You have to figure that after they turned that nothingburger of a story about age-old sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain into a firestorm of a narrative, Politico has pretty much decided that it’s just too much work to keep up the false pretense that they’re not in the tank for the left, most especially Obama.

This sappy love letter written yesterday to Their Precious One probably taught the DNC a thing or two about how to create propaganda:

Where are the obvious transitions, the segues that TV news loves so much?

I’ve seen them so strained that while anchoring a newscast I once refused to read a segue that went from Thanksgiving dinner to a double fatal car accident. It went something like this, “One local family will not be enjoying their Thanksgiving dinner because they were killed while driving south on I-15.”  Yes — not this year’s dinner, or next year’s or the year after. Producers in newsrooms consider it an art to be able to tie stories together so that the viewers can feel the “flow” of a newscast. Many producers take great delight in being able to tie stories together that have no natural tie. Yes, we have all seen new anchors strain at trying to tie stories together.

Now the strain is to totally ignore the perfect segue.

I’ve been waiting patiently to see one of the net’s do this Blizzard Of 2010 story and follow it with …” Meanwhile, President Obama is in Hawaii playing his 4^th or 5^th round of golf during his vacation.” Hummmmm. Haven’t seen that yet. Good Morning America had both the snow story and an Obama story in their opening segment on Monday, but they painfully put a story about stolen fertility eggs between Storm Watch2010 and Obama’s support of Michael Vick. A natural transition lost, or intentionally avoided. Do not believe things like this happen by accident. Placement of stories are carefully considered to give a newscast the flow that they so badly want.  In this case, flow was ignored to protect Dear Leader.

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From the Boston Herald, the lede of the weekend:

EDGARTOWN – Another Sunday, another missed opportunity for President Obama to prove to America he’s not a Muslim.

But instead of attending church services at one of the dozens and dozens of quaint, island Christian churches yesterday morning, the commander in chief hit Our Lady of the Fairways, aka the Vineyard Golf Club, yet again, to play 18.

“Our Lady of the Fairways” — ouch:

Anyway, it was Obama’s second outing to the posh, private golf club since landing Thursday on The Rock. The prez teed off at 8:30 a.m. under cloudy, drizzly skies. A perfect day to be inside. Like, say, in church!

Now you’d think, with polls showing that one in five Americans believe Obama is a Muslim – and with the furor over the president’s flip-flops on the Ground Zero mosque – that his White House handlers might have orchestrated a nice little photo op of the first family doing a little vacation worshiping yesterday morning.

Because, despite the administration’s insistence that Barry is a Christian and that he prays daily, most Americans have noticed that Obama rarely attends church. That’s a noticeable departure from previous presidents, such as George W. Bush and Clinton, who were on their knees every Sunday.

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In case you thought the “non-partisan media company” known as Politico was an objective news organization, playing politics right down the middle (as they promised they would when they started), think again. From today’s sob story about how the media is being mean to Michelle Obama:

It’s been a long time since Michelle Obama has been attacked like this.

The first lady’s lavish Spanish vacation was the lead story in the Drudge Report for days. Political columnists and commentators lampooned her as a 21st-century Marie Antoinette, unwinding at a luxury resort while unemployment lingers near 10 percent and President Barack Obama’s poll numbers fade. And headlines set off political sirens: Scandal! Tone deaf! Elitist!

Tone deaf? Elitist?

Yet still, those mean conservatives just won’t let the poor woman have her umpteenth vacation before the First Family, you know, goes on vacation again:

The attacks from right-wing commentators — and a handful of left-leaning pundits — produced the first harsh critiques against the first lady since the heated days of the 2008 presidential campaign when she told an audience that America had finally improved: “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.”

The outrage from conservatives could foreshadow how Republicans might treat the first lady when she sets out to stump for Democrats during midterm elections. When Obama returns to the campaign trail, it could expose her to attacks by Republicans and jeopardize her new, more polished image as a modern woman balancing a career, children and marriage to the leader of the free world.

Ya think? (more…)

In June 2007 Castro’s Stalinist regime held a “tourism fair” in Havana to kick-off an ambitious plan to boost the Cuban military’s tourist booty. By some peculiar coincidence NBC’s Today Show decided to broadcast from Havana that very week. Amidst smiling, clapping, dancing tourists, Matt Lauer and Andrea Mitchell advised viewers on how to legally vacation in Cuba.

Don’t look for this from NBC, but Castro’s Soviet-trained and armed military and secret police own most of Cuba’s tourist facilities. Along with providing these inquisitive Cuban officials with certain “insights” regarding visitors to Castro’s fiefdom, this set-up also insures that most of the money that tourists spend in Cuba lands in the pocket of the only people in Cuba with guns.

Yet Castro apologists and/or agents (both on the payroll and off) keep insisting that a flood of rich Western tourists will magically smother Cuban Stalinism whereupon the island nation will quickly mutate into a bigger (and more historic and picturesque) Cozumel. This logic (which Matt and Andrea naturally shared) seems to go something like this: rewarding and enriching the KGB-trained and heavily armed guardians of Cuba’s Stalinist status-quo will magically convert them into instant opponents of that Stalinist status quo.

Amazingly, this line of reasoning fails to convince those with first-hand experience under Cuba’s Stalinist regime. But never mind this insufferable rabble of “Cuban-American right-wing crackpots!” and their congressional allies. And never mind the evidence. (more…)