To Clueless Media: President Obama’s in Africa ‘cuz it has top 10 fastest growing economies in the world

TO CLUELESS MEDIA: PRES. OBAMA’S IN AFRICA ‘CUZ IT HAS TOP TEN FASTEST GROWING ECONOMIES IN WORLD

by @zizii2

“THERE is no shortage of economic growth in Africa. Six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies of the past decade are in sub-Saharan Africa. A clutch of countries have enjoyed growth in income per person of more than 5% a year since 2007.”

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Dakar, Senegal (c) mostroneddo

Nothing demonstrates the vapidity of the corporate media than the rancid ignorance they display when they are gung-ho to score cheap shots at President Obama on important matters, rather than do basic research!!!

And so it is that on Pres. Obama undertaking a long overdue working visit to three countries on the continent of Africa, the corporate media including FOXNews universe display once again the national embarrassment that they have become. But for the fact that they’d bleat about threats to their “First Amendment Rights”, I’d rather Pres Obama left them behind to indulge in muffin stories and similar shiny objects they chase best. Foreign media ALWAYS outshine ours anyway, so their absence would actually improve the media pool at these foreign pressers. And the public would be better informed for it.

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So cynical journos like David Nakamura of @WAPO , and colleagues at AtlanticWire  @NYT , Moonie News, @ABC, @NBC, @MSNBC, @CBS, @CNN, @FOX, @YahooNews, here are 12 FACTS to get into their heads before they utter any more inanities about the President’s trip to Africa, and carping endlessly about “costs of trip” versus sequestered White House tours. Without the 80% of Coltan produced from the Congo belt running your iPhone/iPad or other tablet LED screens, they’d be pecking away at an old typewriter (well, assuming even the steel in the machine’s housing isn’t from African iron ore).

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We are talking about Africa in the 21st Century, not some Henry Stanley 19th century racist travelogue you read about “natives doing quaint tribal dances”, or as the late Literary maestro Chinua Achebe snarkily penned at the end of his seminal novel Things Fall Apart, the colonizer’s version of history in which the indigenous African only warrants a passing line about his own history. No we are talking about a forward moving continent, warts and all that brooks no nonsense from anybody, superpower or not!

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This and That

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OFA

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President Barack Obama talks with advisor Karen Dunn aboard Marine One en route from Camp David to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Oct. 22, 2012. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is seen in the background. (Pete Souza)

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Meanwhile…..

‘Stock market’s performance under President Obama ranks fifth among all Presidents since 1900’

Steve Benen: ‘Worst. Socialist. Ever.’

See here

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afternoon all

First Lady Michelle Obama participates in a pre-Easter celebration with military families and children at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, April 4

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President Obama signs the STOCK Act into law at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, April 4. The STOCK Act is a bipartisan bill that prevents members of Congress from trading stocks based on nonpublic information they gleaned on Capitol Hill

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The Week

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Liberal Librarian: Can we call it “fascism” now?

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The First Lady and Dr. Biden’s Joining Forces tour schedule:

Wednesday, April 11:

White House, 11:00 AM ET – Anniversary Celebration

First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden will honor the 20 finalists of the Joining Forces Community Challenge at the White House. The finalists will be joined by the Challenge’s notable judges, Tom Brokaw, who will deliver opening remarks, J.R. Martinez, San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, USO President Sloan Gibson and Deanie Dempsey, wife of General Martin Dempsey.

University of Pennsylvania, 2:15 PM ET – Nurses Nationwide Join Forces to Support Veterans and Military Families

First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden will announce a major initiative by more than 150 of America’s leading nursing organizations and more than 450 nursing schools in 50 states and territories to ensure our nation’s nurses are prepared to help meet the unique health needs of service members, veterans, and their families.

New York City – The Colbert Report

First Lady Michelle Obama will appear on The Colbert Report to discuss her Joining Forces initiative.

Thursday, April 12:

Shreveport, Louisiana, 1:15 PM CT / 2:15 PM ET – Announcing Joining Forces’ 50,000th Hire

Last August, President Obama announced a series of policies to increase veterans’ employment and asked the First Lady and Dr. Biden to lead an effort through Joining Forces to challenge the private sector to hire or train 100,000 veterans and military spouses by the end of 2013. Well on track to exceed this goal, First Lady Michelle Obama will travel to Shreveport, Louisiana, to announce the 50,000th veteran or military spouse to have been hired by a company through the Joining Forces initiative. Mrs. Obama will visit the Kansas City Southern Railway Company, which has aggressively hired veterans in the last year because of the unique skill set that they bring to the job

Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, 6:00 PM ET – Honoring Young Women from Military Families

First Lady Michelle Obama will invite young women from military families to a celebration honoring their service to our nation as members of a military family. Mrs. Obama will deliver remarks to the high school junior and senior girls and their parents and reveal surprise guests who she invited for this special occasion.

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More here

evening all

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama talk in the Green Room of the White House before hosting a Smithsonian Museum of African American History reception in the East Room, Feb. 22, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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President Barack Obama listens during the groundbreaking ceremony of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, February 22

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Don’t miss Liberal Librarian’s latest post at The People’s View

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Business Week

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The Hill: The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package continues to have a significant effect.

The bill raised fourth-quarter 2011 gross domestic product by as much as 1.5 percent, it states, and lowered the unemployment rate by as much as 1.1 percentage points.

The package reduced the rolls of the jobless by up to 2 million people in the last three months of 2011.

More here

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LA Times: Sales of previously owned homes rose 4.3% in January and inventories fell to nearly seven-year lows as lower prices, unusually warm weather and an improving economy lifted demand.

….. January sales were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.57 million …. Sales rose in all four major regions, including an 8.8% pop in the West.

Job creation, mild weather, rising rents and increased household formation contributed to the sales gains, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the Realtors group. “Things are genuinely improving,” Yun said.

More here

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Slate

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Link

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One photo, two cool cats.

Thank you Pam!

(You can buy the PBO poster here – thank you Donna Dem)

ah, gopolitico….

Steve Benen: …. it was another unpleasant day on Wall Street yesterday, with all of the major indexes falling. From a political perspective, consider how some news outlets covered the story – and connected the drop to President Obama …. Politico’s front-page headline told readers: “Markets plunge after Obama speech.”

In fairness, the Politico article was slightly better than its ridiculous headline, but the larger point is the same: these outlets tried to draw a connection between the president’s jobs speech and the one-day drop on Wall Street. After all, Obama spoke on Thursday night, and stocks slipped on Friday morning, ergo, one caused the other.

The problem, of course, is that this isn’t even close to being accurate. We know why the major indexes fell yesterday: “The stock market tumbled again Friday as doubts about the ability of European leaders to address a spiraling debt crisis on the continent overshadowed President Obama’s new proposal to spur U.S. job creation….”.

To suggest to U.S. news consumers that markets were reacting to the president’s jobs speech is absurd, even for conservative media outlets…..

More here

Zachary Karabell (Daily Beast): It’s easy to blame the president’s speech for the turmoil in economic markets at home and abroad – it’s also wrong.

… Most major news outlets ascribed the drop to a negative market referendum on President Obama’s jobs speech last night.

… The weakness of U.S. financial markets this week has almost nothing to do with what is going on in the United States economically or politically. It has everything to do with the endlessly unfolding drama in the European Union over the fate of Greek debt, peripheral countries, and the euro.

…  we have one easy but false narrative – the markets don’t like Obama’s plan – that trumps a more complicated but true story – the markets are roiling from the fear of what is happening in Europe ….

Most financial cognoscenti know that the current issue is Europe, as do many who write and speak about such things. But the American desire to be the center of all things makes the story of markets selling in reaction to Obama too tempting. The problem isn’t just that it’s the wrong twist….

More here

the family values guy….

Justin Elliott (Salon): Here’s an interesting tidbit from Rick Perry’s past to keep an eye on. In the mid-1990s, the presidential candidate owned stock in a video rental store chain whose hardcore porn offerings drew the ire of conservative groups, according to a 2006 report on a liberal Texas blog. That item was resurrected by several liberal web sites this week.

Burnt Orange Report, a site founded by a Democratic activist, reported in 2006 that Perry’s 1995 financial disclosure showed he owned between $5,000 and $10,000 in stock in the company Movie Gallery. He was at the time state commissioner of agriculture.

Why is that significant? Because the now-defunct Movie Gallery, once a competitor to Blockbuster, was known for offering XXX porn rentals along with conventional Hollywood fare….

Ironically, it was the social conservative crusaders at the American Family Association – the very group that helped organize Perry’s stadium prayer rally this month – who spent years on an anti-porn campaign targeting Movie Gallery….

…. Perry’s stock holdings were put in a blind trust in 1996, so what he has owned since that year is not publicly known ….1995 was a long time ago, but never underestimate how intensely social conservatives in places like Iowa abhor porn… it’s not beyond the realm of imagination that it could become a real headache…..

Full post here

‘if this is socialism, call me comrade’

Ritholtz.com: No politics or partisanship here, “just the facts ma’am”.  The stock market, as measured by the S&P500 (a capitalization-weighted index, published since 1957, of the prices of 500 large common stocks actively traded in the United States) is up just about 50 percent since President Obama’s inauguration …. only Eisenhower comes close, but not even in the same zip code. A 50 percent stock move does a lot “spreading the wealth around” and Joe the Plumber’s pension is in much better shape today than it was in November 2008.

Washington Monthly: For about the first two months after President Obama was inaugurated …. Wall Street indexes were dropping sharply … conservatives said the declines were evidence that the White House’s economic policies were a mess, if not an outright failure, and that the president didn’t know what he was doing.

…..The drop in the Dow, the Wall Street Journal insisted, was a direct result of investors evaluating “Mr Obama’s agenda and his approach to governance”. Karl Rove and Lou Dobbs made the same case. So did Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, John Boehner, Mitt Romney…..

That was nearly two years ago, and wouldn’t you know it, they’re not saying that anymore.

….a chart like this one (see above) comes with all kinds of caveats … the value of a stock market index is hardly the best metric for measuring the strength of the economy …. and it’s easier to generate major gains like these when one starts from a very low point – and after eight years of disastrous Republican policies, Bush bequeathed an economy in shambles.

That said, there are some relevant angles to results like these, too. For example, it’s hard not to notice that the right seems awfully selective about when Wall Street indexes count – when the markets are down, Obama deserves the blame; when the markets are up; Obama doesn’t deserve the credit. It’s funny how that works. It’s also tough for unhinged conservatives to continue to insist that the White House is comprised of radical socialists, intent on destroying private enterprise, when major indexes have soared under Obama’s watch.

Full article here