This week, it's useful to remember that the traditional media believes:

• Spending is not stimulus

  -AND-

• Social Security is in crisis

Apparently, Republicans can blatantly make factually incorrect statements about how money works. And unless there's a Barney Frank around to correct them, the statements stand as fact.

This is why I'm especially wary of excessive bipartisan gestures from the administration - I'm just not confident any of it will make it to the public's ears unwarped. Republicans will just whine that Obama's ignoring them; the sound bite people hear on their car radio during a news break will sound something like: "President Obama says he wants bipartisan input, but Republican leaders say it's too little, too late."

Update [2009-2-2 14:1:54 by Josh Orton]: And here's David Broder, the worshiped dean of the Washington media, conflating TARP spending (which aims to recapitalize our banking) with a stimulus bill (which primarily spends money to create jobs). Of course it's impossible to project a good-faith process with Republicans - our national media doesn't know legislative apples from oranges.

The futility reminds me of an analogy a friend once thought-up: you can't sit down with a monkey and expect a game of chess. You'll move a knight; he'll throw feces at your head.

Update [2009-2-2 14:58:53 by Todd Beeton]:On Friday, a rightwing member of Congress, I'm forgetting which one, was on MSNBC and called the stimulus package "a bailout" twice and Andrea Mitchell didn't once correct him. Ahh, yes, our liberal media at work.

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This is not much of a diary, but I just had to pass this on. I LOVE this line!

Sleeping with a Secessionist ...

Do we want a separtist with easy access to the centers of power in the nation?

What would it mean to have a Vice President (likely President) sleeping with a separtist?

This question is essentially absent from the pages of traditional media.  

Imagine if Michelle Obama were a registered member of the Black Panthers until 2002?  Imagine the drumbeat of outrage that all Americans would hear.  About Todd "My Guy" Palin's separtist credentials?  Crickets chirping in the night ...  

Sarah Palin has not just sleeping with a separtist but clearly seems to be in the realm of fellow traveler.

Read the rest of  A Siegel's diary at Progressive Blue:
http://www.progressiveblue.com/showDiary .do?diaryId=2524

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Sen. John McCain's VP nominee Gov. Sarah Palin continues to make her claim that she said, "Thanks, but no thanks," to the federal earmark for the Bridge To Nowhere. Palin's claims have been debunked by Talking Points Memo and Alaska TV news.

Why is it so important for the McCain campaign to manufacture their own reality on this matter?

How should activists respond to faulty coverage?

As Steven Benen (Washington Monthly) points out, the traditional media has found ways to dodge the fact that Palin and McCain are saying things that are objectively not true.

CNN had a segment this morning about Sarah Palin lying on her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere, but instead of delving into the McCain campaign's apparent inability to tell the truth, CNN's John Roberts asked why Barack Obama is having trouble making the truth "stick."....

At that point, Roberts did what CNN tends to do -- turn to a Republican to offer a competing side to the truth. In this case, Alex Castellanos said the media should be "a little gentle" with Sarah Palin's obviously false claims. "The amazing thing about Sarah Palin is when she became governor she actually stood up and said no" to federal pork, he said.

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Yesterday, when MSNBC's First Read immediately debunked McCain's latest Obama lie, I hoped it was part of a trend.

But as compiled by Talking Points Memo, we see that most major news outlets failed to call out the false premise of McCain's ad attacking Obama for canceling his visit to a U.S. Army base in Germany. Presenting a lie and the truth as two sides of an argument is not journalism. It's stenography.

And as Todd notes, Hagel only seems to simply express disappointment that McCain isn't meeting his usually mythical high standards, admitting that, regarding McCain's smear ad, "I do not think it was appropriate."

When a passenger on a crowded flight brings a yipping dog on board, that's inappropriate. This is a smear.

And they keep coming:

The McCain campaign has just ratcheted up the rhetoric on this "controversy" with yet another misleading statement, this one in the name of Chief Warrant Officer (4th class) Michael J. Durant:

   "Over the last week, Barack Obama made time in his busy schedule to hold a rally with 200,000 Germans in Berlin, hold a press conference with French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Paris, and hold a solo press conference in front of 10 Downing Street in London. The Obama campaign had also scheduled a visit with wounded U.S. troops at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, but this stop was canceled after it became clear that campaign staff, and the traveling press corps, would not be allowed to accompany Senator Obama."

   "I've spent time at Ramstein recovering from wounds received in the service of my country, and I'm sure that Senator Obama could have made no better use of his time than to meet with our men and women in uniform there. That Barack Obama believes otherwise casts serious doubt on his judgment and calls into question his priorities."

Marc Ambinder apparently super-glued on his villager's hat and decided that this strategy is actually smart Republican "partisanship" on the part of McCain. To Ambinder, McCain is engaging in "repetitive, reactive taunting of Barack Obama."

How inappropriate.

Update [2008-7-28 15:0:37 by Todd Beeton]:Credit where credit is due: Andrea Mitchell calls the McCain ad "literally not true."

Getting closer.

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