Senate reaches compromise, on the backs of education / Media giving heavy exposure to Republican critics

THE U.S. SENATE HAS APPARENTLY SETTLED ON A COMPROMISE ON PRES. OBAMA'S STIMULUS PACKAGE
Reports early Friday (2/06/09) evening indicated that a Senate compromise was made. The compromise was reached via the support of three Republicans.

NEEDY SCHOOLS TO PAY FOR COMPROMISE
The Republicans, who gave us eight years of the president (G.W. Bush) who claimed to be the education president, insisted on a thick host of cuts.
Prominent among the cuts was education spending. This will hurt financially needy districts profoundly. They can look forward to increases of student class sizes, such as 30 students in a kindergarten class.

The cuts will pit district against district and school against school (given the combination of cuts and the protection of pay for No Child Left Behind "NCLB"); this from Huffington Post:

In a key reduction from the bill that reached the Senate floor earlier in the week, $40 billion would be cut from a "fiscal stabilization fund" for state governments' education costs, though $14 billion to boost the maximum for college Pell Grants by $400 to $5,250 would be preserved, as would aid to local school districts for the No Child Left Behind law and special education.

2010 RACES START NOW
The Democrats need to call attention to the destructive role that Republicans have played in this mess. When cities and states have to slash budgets, due to Republican-triggered cuts, the Democrats need to publicly highlight this. When the recovery is weak, because of modest federal infusions of cash, Democrats need to call attention to the Republican pressures for austere financial contributions to the recovery.

Democrats need to call attention to the guns/butter dichotomy. Every dollar for the military is money withheld from useful social spending or useful injection into the civilian economy.

The Democrats need to start a drumbeat of these talking points NOW. There are many vulnerable Republican senate incumbents, in seats in economically depressed areas, e.g., George Voinovich of Ohio. The Republicans need to go. Spector too. The Republican pair in Maine are lucky that their seats aren't up for reelection in 2010. They (Collins and Snowe of Maine) and the other so-called moderates have shown their true colors on this urgent stimulus package. Moderate Republicans are generally liberal on social issues and conservative on economic issues. That kind of posture is not helpful in this true national emergency.

President Obama has offered an olive branch to the Republicans. They have not responded in kind --not even the moderates. Instead, they have, as he has recently pointed out, pursued the same old thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.

*THANKFULLY, HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI IS COMMITTED TO PROPELLING A STRONG BILL THROUGH CONGRESS, AGAINST THE CALLS FOR BIPARTISANSHIP*
From Glenn Thrush and Patrick O'Connor at Politico, Friday afternoon (2/7/09):

In a statement sure to rile Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Friday dismissed calls for bipartisanship as “process” arguments extraneous to passing a stimulus bill — and warned Senate Democrats against slashing proposed increases to education spending.
. . . .
“Washington seems consumed in the process argument of bipartisanship, when the rest of the country says they need this bill,” the California Democrat said, seeming to sweep aside the Obama administration initial desire to have broad GOP support for the plan.

“We must have a bill [quickly],” she said, in a clear message to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has spent the past two days wrangling with moderates who want to cut proposed education funding for the states by as much as $50 billion.

“These cuts are very damaging — [the House bill] was put together very carefully. ... The funding goes directly to school districts, they are stimulative because they maintain jobs instead of cutting jobs.”

NETWORKS DEMONSTRATE BIAS IN BOOKING MORE REPUBLICAN APPEARANCES THAN DEMOCRATIC APPEARANCES
The Democrats need to hold press conferences, to call attention to the media bias for Republicans, a bias that has led to a (recent) public appetite for austerity.
See this study at ThinkProgress.org, for factual demonstration of this partisan bias in booking of guests.

REPORT: GOP Lawmakers Outnumber Dem Lawmakers By Almost 2 To 1 In Cable News Stimulus Debate Again»

Last week, ThinkProgress released a report showing that, in the debate over the House economic recovery bill on the five cable news networks, Republican members of Congress outnumbered their Democratic counterparts by a ratio of 2 to 1. The analysis tallied interview segments about the stimulus on CNBC, Fox Business, Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC during a three-day period, finding that the networks had hosted Republican lawmakers 51 times and Democratic lawmakers only 26 times.

The economic recovery package passed the House last week with zero Republican votes, shifting the focus to the Senate. Though the venue has changed, the debate on cable has not improved much.

In a new analysis, ThinkProgress has found that Republican lawmakers outnumbered Democratic lawmakers 75 to 41 on cable news interviews by members of Congress (from 6am on Monday 2/2 through 11pm on Thursday 2/5):



Some observations from our analysis:

* Last week, Fox News came the closest to balance with 8 Republicans and 6 Democrats. But the so-called “fair and balanced” network was not able to maintain such a ratio this week, hosting 24 Republicans and only 11 Democrats.

* The business news networks were particularly egregious this week. CNBC had more than twice as many conservatives, with 14 Republicans and 6 Democrats. Fox Business was even worse, hosting 20 Republicans for just 4 Democrats.

* In the previous study, the supposedly liberal MSNBC favored Republicans 15 to 9. This week, however, MSNBC became the only network to host more Democratic members of Congress than Republicans, with 17 Democrats and 12 Republicans.

Though the imbalance is already stark, the tilt of the coverage would have been even more lopsided if the analysis had been broken down into whether a lawmaker who appeared on TV was a supporter or a critic of the economic recovery plan. Some of the most frequent Democratic guests this week were outspoken critics of the proposed stimulus plans, such as Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Kent Conrad (D-ND).

Fortunately, the imbalance on the networks is not going unnoticed. A House Democratic leadership aide told Politico’s Michael Calderone yesterday that “what happened with cable last week is that Republican House members were the only show in town.” A “very senior” Democratic aide told The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent that the leadership is “aware of the problem and are taking steps to fix it.” The aide noted that “there is also an onus on producers to remedy this issue.”

Networks protest blocked access to Palin; Couric interview explains why access is blocked

The McCain/Palin handlers sequestered Gov. Sarah Palin away from the television networks on the occasion of Palin's visits with international leaders at the United Nations. {{Scroll below for frightening comments Palin made to CBS' Couric.}}
Huffington Post issued a compilation of reports from major media outlets (CBS, AP, ABC). This excerpt from ABC News summed up the situation:

There's a battle going on right now over how the networks will be allowed to cover Sarah Palin's big day of visits in NY with world leaders. Palin is scheduled to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai shortly, followed by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and then with McCain advisor, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The networks had arranged for a "pool" camera- one camera to cover the meetings, whose video would be pooled or shared with all networks. Such arrangements are standard when dealing with intimate high-level meetings between leaders and candidates. But typically, along with cameras, there is an editorial presence-- at least one print reporter, one TV reporter and one radio reporter is standard. Today, the McCain campaign had said it would allow only one editorial person inside. Now, the campaign is saying it wants only the camera inside with no editorial presence. All of the networks are objecting. Stay tuned.

P.S.: The networks have just voted to BAN any use of the photographs/video in protest.

* * *
A major CNN female anchor, Campbell Brown, charged the McCain campaign's treatment of Palin as sexist. The writer wondered whether this cloistering away of the VP pick would have happened were the VP nominee a man.
* * *
Sarah Palin's appearance with CBS News' Katie Couric resolved any questions as to why the McCain/Palin handlers have kept the media away from Palin: She can be an unmitigated disaster when she is allowed to speak unscripted. Commentators such as myself have already expressed great discomfort with her comments. Her statements about Russia, Alaska and her fitness to lead in the international stage suggest to this writer naivete, ignorance and a flippant attitude toward the seriousness of having a deep understanding of international relations. Her statements to Couric profoundly underscore this impression, as reported this afternoon in in the Huffington Post:

COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?


PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land-- boundary that we have with-- Canada. It-- it's funny that a comment like that was-- kind of made to-- cari-- I don't know, you know? Reporters--

COURIC: Mock?

PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our-- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia--

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.

URL link for above Couric interview.

Click here for a link to CBS News video showing the dizzyingly disorganized melange of cliches that constitutes Palin's thought [in Couric's interview with Palin]. All she does is string together phrases composed of standard economy and foreign policy buzzwords. Her speech does not indicate someone that has a well-conceived conception of policy.