It seems oddly fitting that on the day that President Barack Obama is set to sign his economic stimulus package into law, that the press is mainly obsessed with the fact that he"s doing so in Denver, Colorado. What does It All Mean? What statement does it make about Magical, Wonderful Bipartisanship? What can be divined by Obama"s decision to Avoid Washington? Pure window-treatment stuff. But what can you expect? The media have come to the end of a month of politicking over the economic stimulus and, from what I gather, have managed to mostly unlearn as much as they could about the principles upon which the proposed plan is based.If you were a member of the public who wanted cogent answers to questions such as, "How will infrastructure stimulate the economy?" or "Can targeted tax cuts add value to the package?" or "What type of spending translates into the fastest job growth?" -- you know, the nuts and bolts of a set of ideas that voters are asked to take on faith -- you were basically out-of-luck. Instead, the press was filled with daily news of the soap opera over bipartisanship. Can any idea really be a good idea if eighty people won"t vote for it? If the overall package gets less effective on the road to consensus, will the economy hand out extra credit points, because of the fantastic procedural accomplishment? These were the inane obsessions of the professional political media.
And here is a nice litany of their accomplishments: LinkHere
President Obama"s stimulus plan may be met with dismay by conservatives such as Sean Hannity, but it has clearly stimulated a flourishing of creativity among his Fox News video team. Opening his show tonight was a 2-minute video montage, set to the ominous sounds of "O Fortuna" from Carl Orff"s Carmina Burana (you"ll know it when you hear it), that painted the passing of the stimulus bill as a practically apocalyptic event.
The clip splices together scenes of GOP leaders denouncing the push to pass the stimulus spending (such as John Boehner"s theatrics before the House last Friday) while Democrats aggressively argue for their agenda. The piece ends with an undeniably cheesy graphic showing a recent edition of Newsweek--the one with the headline declaring "We Are All Socialist Now"--rising up from the ocean to tower above the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial.
Watch it in all its operatic glory.
The clip splices together scenes of GOP leaders denouncing the push to pass the stimulus spending (such as John Boehner"s theatrics before the House last Friday) while Democrats aggressively argue for their agenda. The piece ends with an undeniably cheesy graphic showing a recent edition of Newsweek--the one with the headline declaring "We Are All Socialist Now"--rising up from the ocean to tower above the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial.
Watch it in all its operatic glory.
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