Screaming at the Radio

As I listened to the debate last night, there were several statements by Obama that leapt out at me. I was driving at the time, so I was screaming at John McCain to please pick up on what was just said and hit back hard. Although there were several responses by McCain I appreciated, in at least one case he missed a golden opportunity to nail Obama to the wall. Here are some statements from a CNN transcript:

Brokaw: Sen. Obama, time for a discussion. I'm going to begin with you. Are you saying to Mr. Clark (ph) and to the other members of the American television audience that the American economy is going to get much worse before it gets better and they ought to be prepared for that?

Obama: No, I am confident about the American economy. But we are going to have to have some leadership from Washington that not only sets out much better regulations for the financial system.

This is after Obama jumped on McCain again for his statement a few weeks ago:

Obama: And we've -- you know, Sen. McCain and I have some fundamental disagreements on the economy, starting with Sen. McCain's statement earlier that he thought the fundamentals of the economy were sound.

Barack Obama and his media sycophants jumped all over John McCain for making this statement. Campaigns and the media should operate under different rules of engagement, but when it comes to the media and their agenda, they have the same rule. A campaign will take something that somebody said and regardless of what was meant, use the statement to their advantage. In my opinion the media should take what somebody said, attempt in good faith to determine what was meant and comment on what the person meant to say. While I can expect the Obama camp to spin McCain’s “fundamentals” statement against him, I do expect the media to refrain from joining the Obama spin. When a campaign does spin as Obama did in this case, I would expect a certain consistency regarding the spin instead of spinning one way for one circumstance, but spinning another way when it suits.

Here after Obama and his media sycophants made such a huge effort to take McCain down a few notches, Obama turns around in the debate last night and made a virtually identical statement as McCain did weeks ago. Obama says he is confident about the American economy. There are only two ways to read that statement. Obama is confident about the American economy because the fundamentals of the economy are sound OR Obama is confident about the economy even though the fundamentals of the economy are not sound. If it is the first, Obama, may have scored points with it but is a hypocrite of the highest order. If it is the second, then Obama is living in an alternate universe where he is happy and optimistic in spite of the economic house burning down. Hypocrite or hysterical, Obama needs to be called on it.