Media Lovefest in Charlotte

[Dusty]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...d13_story.html

The Democratic National Convention is just getting underway, but already I’ve been given the treatment. Lots of treatments, actually.

I’ve had my deltoids massaged in candlelight by a licensed therapist; had a foaming pore cleanser and mask applied to my face by an aesthetician; been instructed in the Warrior, Half-Sun Salute and Dancer poses by a yoga instructor; and crawled into a hanging cocoon for a “meditative snooze.” I worked up quite an appetite doing all this, so I ordered vegan corn chowder and gluten-free chicken chile verde washed down with Fiji water — all courtesy of the Huffington Post.

Ostensibly, the Huffington Post Oasis offers these spa services gratis to convention delegates as well as to media types. But in practice, said Brendan McDonald, whose Lyfe Kitchen serves the Oasis’s healthy fare, “I’ve only seen the likes of you.”

Do not be deceived by all that talk of delegates and floor speeches: This is a convention of the media, by the media and for the media. There are some 15,000 representatives of the media here for the convention, and only about 5,000 delegates. This mathematical imbalance means most journalists spend their time with other journalists at events sponsored by corporations and hosted by media organizations for the purpose of entertaining advertisers and promoting themselves to each other.

There’s the Politico Hub (Ketel One Martini bar!), the Bloomberg Link (hot breakfast and goodie bags!), the CNN Grill, the MSNBC Experience and many more. The Atlantic, National Journal and CBS started offering mimosas at 9:30 a.m., and the Hill had a full bar open at 10:30 a.m. in its hospitality suite atop the Charlotte City Club. I attended these events for five hours straight on Tuesday and could not identify a single delegate.

Last week’s storm-shortened Republican convention in Tampa, visited by a similar media mob, produced no bounce in the polls for Mitt Romney. The situation in Charlotte — thousands of idle journalists and not a serious news story in sight — is one more reason to consign political conventions to the dustbin of history.

My Tuesday began at the Politico Hub, where Mike Allen was interviewing President Obama’s confidant Valerie Jarrett.

“He’s a human being and he likes to laugh,” Jarrett disclosed.

Allen asked if it’s true that “they’re incredible parents.”

“They’re absolutely amazing,” Jarrett confirmed.

“The young ladies have turned out to be remarkably normal, right?”

“They are very normal.”

The dozens of reporters in the crowd, NBC’s Mike Isikoff and the Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove among them, munched on scones and fruit (sponsor: Bank of America). Nearby were other pieces of the Hub to be used later in the day: a bar (sponsored by BAE Systems and others) and a Coca-Cola “Refresh Station.”

An hour later, the Bloomberg Link held its breakfast event — also featuring Jarrett. Attendees, including Time’s Mark Halperin, BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith and three from The Post editorial page, got purple Bloomberg beachbags containing sunglasses and water bottles. The Bloomberg hosts were pleased with their glitzy digs, two floors above the plaza with MSNBC’s set. “It’s like spring break out there, and this is like the cool party everybody wants to get into,” one Bloomberg guy explained to a guest.

In the plaza, a whiteboard listed MSNBC’s scheduled festivities, including a pizza party at noon, “Rev. Al’s Blueberry Pie Cafe” at 6 p.m., and viewing parties throughout the day. This was much like the offering at the nearby CNN Grill, which sent out daily updates with the political and media stars “sighted” at the grill, including Charlie Rose, Dave Barry, Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper.

From there, I hurried to the National Journal-CBS Breakfast (sponsors include United Technologies, Volkswagen and Pfizer), which featured Obama pollster Joel Benenson informing a roomful of journalists that the president’s crowds have been getting bigger.

There was little time to process this wisdom, because I was late for a breakfast done by the Hill (sponsors include Tyco, Allstate and lobbying firm Holland and Knight), where Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) announced that Obama’s advisers have been “astonishingly successful.” By then I was behind for the Yahoo-ABC News event, so I missed Obama campaign manager Jim Messina telling the roomful of reporters that “the president is building an economy built to last.”

There were a dozen media events to go, including Asian-fusion food at Politico, Politics and Pints trivia with The Post’s Chris Cillizza, and a RealClearPolitics party. But if I went to the late-night BuzzFeed party at a children’s museum, I wondered, could I still make it to Wednesday’s breakfast sponsored by Bloomberg and The Post?

Possibly — but I’d need a nap at the Huffington Post.

Snip

[Barbarian]

I suddenly feel an odd mix of anger and nausea.

[Streck-Fu]

Originally Posted by Barbarian

I suddenly feel an odd mix of anger and nausea.

A common reaction when sucker punched.....

[Richard]

SSDD

http://news.yahoo.com/15-000-media-c...170800307.html

And so it goes...

Richard

[Badger52]

Media has always been a cheap date.

[afchic]

If CNN is Fact Checking the DNC.... Well Hell MUST be freezing over

CNN Fact Check: About those 4.5 million jobs ...

CNN Reality Check: 4.5 million jobs created?

(CNN) -- Anyone watching the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night heard the number 4.5 million several times.

"Despite incredible odds and united Republican opposition, our president took action, and now we've seen 4.5 million new jobs," San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, the party's keynote speaker, said.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served as President Barack Obama's chief of staff, and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who followed Obama's November rival Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts, both cited the same number.

Sights and sounds from the DNC

It's a big-sounding number, given the still-sputtering job market. So we're giving it a close eyeballing.

The facts:

The number Castro cites is an accurate description of the growth of private-sector jobs since January 2010, when the long, steep slide in employment finally hit bottom. But while a total of 4.5 million jobs sounds great, it's not the whole picture.
Watch full speech of Julian CastroNonfarm private payrolls hit a post-recession low of 106.8 million that month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figure currently stands at 111.3 million as of July.

While that is indeed a gain of 4.5 million, it's only a net gain of 300,000 over the course of the Obama administration to date. The private jobs figure stood at 111 million in January 2009, the month Obama took office.And total nonfarm payrolls, including government workers, are down from 133.6 million workers at the beginning of 2009 to 133.2 million in July 2012. There's been a net loss of nearly 1 million public-sector jobs since Obama took office, despite a surge in temporary hiring for the 2010 census.
Meanwhile, the jobs that have come back aren't the same ones that were lost.

Are you better off?

According to a study released last week by the liberal-leaning National Employment Law Project, low-wage fields such as retail sales and food service are adding jobs nearly three times as fast as higher-paid occupations.

Conclusion:

The figure of 4.5 million jobs is accurate if you look at the most favorable period and category for the administration. But overall, there are still fewer people working now than when Obama took office at the height of the recession

[XngZeRubicon]

Originally Posted by afchic

If.

While that is indeed a gain of 4.5 million, it's only a net gain of 300,000 over the course of the Obama administration to date. The private jobs figure stood at 111 million in January 2009, the month Obama took office.And total nonfarm payrolls, including government workers, are down from 133.6 million workers at the beginning of 2009 to 133.2 million in July 2012. There's been a net loss of nearly 1 million public-sector jobs since Obama took office, despite a surge in temporary hiring for the 2010 census.
Meanwhile, the jobs that have come back aren't the same ones that were lost.

I know, don't you love how they fail to mention that NET, NET....they lost more jobs than they "made" over the past three and a half years?

I also love how the debt clock ticked over to the $16 TRILLION number during the first day of their convention. I don't think I saw one news network (other than Fox) mention it. Maybe I just missed it.

Oh heck, though....16 million, 16 billion, 16 trillion.....it's all the same to many of those folks. And money grows on trees anyway.

[tonyz]

FACT CHECK: FIRST LADY'S FALSE FAIRY TALE OF STRUGGLE

Breitbart
by JOEL B. POLLAK 5 Sep 2012, 5:58 AM PDT

First Lady Michelle Obama’s pitch to voters last night relied on the premise that she and her husband understand what it is to struggle to make ends meet. She spoke movingly about their early years--about how a young Barack Obama drove a car that was “rusted out" and found his furniture “in a dumpster,” how they both came from families that had to “scrape by.” Her fairy tale--however well-delivered--was one great, big, colorful lie.

Both Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama began their adult lives with a leg up on the rest of America. They attended elite schools: Michelle went to Whitney Young, the public magnet school for Chicago’s upper class, while Barack attended Punahou, the private prep school for the top stratum of Hawaiian society. They were accepted to Ivy League schools despite undistinguished credentials, and both attended Harvard Law School.

“[B]elieve it or not, when we were first married, our combined monthly student loan bills were actually higher than our mortgage,” Michelle said. That sounds like a raw deal--but in fact reflects their fortunate circumstances. They had both just graduated from a very expensive law school, and their combined income from cushy law firm jobs dwarfed the repayments. Barack also soon enjoyed a second salary from the University of Chicago.

They had expensive tastes, reflected in the $277,500 two-bedroom condo they bought in 1993--a high price even by today’s standards. Several years later, they moved into their $1.65 million mansion in Hyde Park--with the help of fraudster Tony Rezko. Barack often told a story of hardship on the campaign trail in 2008 about having his credit card declined--once. The fact that he thought this counted as real hardship speaks volumes.

As her husband moved onto the national political stage, Michelle Obama began to enjoy a lavish lifestyle at taxpayer expense, directly and indirectly. When Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, he obtained a $1 million earmark for the University of Chicago Hospital--and his wife’s salary as Vice President for Community Affairs jumped from $121,910 to $316,962. Her job: pushing poor, uninsured patients to other hospitals.

As First Lady, Michelle Obama has lived high on the hog while the rest of the country has suffered through an extraordinary recession. In 2010, she and her entourage decamped to Spain for a lavish vacation. That summer, the Obamas encouraged Americans to visit the Gulf coast after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which threatened tourism in the region. They promptly jetted off to Maine for their own summer holiday.

This summer, the Obamas skipped their usual summer trip to the wealthy playground of Martha’s Vineyard--months after Michelle and her daughters had enjoyed an expensive winter skiing trip in Aspen. And, of course, there are the frequent pilgrimages to Hawaii, Some of their family’s comfort, of course, comes from private income, principally Barack Obama’s book sales--yet even that wealth is a spin-off of Obama’s political career.

If, as the Democrats eagerly pointing out, Mitt Romney enjoyed the privilege of private wealth, the Obamas have enjoyed privilege funded by public money and public life. And until entering the national spotlight, they gave little to charity, contributing instead to a church that preached racial grievance. “[T]ruth matters,” Michelle Obama told the nation last night. That, too, is a lie--because so far, she has evaded it without consequence.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...le-of-Struggle

[Red Flag 1]

The bucks spent on both conventions is shameful at best. Too bad some of this wasted funding can't be plopped down on the debt this nation is facing. There is no news at either convention; and yet, look at all the media. We know who was running two weeks ago, nothing has changed. Both conventions present perfect picture of waste, fraud and abuse of citizen's funds. Take all that funding, divert it to folks who need it. Small business's owners, Military Vets who are unable to find work, etc., they would be better off; and, the convention outcomes will still be what they are. This stuff is just beyond reason.

Back to my little hole here in "The Valley".

RF 1

[Inflexible Six]

delete

[tunanut]

But look at all the excitement ya'll are missing.
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i4...S/IMAG1678.jpg
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i4...S/IMAG1694.jpg

The SS and DHS has the Occupy folks under tight survielance. I wanted to go talk to them, but am afraid of being considered one of them. They're not allowing them to gather together in groups and it would be awefully redneck of me to end up in jail on my son's birthday. Today is another day though.

http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i4...S/IMAG1696.jpg

http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i4...S/IMAG1693.jpg

[Razor]

Originally Posted by tunanut

http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i4...S/IMAG1678.jpg

So that's one of those giant protesting vaginas everyone was talking about?

[tunanut]

Down with big corporations

http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i4...S/IMAG1723.jpg

I recogignize that camo.
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i4...S/IMAG1718.jpg

Charging station and free wifi for you Iphone's. They are so ironic.
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i4...S/IMAG1728.jpg

The whole scene make me chuckle. Looks like about 30,000 undistributed tickets made them change the venue tonight from BofA stadium for a small fee of about 1 million. All those empty seats wouldn't look too good on TV. oh wait,,, this just in. They moved it because of a chance of rain.

[Sigaba]

There was a nice cat fight on Jessica Alba's Instagram feed. The brawl demonstrated a key difference between men and women when it comes to political discussions. Ms. Alba was posting photos of herself, Eva Longoria, and ScarJo ... what's the problem?

And then there was this <<LINK>>!

Meanwhile, the trumpets of flatulence were in full blast over on Twitter. I may have motivated one celebrity to dial it down, got blocked by a B-lister, and helped to put another B-lister under the probing glare of her network. (To me, what makes actors/musicians/entertainers stupid is not their political views, but the way they bite the hands that feed them when they express those views in ways that are disrespectful to potential viewers.)