Since long before his election, the BBC has been fawning over The One.
After that the media has systematically ignored the failure of Hoax’n’Change, glossed over the rise of the Tea Party and dismissed the rise of small-government anti-Obama voices as ‘kooks’ and ‘racists’.
Tuesday sees the BBC’s runaway love-in coverage hit the buffers of the US electorate, and we’re going to live-blog the humiliation.
Shadowing the BBC’s live broadcast, we’ll be hosting a chat here which will also include a feed of the latest results. We’ll be analysing both the results as they come in, and the BBC’s reaction to them.
It’ll start at midnight, and we’ll be joined by readers from David’s other blog A Tangled Web and also All Seeing Eye and a couple of others to be confirmed.
“Midterm elections 2010: Prepare for a new American revolution”
(Janet Daley)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/8098844/Midterm-elections-2010-Prepare-for-a-new-American-revolution.html
What an excellent article by Janet Daley (another person with real experience of the US who seldom appears on the BBC these days. I wonder why ?).
In stark contrast with the BBC’s banal “analyses” of the US political scene and the reaction across the political spectrum against “Big Government”
I’m drooling with anticipation. I do hope the yanks don’t let us down.
I still can’t believe the BBC is going to do live coverage of a mid-term election of a foreign country. The only reason they’re doing this is because of that Cult of Personality.
No matter what happens on Tuesday, their beloved Obamessiah will still be in charge. They’re just concerned about what will become of His Plan For Us. Is the domestic agenda of a foreign country that important?
Political and personal bias at the BBC.
¡Sounds fun!
It’s cos he is a “black” man. That is the sole reason for this cult.
But, shhhhhhhhh, don’t tell the Beeboids, he is half-white!
I remember in the days when power-sharing was tried in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, when Smith, Muzorewa, Banana and one other all shared power (3 months at a time) and it seemed like the first big step towards full democracy in Zimbabwe, the BBC were cheering Peter Hain’s attempts (ultimately successful) to replace the moderates with Mugabe and Nkomo. It was a long time ago but if my memory serves me right, the BBC were building a bit of a cult of Mugabe then as they later did with Mandela.
I don’t see the faintest comparison between Mugabe and Mandela. It’s a ‘Bush-Hitler’ comparison.
Ask the BBC that one. The comparison was in their similar treatment of the two men at the time. Rather they fawned over Mugabe but started to cool slightly when he showed feet of clay, they then redoubled their energy toward Mandela when he was released.
My guess is that the Dems will lose 74 seats in the House, and will have 48 Senators after Tuesday. That is – control of the House of Representatives, byebye Nancy, and an absolute block where necessary in the Senate.
And Australia will win the Ashes. Because they have to !
Nate Silver provides a seat-by-seat guide to the results as they cpome in. His version of a “swingometer” is the number in the lower left of each district’s box – ie if “this division” is won, this is what the final overall result might look like if this division was the mid-point of all the results.
That is – as the results roll in, the number of Republican gains will go up from, say, 40 to what looks like the final result.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/the-ultimate-hour-by-hour-district-by-district-election-guide/
I think it is too simplicistic to say that Obama was favored by the media because he is African-American. That is certainly part of it, but I think the fact that the press HATES the Clintons was part of it, and also that Obama was (is) tied to the harder left was part of it, and, I am sorry to say, the fact that he is reflexively anti-Israel was a large part of it.
Check out how desperately biased Mark Mardell is to the bitter end:
The last rally
Mardell describes the goings on and mood at the President’s last rally before Tuesday’s election. Nothing unusual or interesting (except for the gratutious racially-oriented accompanying photo), until we get to the very end:
The rally, of course, finished on cheering and placard waving. But I am not sure it did the trick. This was a meeting for activists but four big blocks of seats were empty.
Perhaps that was down to fire regulations, I don’t know. But the president seemed slightly lower key than I have seen him in the past, the speech heartfelt but not fresh. Despite the big build up, it seemed to me all rather low energy for the last rally in a critical election.
What else is there to say? Mardell can’t even come up with excuses as good as the New York Times does when they report that only about 8000 out of the 13,000 seats were filled. At least they managed to find someone to blame it on Halloween. Perhaps the BBC North America editor who doesn’t know the difference between the Star Spangled Banner and the Pledge of Allegiance, and doesn’t even bother to listen to the proceedings on stage during an event on which he’s supposed to be reporting professionally simply doesn’t know why all those kids are running around wearing costumes this afternoon.
If his beloved Obamessiah does too badly on Tuesday, I expect Mardell will start wandering around acting like Job.