009-2014, the population has grown by 11.98 million. This is close to its growth for the last six years of Reagan’s presidency. Yet, the number of people deemed to be living in poverty has not declined, but has increased by more than 3 million. For comparison, see this table extrapolated from previous figures:
Excellent find Jack…thank you.
Trump’s press conference today was outstanding. He played the media, he toyed with them, he excoriated them, all with a mild tone, humor and a good dose of humility. It seemed to me he was truly enjoying himself in a room full of “reporters” who are bent on destroying him. It was a wonderful thing to watch.
Trump effectively accused Obama of running a shadow government, which is true. (The man who claimed to run “most open administration in history” was in actuality one of the the most closed.) Trump ridiculed Hillary over her 33,ooo emails gone missing, the absurd “Russian reset” and the handing over to Russia 20% of out uranium supply.
I wonder if Hillary has ever figured out that deleting those emails didn’t inspire a lot of trust in her.
Trump — Tomorrow they will say, “Donald Trump rants and raves at the press!” I’m not ranting and raving. I’m just telling you, y’know, you’re dishonest people.
And that is EXACTLY how it was reported by the media across the US. Ranting and raving Trump.
I have never seen anything like it. Trump was amazing.
Oooohhh, talk about your “alternate realities”.
He rambled, he babbled, he muttered, he bumbled … he lied several times … and on one of them was caught out … in real time. That was spiffy.
When the mean, nasty, ugly reporter followed up with something along the lines of: “How are the American people suppose to trust you and your agenda, when you repeatedly make false representations?” … Trump, leader of the free world, said … “I just repeat what they tell me.”
Pie … that was amazing.
Poor Libby, she is beside herself with fear and loathing. The entire lunatic left is. The more the left spews hatred and venom at Trump, the more pleasure it is for me. 😀 You are wonderfully self-marginalizing.
Context and humor mean everything, Libby. You have neither. At least not intentionally. In case you haven’t noticed, Politicians tend to exaggerate and prevaricate with few exceptions, you sad, silly, extreme left wing snowflake whiner. Trump is nothing new in that department.
(It is hard to believe that even you are that stupid and naive to not have noticed, but you at least turn a very selective blind eye.)
Obama, Hillary, Pelosi — in fact the entire Democratic party and the left as a whole — is populated by exceptional liars. And that includes you. So sit down and shut up.
“So sit down and shut up.”
Ha! It doesn’t work for Trump. It certainly won’t work for you.
Hilariously, you will never sit down and shut up. Works for me. I would hand you a shovel, but you do just fine digging that hole you inhabit with your bare claws.
“the handing over to Russia 20% of out uranium supply”
But that did not happen. Just as it did not happen that Trump had the biggest electoral since Reagan.
That you can sit there and cheer while Trump tells blatant, and stupid, lies…what is wrong with you? Why do you enjoy being lied to?
You think Trump did a good job at a press conference where he answered a question about anti-Semitic attacks by calling the Jewish reporter a liar and claiming that he was the victim? Are you serious?
The man just called the media “the enemy of the people.” He just had a campaign rally less than a month after becoming president! He is not well. And he will be impeached soon.
“But that did not happen.”
Oh really?
NYT:
Think again.
Tina, 20% of our uranium capacity is not 20% of our uranium supply. Those mean two different things. Pie’s use of the latter word makes his statement false.
OUTSTANDING press conference by TheDonald!
The moron media presstitutes are no longer calling the shots and they don’t like it. Too bad!
That cheering you hear in the background isn’t just from Trump supporters. It’s from millions of viewers who are tired of the condescending bilge and outright hatred spewed by certain members of the press. Can you say Fake News Network?
Well done, President Trump!
Which part did you like best? Where he was called on his repeated lie that he had the biggest electoral victory since Reagan, and all he could say was “That’s the information I was given?”
Or when he replied to a simple question about a rise in anti-Semitic attacks by calling the Jewish reporter a liar and playing the victim?
These may seem like small issues. But what do these things tell us about Trump?
1) That he is incapable of seeking out an evaluating reliable information, and will just believe people who tells him what he wants to hear; he will then blame them when he is wrong.
2) That he is incapable of even the bare minimum of diplomacy.
Do you think this will not matter at any point in his presidency?
They don’t get it. They don’t get it because they speak a fake version of the language. Phony contexts rule their world. Honesty just doesn’t figure in. Nuance and exaggeration to make a point are not allowed…makes their hair catch on fire.
How do people get so utterly screwed up? Years of indoctrination and accepting only a single point of view doesn’t help.
They could use a mid blowing experience.
Tina , you have to consider the source when Dew drip or Lippy post their berating dribble toward Post Scripts or President Trump. Especially since they still negatively refer back to even President Bush, while still holding their feckless icon Obama in such high regards.
Lippy of late has been on a one person titrate about President Trump, and what has been normal seeks the articles that constitute Fake News, why? it all she has right now, and it seems Salon is her favorite bookmark.
Recently a article I read about the “lefts knee jerk violence” being instantaneous ( more and articles like yours and Jacks are exposing extensive funding of such protests gives more clues to this falsehood), the Left is keeping the mislead and misinformed stirred up and causing disruptive nonsense so much that even some left leaning sources are commenting on why this is the case , if only to try and re establish a foothold on their own creditably.
One such article from Snopes Managing editor that I found interesting:
“Of course, when you feel disempowered, you want to strike back with everything you got, and you feel like the whole world is against you,” says Brooke Binkowski, managing editor of Snopes, a fact-checking website that has debunked many of the false stories circulating around the internet.
“People who think they’ve been pushed out of the political world as it is right now are going to be susceptible to misinformation – they’re going to focus on whatever makes them feel better,” she says.
Right now, that’s liberals. Ms. Binkowski says she has seen an uptick in liberals sharing misleading stories on their news feeds. Others agree.
There is this YUGE undertone the left is currently applying by using Alinsky’s socialistic rules, especially in opposition of a Administration that is attempting to reunite the American people with self reliance, and reducing their dependence on Government, something that YUGELY scares them to death.
Wounded animals, eh Harold?
LOL
So let me get this right. You think Mr Trump speaks intelligently and at your level?
Everything wrong in the world is that Republicans can not force their beliefs on everyone right?
Dewey, you have absolutely no standing nor credibility to comment on anyone’s intelligence or speaking talents. Your implication that Republicans seek to “force their beliefs on everyone” is a paradigmatic testimony to your vast intelligence. You are your own worst stereotype and you do not even know it Which is the funniest thing about you.
It’s difficult to imagine a mind so spectacularly wired, Pie.
Like Libby, the guy is a short circuit.
Worth noting that while the moron media presstitutes were howling about how they were so badly treated at yesterdays press conference with President Trump, NOT ONE WORD from those same presstitutes on the President signing legislation removing Obumble’s coal mine shutdown so miners could get back to work.
FoxNews and FoxBusiness covered it – but nobody else did!
Well done, President Trump!
That’s not true either. I saw articles about it and thought: “all the nine-year-old asthmatics and their parents in the hinterlands will be thrilled about this.”
Not only that, most of our production was being sold to China, but even they have decided to cut back, as the citizens of Beijing are gettin’ real testy about having to breath sludge, so this is NOT going to improve the lot of the miners, it’s going to worsen the lot of asthmatics, and about this you are pleased?
The world turns Libby, people encounter difficulties and hardships.
Coal miners families have to eat. Are you pleased that their children suffered because of stupid regulations born of fake science hysteria? Those costly regulations put miners out of their jobs but wouldn’t have cleaned the ait by a significant enough amount to matter to the asthmatic kids.
Coal was already cleaned up significantly. Had you not been at the affect of hysteria you would have given the coal companies more time to meet the standards you want.
This wasn’t about clean air or kids with asthma…it was about killing green energy’s competition! It was about green energy investors making money.
The green faux science radicals are real jerks! And the kids are just pawns in their game. You? You’re a sucker and willing dupe.
Not true? What’s not true?
Try re-reading my post again.
Was going to argue the point, but then I realized that since it’s Libby the Lib calling things “not true,” I’d just be wasting my time. Ya just can’t fix stoopid!
Libby’s post was very clear, J. She was saying it isn’t true that only Fox News covered Trump’s repeal of the coal shutdown. And she’s right–that isn’t true. A simple Google search could have told you that.
I think you’d have to be pretty stupid to not know that’s what she was talking about.
It is unquestionably true that the press was more favorable to Obama than to Trump. It is also unquestionably true that PART of the reason for this is that Trump’s first 100 days so far has been a disaster.
Yesterday, he once again lied about the size of his electoral win, and when called on it, said “That’s the information I was given.” When asked a perfectly easy question about the rise of anti-Semitism, instead of taking the opportunity to condemn it, he made himself the victim, called the Jewish journalist a liar, and talked some more about his electoral college win. The man is an idiot who shows severe signs of dementia; of course he is going to get unfavorable coverage.
I imagine the conversation between Pence and his wife, the only person he can talk to about this: “Honey, I think I’m gonna be President. I don’t know exactly when, exactly, but I think I am gonna be President.”
Trumps first 100 days are a disaster only to those looking for any excuse to paint it in that light. They create their own illusion built on their own efforts to undermine. It’s quite a fantasy world.
Trump and his staff are not playing the part though. They see it going on, they might even stumble now and then, but they recover quickly and move on. His administration does not depend on approval in the media. His supporters know what nasty charlatans they are.
Dementia? Ridiculous!
Trump will get unfavorable coverage for the simple fact that he is not in the liberal club.
But the liberal club is irrelevant…and with the people of the heartland behind him, trump is going to reverse a lot of the crap that’s been foisted on the people of this nation and create conditions for good wages and prosperity to blossom! The radical left and their media arm may not like it but America and the world absolutely will.
It’s cute how you think Trump doesn’t care about media approval. Why does he keep lying about the size of his electoral victory? Why is he still so obsessed with the campaign and the election?
Do you think it’s normal for a president to hold a campaign rally less than a month after becoming president? Has any president ever done that before? Trump is DESPERATE for approval, Tina. But Americans aren’t giving it to him. He has the lowest approval rating of any modern president at this point in his presidency. That’s not the media’s fault. That’s his fault. He has no experience or qualifications for this job and it is showing. He is unfit for this job and it is only those few still denying this that are living in a fantasy land.
Obama did nothing but campaign during his first four years. It was all he knew how to do. and his transition was not all smooth.
TownHall, “Bumps in the Road: Trump vs. Obama”
Chill!
“Trumps first 100 days ….”
Tina … try 32 … and, my, but they have been uproarious. However, as a practical matter, all he’s done so far is cost us money. The nation’s airports, the businesses in the vicinity of Trump Tower and Mar-A-Lago have been losing money hand over fist. His adult children are running up humongous secret service tabs.
His executive orders have accomplished nothing but angst, anxiety, and ill-considered expense. You crab about the Congress’s inaction, but the Executive is supposed to be sending them legislation to fail to enact, and the Executive is not doing that. Probably because the pointless pieces of paper make all the noise required to pacify the morons, and writing legislation requires a competent staff … not yet extant.
Still, at 32 days, we should probably be cutting the TA a little slack … but he has got to can that “fine-tuned machine” horsepucky.
Stop what you’re doing and watch these three videos from the LA area.
http://louderwithcrowder.com/minorities-sanctuary-cities-racist/
There’s a group down there bent on turning California conservative…they’re Latino and they want our immigration system repaired so it works. The US population doesn’t always fit neatly into the little boxes that liberals like to put them in.
Conservatives are not a majority.
Why is it you think forcing everybody to go down the conservative or neoliberal rabbithole is a right?
There is a bigger movement of independents to take down these fascist parties.
Taxpayers spending almost a billion dollars to subsidize Trump’s family & businesses are being reminded why it’s smart to elect a taxpayer. Maybe we can next election?
Dewey you misunderstand me. You continuously misrepresent what I’ve written. It’s unfortunate.
I’ve never claimed conservatives are a majority, although, I think that people are often more conservative than they realize. some of this is because conservatism has been trashed in the media and school kids are taught progressive garbage and grow up confused.
I have likewise never suggested forcing anyone down a rabbit hole, neoleft nor conservative. You hear what you want to hear. I simply express my views, as is my right.
Once again you make a claim without evidence. A billion dollars? Really? Where’s the proof? If there is truth in what you say you should look at who created the law that allows it…and why!
An example I found in National Review includes NYC taxpayers only…and they pay high taxes in NY: