Showing posts with label Chris Stirewalt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Stirewalt. Show all posts

Thursday, August 7, 2014

ICYMI: President Obama's job approval is now at an all-time low of 40%. The U.S. opinion poll about Obama whose negative results were buried by the very TV network who paid for it... Surprise! It's NBC News; Thanks to Fox News Channel's Chris Stirewalt, I know what they were ignoring. @cstirewalt continues the great work at "FOX News First" of finding the news & news nuggets I want to hear more about

The following is from an email that I sent out yesterday, early Wednesday afternoon, to my always-curious and very well-informed crew of friends and associates with a News Junkie gene located around Florida and thw world beyond, who, like me, can't watch and read everything, so you have to pick and choose your times and share what you know, when you can, oui?
In retrospect I really should've blogged it and simply sent an email out with links to it, but sometimes, even after all these years of having a blog and now an ever growing Twitter feed, @hbbtruth https://twitter.com/hbbtruth you don't think of it first at the time.

My post today are my thoughts regarding something I'd read in the FOX News First daily email, which is written by Chris Stirewalt@cstirewalt, which I have previously mentioned here on the blog because of how often I see some interesting facts or anecdotes that I don't see elsewhere.

---
The poll referenced below in the Fox News newsletter that I get in my email inbox every weekday, which was financed in part by NBC News, is the very same opinion poll that last night's NBC's Evening News
conscipuously avoided mentioning last night. Really.


The very last thing that you'd expect, competition being what it is or at least used to be... once upon a time.
No, you would expect that absent some terrible/amazing story that knocks everything else off the lineup, given their direct involvement, the results of the poll would be one of the first 10 news stories reported upon, but it wasn't.
Why do you suppose that is?


That sort of attitude is precisely the sort of thing that only encourages most reasonable people, regardless of their personal or political positions, to doubt the veracity of so much of what they see reported upon -and only encourages them to wonder as I often have on my own blog over the past few years about the increasing number of legitimate news stories I know about taking place in South Florida that are either being consciously ignored, spiked or buried.

Despite all the advances in technology over the last two decades with regards to improved newsgathering equipment that makes it easier than ever to report, in my part of South Florida, more than ever, the stories that are being ignored by the news media greatly outnumber the ones that are actually reported upon in some manner or fashion, no matter how compelling or important they genuinely are.
A muzzled or lethargic press is not the same thing as a free press, no matter how many more instances we see all the time of this discouraging attitude.

-This is just an excerpt- see bottom for whole newsletter
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Fox News First Daily Politics
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 09:51:27 -0400
Subject: Fox News First -- Crisis mode: Obama leadership woes sinking
Dem hopes | Walsh heading for the exits? | Grimes gets a 'Billigan'
from Bubba | Establishment scores, doesn't sweep in primaries | What
cheese?

FOX News First:  August 6
By Chris Stirewalt

CRISIS MODE: OBAMA LEADERSHIP WOES SINKING DEM HOPES

The WSJ/NBC News poll dropped like a bucket of cold water on Washington, where fevered attacks over legislative minutiae and blame-placing in recent weeks has caused politicians to forget what is actually going on. And what’s going on is that Americans are deeply frustrated with their president, his refusal to govern by normal means and his handling of crises at our border and around the world. Foreign policy seldom intrudes into the midterm election discussion, but when the world seems to be falling apart, Americans get anxious and upset with their commander in chief and his party. That’s clearly what’s happening here. Sixty percent of respondents said the U.S. is in decline, only 35 percent were satisfied with America’s role in the world, and just 21 percent said that the next generation would be better off.



The president likes to say that he can act alone on domestic issues, a dubious supposition. But on international affairs, an area in which American presidents have enormous latitude, the situation is dire.
Respondents offered a negative assessment of the U.S. response to the Ukrainian war, the Syrian civil war, the conflict in Gaza, the rise of ISIS and especially the flow of illegal immigrant minors across the southern border. Just 11 percent were satisfied with the handling of the border crisis. Overall, just 36 percent of respondents approved of Obama’s handling of foreign policy, 12 points lower than ahead of the 2010 vote.



The consequences for November are ominous for Democrats. Republicans are in slightly better shape in the generic-ballot test than they were at this point in 2010, the year that a wave election washed away the Democratic majority in the House. The president’s job approval, now at an all-time low of 40 percent in this poll, is 7 points lower than it was four years ago. The reality is setting in that Democratic hopes of
holding the Senate are winnowing, a realization that could turn a bad year into a rout. The president promises more executive action to mobilize base supporters on immigration and corporate taxes, but with numbers like these, Democrats will be increasingly unwilling to hustle for what looks like a lost cause. And the harder the president goes in rallying his base, the deeper he will sink in the estimation of moderate voters who are so fed up with his administration.



-- 90 days until Nov. 4 --


You can read the whole thing here, via Chris Stirewalt's Twitter account:





Thursday, May 1, 2014

Media Narrative & Optics as the most important thing in public policy, to the detriment of real facts. Equally true in South Florida now with proposed David Beckham/MLS PortMiami soccer stadium as well as for mendacious Benghazi response in 2012 by stonewalling Obama White House, as Sharyl Attkisson can attest to


























Media Narrative & Optics as the most important thing in public policy, to the detriment of real facts. Equally true in South Florida now with proposed David Beckham/MLS Port of Miami soccer stadium as well as for Benghazi response in 2012 by stonewalling Obama White House, as Sharyl Attkisson can attest to


The attempt to successfully frame a media narrative with favorable optics, mentioned at the top in Chris Stirewalt's tweet and which is today's FOX News First newsletter 
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/01/white-house-correspondence-indeed/
is press management of the sort that we see everywhere and everyday, from here in South Florida to Stockholm, sometimes, in quite humorous or ham-handed ways if observant people are paying close attention.

And yet all too often, the news media fall for it hook-line-and-sinker and don't bring the sort of critical thinking to bear on the issue that they ought to, caught up as they are by the sight of the cute bear riding the bicycle in a circle in front of them, to ask questions that need to be asked.

In Miami, recently, questions like that included why should real soccer fans like me care about the prospective views from a proposed stadium at the Port of Miami more than they care about the actual comfort level and aesthetics they feel once inside of the stadium, and how easy it is to get to for the largest number of prospective fans to get to and from the stadium, with any hope, near public transit facilities that make that trip easy, which is good for everyone involved.

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player
Local10 video: Public hearing held on MLS stadium in PortMiami 
April 23, 2014 07:42:06 PM EDT   
Updated April 23, 2014 07:49:36 PM EDT
The mayor of Miami Beach called a public hearing Wednesday because he feels that a stadium in PortMiami will affect the already congested commute for residents.
But early on, though not true in the Local10 news video above, the cute bear on the bicycle on that issue, David Beckham, was all that the early news stories in South Florida largely focused on, which is precisely what his ownership group wanted, even as a few highly-observant and popular South Florida bloggers and tweeters of distinction and serious news personalities like Bill Cooke at Random Pixels blog, film/TV director Billy Corben and Local10's Senior Political Reporter Michael Putney were asking and writing about with a real purpose.






See conversations in the tweets!



David Beckham Meets With Florida Gov. Rick Scott Lobbying for New Stadium for Miami MLS Project 
Ed Molina, staff@latinopost.com
March 28, 2014 02:49 PM EDT 
http://www.latinopost.com/articles/5212/20140328/david-beckham-meets-with-florida-gov-rick-scott-lobbying-for-new-stadium-for-miami-mls-project.htm

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player
This Week in South Florida
Local10 video: "Local 10's Michael Putney talks with local leading members of the Beckham team and a Miami commissioner about why location they've set their sights on for the new major league soccer stadium and if it's a good one."
March 30, 2014 01:31:19 PM EDT
Updated March 30 2014 04:14:19 PM EDT
http://www.local10.com/news/this-week-in-south-florida-march-30/25236456


Local10 video: War of Words over David Beckham's plans for soccer stadium. Port Miami is second largest economic generator in Miami-Dade County  Published On: April 30, 2014 06:34:23 PM EDT 
Updated April 30 2014 06:42:45 PM EDT

But as I've lamented so many times over the years on this blog over the past seven years, spouting common sense and asking pointed questions makes them (me) a distinct minority in this area of the country, unfortunately.

The anger we now see among some in the U.S. press corps is, for some of us at least, a little too late and convenient, to say nothing of being too over-the-top, especially given how easily, via CW group think, they abandoned their natural (accurate) initial suspicions and replaced that by eagerly swallowing the Obama Administration's feeble excuses about a YouTube video that hardly anyone had ever seen or heard of prior to them offering it up as a reason for protests in Cairo.

The Beltway Media is mad at themselves, obviously, but since they can hardly blame themselves, they are now wildly pointing fingers at others.
After the horse is long gone out of the barn.

If you missed Sharyl Attkisson's very revealing interview with Glenn Beck on Wednesday morning regarding the very curious circumstances she's been in for the past 18 months, from her being "watched" and having her work computer hacked -by ???- plus the problems she had at CBS News with getting reports on Benghazi on-air, and her recent departure from there, see the context and video here:

The Blaze
Sharyl Attkisson on the One Thing People Should Be ‘Standing Up on Buildings and Screaming’ About 
April 30, 2014 1:50pm  
Erica Ritz

That we are only now learning via a Judicial Watch FOIA request that the author of the Obama White House talking points about the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the death of four Americans, Ben Rhodes, would turn out to be the brother of the President of CBS News, is, of course, obviously a delicious wild card.
A wild card that none of us who were always suspicious of the White House narrative and Susan Rice's self-serving comments regarding a YouTube video, could've ever guessed at months and months ago.

By the way, for what it's worth, the Fox News First newsletter I received this morning that mentions some of these issues and which prompted me to do this blog post, has consistently proven over the past eight months to be much-more accurate and fair -even prescient- than I'd have initially guessed when I first subscribed last year.
You might want to sign up, too.
Just saying...