Anyone else catch Mark Mardell’s gushing coverage of Obama’s State of the Union speech? You would need a heart of stone not to laugh at Mardell’s sycophancy towards President Narcissus and his equal desire to blame those wicked gun-loving Republicans for not lying down and doing the will of their master in the White House. As ever, the BBC go with Obama’s windy rhetoric and choose not to examine the substance of the issue. Obama came to power boasting of “fixing” the economy, he has waffled some more about this last night and it swallowed by Mardell.
OBAMA WORSHIP
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It was not the dignified speech of a President, who should speak on such an occasion to and for the whole nation. After all, it is a Union speech. That is not to say it shouldn’t include policy aspirations for his administration, but it must be done in a measured and emollient way. Much of Obama’s speech was indistinguishable from electioneering.
Obama has NEVER, as President, spoken for the whole nation.
Obama has NEVER stopped electioneering.
He is most un-statesmanlike.
Mark Mardell would enthuse about a plank of wood if it was a Democrat.
I know, like and respect quite a few Democrats, but when it comes to the media PR end, I’d have to say ‘of wood’ is a tautology.
As to the speech, the guy is a tub-thumping orator without peer.
My apolitical missus (even more so on the US scene) saw it on SKY this morning, and said she expected all present to cry ‘Hallelujah’ as he gasped each breath.
Fine for acolytes.
Media… not so much.
Channel 4 News last night, didn’t catch all of Matt Frei’s report from Chicago’s south side, but heard some very interesting comments from black people at the sharp end. One older guy actually agreed with the NRA argument that law abiding people needed guns for protection, as did a mother who’d lost a son to gang violence. The depressing view was that things were so bad, that guns were so prevalent, that Obama’s words, however noble they sounded, were chaff on the wind. A courageous young youth worker said if it wasn’t guns it would be knives, other weapons – the problem was the mindset. Only by altering that can progress be made. Quietly, & with dignity, they told it as it was, & were allowed to do so. Their views of Obama were refreshingly pragmatic, a long way from the purblind sycophancy that gets us nowhere, & tells us nothing. A really balanced, sober chunk of reality television from an urban war zone, without any histrionics, or slant. The way to do it.
Mardell was quite negative about Obama’s chances in passing his proposals. Must listen to a different BBC.
Oh yes that would be because of the hated Republicans not a failing on the obamrama ‘s behalf !so still not quite the negative !
You’re quite right, colditz. Mardell does not expect the President will automatically be able to pass His every Plan For Us. Do you know why? I bet you do. As the BBC’s US President editor told us yesterday, it’s because the Republicans aren’t willing to change. By change, Mardell means shifting to the left of center on key issues. Just like the President Himself has said, “compromise” means doing it His way.
Simply stating that the President might have a difficult time passing His entire agenda is not the same thing as not praising the speech. You seem to be confusing the two concepts.
Also, as usual, we’re expected to believe that there is no legitimate opposition to His Plans. The only reason Republicans vote against Him, says the BBC’s US President editor, is personal. There’s no possibility for debate or even rational discussion of issues here. Either you do it His way or you’re flawed, full stop.
If only the Republicans would change for the better, Mardell believes, we could return to what he referred to as a Golden Age: when the Democrats ruled both houses of Congress and were able to push through His wishes without needing a single Republican vote. As he told an audience of Beeboids at the BBC College of Journalism a while back, the President is “the last Keynesian standing”, and that everyone in the room – and, he claimed, most British people – thought that was the correct economic policy direction. So of course he’s going to think the President is right and His enemies are wrong. Mardell listed spending plan after spending plan in the written version of his report on the SOTU, even using the White House/Labour/Socialist term “investing” in place of “borrowing and spending”. Without that absolute Democrat power, Mardell knows that the President might not be able to pass every single thing.
The real problem with his analysis, though, is that he’s acting as if the President’s way is the only correct way. No mention of our continually rising debt from the lapdog. It’s all good because the President really and truly has a Plan For Us this time.
If we don’t do what He wants, somehow that’s harmful to the country, won’t fix the economy, won’t fix gun laws, etc. Which is why he directed slightly kind words towards Sen. Rubio regarding the Republican rebuttal. Rubio seemed to pivot towards the President’s policies, Mardell suggested, which is the right thing to do, he says, because Republicans need focus on Leftoid policies more. In other words, go with what the Democrats do. Just like what he said in his editorial about Republicans being unwilling to change.
What Mardell does isn’t objective journalism: it’s a series of ideological op-eds dressed up as cogent analysis from a political “editor”. And just like the entire cadre of professional journalists at the BBC, you swallowed it whole.
Socialist tax, borrow and spend policies; fighting ‘climate change’; closer trading agreements with the EU; UN Agenda 21 simmering nicely in the background. We’re all heading for Oceania, aren’t we?
Got to admit it’s funny to watch so called Liberals complaining that the Republican opposition party is acting like an opposition party ? they really don’t like democracy do they !
To give Mardell his due he is critical of Obama’s tone and attitude towards his opponents though he hides it between phrases such as ‘People were on their feet, some crying’.
The BBC is going to have difficulty though as two of their favourites disagree. O claims that ‘Heat waves, droughts, wildfires and floods, all are now more frequent and more intense’ and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change disagrees with him. Who will they back?
They’re going to stick with Plan A: it’s all really happening, and the IPCC admission doesn’t mean it’s not all really happening.
Besides, IPCC is white.
Mark Mardell and Obama, it’s like 1963 all over again..
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
You think you lost your love,
Well, I saw her yesterday.
It’s you she’s thinking of
And she told me what to say.
She says she loves you
And you know that can’t be bad.
Yes, she loves you
And you know you should be glad.
She said you hurt her so
She almost lost her mind.
But now she said she knows
You’re not the hurting kind.
She says she loves you
And you know that can’t be bad.
Yes, she loves you
And you know you should be glad. Ooh!
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
And with a love like that
You know you should be glad.
Because she loves you
And you know that can’t be bad.
Yes, she loves you
And you know you should be glad. Ooh!
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
with a love like that
You know you should
Be Glad!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah Ye-ah.
A few home truths about Obummer’s sworn intent to stop the climate changing:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/19683/Obama-fails-climate-science-in-his-State-of-the-Union-address–Climate-Depots-pointbypoint-rebuttal-to-the-Presidents-global-warming-claims
I’d love to hear Mardell question the Messiah about this…
There have been over 900 Executive orders put forth from Obama, and he is not even through his first term yet. He is creating a martial law ‘Disney Land’ of control covering everything imaginable. Some of the executive orders he has signed recently have been exposed thanks to ‘Friends of Conservative Action Alerts.’ They have compiled a choice list of ‘Emergency Powers, Martial law executive orders’: Get your headache medication out while you still can without a prescription.
* Executive Order 10990 allows the Government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.
* Executive Order 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
* Executive Order 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels, and minerals.
* Executive Order 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
* Executive Order 11001 allows the government to take over all health education and welfare functions.
* Executive Order 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.
* Executive Order 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
* Executive Order 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate and establish new locations for populations.
* Executive Order 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways, and public storage facilities.
* Executive Order 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issues over a fifteen-year period.
* Executive Order 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
* Executive Order 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute Industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.
* Executive Order 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit, and the flow of money in U.S. financial institutions in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when the president declares a state of emergency, Congress cannot review the action for six months.
What is happening over there? What is the Government expecting to happen?
This is just plain wrong. None of the above are Obama’s Executive Orders. See here for more.
Seems to be an email going round, these often are exaggerated or misunderstood but probably based in some fact/logic. Maybe it’s all the POTUS EO’s that affect people’s rights/freedoms and has been elaborated to become just Obama’s.
His Executive Orders aren’t the real problem. A lot of this is mundane. The real danger is all the undemocratic laws-via-regulation by unelected bureaucrats which advance The EPA, for example, has been passing crushing regulation after crushing regulation (see here and here, for just two big examples) that would never get passed as law in the democratic process. These unelected bureaucrats (many, but by no means all, are political appointees) can advance His agenda on the sly. It’s happening in many agencies. Democracy is for the little people these days.
Add to that the VAST amount of armaments and – illegal – hollow point bullets he has ordered for Homeland Security.
Hollow points aren’t illegal to use on the range. And as far as I know, the only people not allowed to use them for real are the military, thanks to human rights international law stuff.
As for the Feds buying all the ammo, if you break down the number of bullets, it’s not a whole lot per armed employee. And most of that gets used on the range anyway. Of course, the real issue here is probably just how many @#$@#$%#%^ Federal employees are armed and use military tactics at the drop of a hat these days.
Combine the ever-expanding amount of armed State and Federal employees who need ammo for training and some minimum field capacity with the very understandable panic buying of citizens who know damn well that, despite all the assurances we hear, the President and His minions really do want to take all the guns away, and you get this scary shortage.
Now I know why the Left allow unfettered immigration; votes and the confidence in knowing that abject incompetence will go unpunished!
I listened to the whole State of the Union speech. It was truly awful – full of lies, partisan sniping and naivete.
Obama is capable of lying blatantly in every paragraph – and a compliant media lets him get away with it. He continues to drive the US economy towards the precipice, the worst Presidency in my lifetime.
As a measure of how dreadful his SOTU speech was, here is a reckoning by a DEMOCRATIC commentator, Kirsten Powers. The sort of coherent and fierce comments about Obama The Demagogue that the BBC never lets us hear. :
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/02/13/kirsten-powers-state-of-the-union/1914215/
Worth having a look at the ‘fact check’ to expose some of his lies.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/12/ap-fact-check-obama-overreaches-in-state-of-the-union-speech/
In 2008, before Obama claimed the Presidency of the United States, FOUAD AJAMI, a keen observer of the political scene whose own perspective on power was acquired in his native Egypt wrote this:
“We think of places like Argentina and Egypt and Iran, of multitudes brought together by their zeal for a Peron or a Nasser or a Khomeini. In these kinds of societies, the crowd comes forth to affirm its faith in a redeemer: a man who would set the world right.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122533157015082889.html
On sober reflection, it seems Obama is the very epitome of a Middle Eastern leader, a man who rules rather than governs; who “is” rather than “does”; whose racial and cultural identity trumps every action. He does not have supporters but followers. My liberal friends fly into rages when confronted by even mild criticism of their idol. It is simply flabbergasting.
It has always been the tradition of liberal democracies to be a thorn in the flesh of authority, to be annoying and probing, to be – in the vernacular – pains in the arse. But with this bunch of cowardly sycophants we can expect nothing.
It’s the democratic tradition to elect leaders and then throw bricks at them. We question them toughly. We hold their feet to the fire. But now? Nothing.
Frankly this guy is beginning to frighten me. Someone in the media, please, JUST ASK HIM A TOUGH QUESTION!
We can just be thankful that the USA system puts him out after 2 terms. However, in that time he sure can do a LOT of damage!
Interesting perspective about the President as Middle Eastern charismatic dictator, Louis. Just recently Mardell was directing us to a “fascinating” essay on how the President is the very epitome of an Indonesian king. Neither description of Him fills me with confidence.
The whole cult of personality thing really is frightening. And He’s not even responsible for that. It’s especially depressing when we hear celebutard after celebutard making public statements about obeying Him or how they wish He had dictator powers for a while, just so He could fix everything without interference, or calling for Him to have the power to throw political opponents in jail,or the former Speaker of the House openly stating her support for giving Him absolute rule to bypass Congress. The MSM and the Leftoids in Hollywood and NY have no problem with His drone killings or warmongering because they trust His judgment on who deserves to die. St. Jon Stewart called Him on it slightly once, but it was couched in praise and St. Jon would never, ever try to turn his audience against the President over that or any other issue. It’s unquestioning faith that any religious leader would envy. There hasn’t been a single moment where a highly-trained, expert journalist at the BBC noticed this sad state of affairs, because they’re all worshipers, too. Failure on top of failure on top of failure.
The only microscopic silver lining in this disaster cloud is that there are – for now – still term limits even He can’t change.
Naughty Boy
You insulted Comrade Obama your a racist.
I read Mardell’s piece again. It really is the most profoundly wrong analysis read. Mardell writes::
“(Rubio’s) message of smaller government and lower taxation was familiar. But the tone, the setting, the appeal to the less well-off – all were so different to anything Romney said during the election that it really stood out.
This perhaps is Mr Obama’s best hope – that those Republicans who feel a need for reform may heed some of his pleas for votes for his plans. ”
Rubio’s “moderation” is Obama’s “best hope”? Astonishing.
Doesn’t Mardell understand that the President has no interest in reaching any sort of bi-partisan agreement. To the former agitator “bi-partisan agreement” means capitulation to Obama’s agenda. It is the operating procedure of all such politicians to stoke permanent discontent, keep the people divided against each other and position himself on the side of the victim. It’s all so obvious, Mardell!
Evidence is provided by what happened when John Boehner went to Obama, cap in hand, and said, “OK, the $800m in tax hikes you wanted last year? You can have them”. The response from Pharaoh was “Make that $2b.” The last thing he wanted was an agreement.
Obama is an uncompromising leftist. His constituency is made up of radical feminists, the gay lobby, the unions, the black caucus and the rich gentry Democrats. This is who he speaks to every day and with whose votes he won the last election. His task now, as he sees it, is not to defeat Rubio’s ideas but destroy Rubio. (through the tame media). Watch for that to start happening any day now. (the Mitt Romney gambit)
But Mardell doesn’t get any of this. He thinks the President is like a moderate Labour Party member. I think Mark needs to read a little more widely and meet real Americans, not the interest groups who huddle together in the current Administration’s warm embrace.
I admire Obama’s strength of character in pursuing his aims. I am angry that the reopublicans can’t articulate their message in ordinary English (or Spanish) But most of all I deplore the craven media who have betrayed generations of journalists. The BBC is nothing more than Obama’s Pravda.
Mardell is aware that the President isn’t going to be reaching across the aisle. He admitted at the BBC CoJ that he felt the President just wasn’t that good at working with others., and has written as much in at least one of his blog posts. But that’s beside the point to him, really.
The biggest problem with what Mardell is saying – and pretty much what he always says – is that bi-partisanship means doing what the President wants. So he sees Rubio’s statement as a kind of siren call for Republicans to move to the Left. Mardell has never once – and I use that word advisedly – suggested that the President needs to compromise, or that He needs to shift or that any of His policies might not be what the country wants.
Mardell knows just how far to the Left the President is. Of course from his perspective the President is correct.
As for your prediction that the knives will be out for Rubio, it’s already begun. Some CNN dopes have already been saying that his awkward water bottle moment is a career ender, and others in whatever has replaced the JournoList are saying it’s proof he’s not ready for prime time, game over, etc. I’m actually a bit surprised we haven’t seen any Beeboid tweets on that yet. I guess Mardell was too caught up in how Rubio was calling for the Republican Party to save themselves by becoming Democrats to notice, or he would have mentioned it.
A short address for Obamessiah supplicant, Mardell:-
“Obama’s Most Dishonest State of the Union Address”
By Daniel Greenfield.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obamas-most-dishonest-state-of-the-union-address/
First, to congratulate those who know how to offer a speedy correction above that serves light over heat.
As to coverage of The President’s speech, it would appear that some media now see their role more as enhancing His narrative over offering any reporting, even on a factual basis.
That’s been how the BBC sees their remit since the Birt years, re-inforced in spades by “Hugs” Boaden. Rather than report, they see their job as to explain, to offer perspectives, to help you understand correctly. Hence the large contingent of titled “editors”.
As Matt Frei (ex-BBC, former BBC Washington correspondent and anchor of BBC World News America) once said, they want to create a “rapport”, to give you an impression of what’s going on. It’s hard to think of a greater indictment.
It has… had… comments.
This debate is now closed.
Was it a debate?
Looks more like a BBC Editor telling people what he thought and the mods allowing through what they fancied.
I guess that is what passes for one there.
Where or when would we have seen this coverage? what did Mardell say?
The OP is unsubstantiated waffle.
Don’t bother reading any of the comments, then, or you might have to think about it.
This from ma liberal facebook friend:
“At work today I was helping out at the cash registers for a few minutes. A guy comes up to buy some stuff. Fairly nice young-ish guy, he smiled, he was pleasant. Before leaving, with absolutely no precedent, he picks up a copy of (I think it was) Time with the Obamas on the cover, and says “Its not everyday a turd makes it onto the cover of a magazine!” I was pretty shocked. I mean, was he trying to be funny? Was he trying to see how I’d react? Was he trying to offend me? Was he trying to start a conversation or have me joke back to him? I just said “Thanks, have a nice day.”
My distaste has nothing to do with my political stance or whether I, he or anyone else likes Barack Obama or his presidency. But why would make a statement like that? Why would you go out of your way to say something so ugly? Seriously, what would one hope to accomplish by saying something so mean to someone else that you don’t even know? I just couldn’t believe it.”
My response was: “Mow you know how Sarah Palin fans feel like ALL the time.”.
It seems, as Corporal Jones of Dad’s Army would have said, “They don’t like it up ’em”.