It's probably a pretty safe bet to say that we're much keener on Obama than on Romney, just because he seems far more in line with general British politics than Romney. Things like Obamacare are very much in line with the kind of health care system we have in the U.K.

Just in case readers missed the point, page 17 includes "Europe: Not a swing continent," a dispatch from Henry Chu, the Los Angeles Times's London bureau chief.  That article notes:

A survey of seven European nations, including longtime U.S. allies Britain and France, has found that Obama would win more than 90% of the vote if the respondents could cast ballots in Tuesday’s race.

Old Europe has a heritage of autocrats, dictators, welfare statism and forced redistribution of wealth.  Many Europeans, propelled in some cases by envy, hold an antipathy for America and what it represents.

Given all that, it's to be expected that a majority of polled Europeans would be attracted to a candidate advocating a command economy while he finds fault with free enterprise, not to mention his own country.

So while Obama has difficulty maintaining a 50 percent approval rating here, the mainstream media point to how well he does among foreigners.  If only those darn Americans were as smart.  Since they aren't, they have to be reminded with two stories on the same topic in the same newspaper on the same day.     

Appearing on the Chicago Tribune's Web site is "Undocumented immigrants fight for lifesaving liver transplants: Without insurance, brothers are denied care."  The story also appears in today's print edition with the title "Struggles for the sick and undocumented."

The story centers on two illegal immigrant brothers suffering from a deadly liver disease.  Contrary to the Web site's headline, however, it seems both of them are receiving care even though uninsured:

Lorenzo Arroyo is being treated at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago, but that institution has not agreed to place him on a transplant list, (Rev. Jose) Landaverde said.

So, while he's not been placed on a waiting list, he's still getting treated. And insofar as the other brother is concerned:

"Since then, Elfego Arroyo has been placed on a wait list for a liver transplant at Rush (University Medical Center), where he had been receiving care, Landaverde said.

A headline claiming that "Without insurance, brothers are denied care" is misleading.  Both are receiving treatment, and one has even been placed on a waiting list for a transplant.

Not detailed in the article is who is paying for the illegal immigrants's medical expenses, although we can guess.  The writer quotes a family friend complaining, "They are treating us like criminals."  Sorry, lady.  They are.  We can sympathize with their serious illnesses, but they are.

Today on the Chicago Tribune's front page, above the fold, is the headline "Pricey gas seen as good, in a way."  The story also appears on the Los Angeles Times's Web site with the title "Gas prices' jump attests to upbeat economy."  Yes, happy days are here again and much of the mainstream media are feeling glad all over, hoping the purported much-improved economy will
enhance President Barack Obama's re-election bid.  The article notes:

The U.S. recovery has solidified through the fall and so far this year, as shown by strong job reports and last week's news of 1.1% increase in retail sales in February.

The job reports aren't really that strong when you consider the recession ended almost three years ago, as determined by National Bureau of Economic Research, and this is the most sluggish recovery in post-WWII history.  As to the increase in February's retail sales, the Associated Press reported:

One factor driving the retail sales increase was a 3.3% rise in gasoline sales last month. It was the biggest increase in nearly a year and reflected a surge in gas prices.

So let's see how this works: Higher gas prices are a significant factor in increased retail sales, which in turn are a reflection of a stronger economy, which in turn is a reason gas prices are higher.  Yep, definitely a win-win situation.  And ain't Obama doing just one heck of a job?

In recent weeks we've seen press items contending the president can do little, if anything, about higher gas prices.  Also we've seen the stories suggesting that, placed in "proper" perspective, gas prices aren't really all that high.  Now
we're instructed that sky-high prices are just more evidence that the economy is rebounding.

The truth is the mainstream media, having helped sell the American electorate on an unvetted empty suit in 2008, are heavily invested in making him appear a success.  We can expect much more of the same through November.  

Posted today on the Chicago Tribune's Clout Street blog is the story"GOP attacks Obama bus, but Bush did same," written by Rick Pearson. It begins:

As President Barack Obama traveled to the first of two “town hall” stops in western Illinois today, top national and state Republicans criticized his campaign-style visit and criticized his use of a taxpayer-funded Canadian-manufactured bus as part of a jobs tour.
 
But no mention was made by Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus or Illinois GOP Chairman Pat Brady that a re-election seeking President George W. Bush used a bus from the same manufacturer, Quebec-based Prevost, for a spring 2004 “Yes, America Can” campaign tour through the Midwest.

The writer reports, as the Associated Press has, that the $1.1 million Obama bus was purchased with tax dollars.  But he ignores that the bus used by President Bush was leased by his 2004 campaign, using voluntary contributions.  There's a world of difference, but why let facts get in the way of yet another effort to cover for the most inept president in history?

A May 5, 2004 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article titled "A busload of election fodder: Bush campaign rides into heart of manufacturing on Canada-built vehicle" reported:

The guts of the 45-foot-long bus were made in the United States, including the sturdy Detroit Diesel engine. And much of the value of the imposing coach was added during its conversion by a Nashville firm that also has included as its clients Aerosmith, Toby Keith, Britney Spears and Christian performers Amy Grant and Third Day.

And later:

The Bush campaign is leasing the president's bus and seven others from the Hemphill brothers of Nashville, from whom the campaign leased in 2000.

$1.1 million in tax dollars for Obama to travel in luxury for a few days as he bashes Republicans.  We're the ones getting taken for a ride. But don't expect that to be worth a story in the mainstream media.    

Tonight in Iowa,  Republican presidential candidates will debate before a national audience.  But, at least on page 14 of today's Chicago Tribune, a much bigger story concerns a little known homosexual activist, not in this evening's debate, who also seeks the GOP nomination.  He admits to a childhood crush on Chuck Connors of TV's "The Rifleman," and stands about as much a chance of winning the GOP nod as the late Mr. Connors does.

The story, "Debate is gay candidate's primary aim," runs 25 paragraphs and approximately 1,200 words.  Excerpted from an even longer article on the Chicago Tribune's Web site, it centers on an understandably  less than optimistic candidate:

Fred Karger, Republican candidate for president, knows there is no chance he will be the GOP nominee, much less the next leader of the free world. "I'm not delusional," he says, though one might wonder what, exactly, he is thinking.

In contrast, the same page of today's Tribune carries a much smaller article, "Eyes on Iowa as GOP hopefuls set for debate," taken from an expanded piece appearing on the newspaper's Web site.  The print story is seven paragraphs in length and about 300 words.  Several candidates who will participate tonight aren't even mentioned.

Maybe if Newt Gingrich confessed to an infatuation with Pa Cartwright, he'd have qualified for coverage in the Tribune story on the debate.  

Today's Chicago Tribune reports "Ex-lawmaker waives tuition for supporter's family: Molaro OKs $94,000 despite children not meeting requirements."  It begins:

Year after year, state Rep. Robert Molaro doled out publicly funded scholarships to the family of a longtime political supporter, ultimately giving the four children more than $94,000 in tuition.

The valuable scholarships came with just one legal requirement: that the students lived in Molaro's Southwest Side district.

The siblings signed notarized documents stating they did, while other public records indicate they lived with their mother in Oak Lawn, outside Molaro's district. Their father didn't live in the district either.

The article, which runs about three-dozen paragraphs, doesn't mention that Molaro is - hang on to your hat here - a Democrat.

As documented repeatedly on NewsBusters, party affiliation is often overlooked in news stories reporting improprieties by Democrats.  Quite a coincidence, isn't it?   

Forget those polls, like the current one conducted for CBS News, that show most Americans disapprove of President Barack Obama's health care scheme.  And ignore accounts like the one in today's Politico highlighting the grief some Democratic congressmen are getting for voting with Obama on health care.  No, focus instead on stories like the one in today's print and Web edition of the Chicago Tribune.  "Health insurance reform profiles" is a "look at how the new law will affect four people in different circumstances."  And guess what?  Every single one of them approves of ObamaCare.  Isn't it funny how it just works out that way?

A 56-year-old woman who lost Medicaid eligibility when her children left home says: "Health reform isn't perfect, it's only a first step, but by God it will make a difference to me."  A 62-year-old man covered under his wife's policy "is confident the greater changes are all for the good."  A 22-year-old male is relieved he'll continue to be carried on his parent's health insurance when he goes to art school.  If not for ObamaCare, "I would have either taken the risk and opted out or looked for work instead of going further in school."  A 40-year-old- freelance writer confides that he is "was "'thrilled' to see the health care overhaul signed into law."

Quoted several times in the article is Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California.  Remarkably, he likes ObamaCare, too.  Tribune newshounds make no mention of  his background, which just possibly could color his views:

A consumer advocate and community organizer. Wright has been widely quoted in local and national media on a range of issues. He has also worked for New Jersey Citizen Action, the Center for Media Education, The Nation magazine, and in Vice President Gore's office in the White House.

You'd think that if the Tribune looked really, really hard, it may have found someone - anyone - who's not enthused about what Obama and his Democratic minions have done to the health care system.  Instead, like many other mainstream media outlets, it's hopped aboard Obama's campaign to portray the disaster as a success.   

In both its print and Web editions today, the Chicago Tribune headlines "Republicans walk the line over healthcare outrage."  It begins:

In the days surrounding passage of healthcare overhaul legislation, Republican lawmakers have been left to strike a fine balance between harnessing voter outrage and fueling it.

Examples of raw anger have piled up. A call to New York Democrat Louise M. Slaughter said snipers would "kill the children of the members who voted for healthcare reform." Later, a brick smashed her Niagara Falls district office window. Hate messages jammed the lines of Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, the anti-abortion Democrat whose last-minute support helped cinch passage. Law enforcement offered increased protection to at least 10 lawmakers, a security measure usually only afforded party leaders.

Other incidents targeting Democrats are also included in the 18-paragraph article of over 800 words. 

Yet it is not until the penultimate paragraph that a shooting incident at the office of minority whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) is noted:

At a news conference, Cantor said a bullet struck a window this week in a building where his Richmond campaign office is housed; the police said someone fired into the air.

No mention is made of the menacing message left for Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-OH), an unedited version of which appears at the Daily Caller ((Warning: Includes Explicit Language.)

It seems that in the Chicago Tribune - as in much of the mainstream media - the angry incidents erupting in the aftermath of the healthcare vote are only newsworthy if Democratic lawmakers are involved.   

Today on its Web site and in its printed version, the Chicago Tribune reported on the large crowds greeting former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on her book tour.  More than a thousand enthusiastic admirers greeted her Wednesday in Grand Rapids.  Another thousand were already in line at 7:00 a.m. today for a book signing scheduled for 6:00 p.m. in Noblesville, Indiana.  Hundreds more gathered in line hours ahead of her appearance at a Ft. Wayne Meijer store.

The vision of Sarah Palin being cheered by so many common people in such common towns as Grand Rapids and Ft. Wayne and in such common venues as a Meijer store must be just too much for the deep thinkers at the Chicago Tribune.  Palin Derangement Syndrome kicked in.  Bad.  They had to provide their own version of what's happening.

"All this rightist hoopla is all so predictable," writes the newspaper's former national editor, Charles Madigan.  In the first part of the piece he decries criticism of Barack Obama's how low can you go bow to Japan's emperor and anti-Obama sentiment from the right:

Their congressional caucus, their blurting mouthpieces, their nattering nabobs of neocon nonsense, their Limbeckians (sounds like Jonathan Swift, doesn't it?) their addled and confused tea baggers, their Michelle Backmanians, they are all coming from the same place, a losers fantasyland where there is no reality other than what they think.

Then he moves specifically onto Palin, who "will make a whole fishing trawler full of money from her book."  He ends:

Palin's following will gobble up her book and it will become as much a bible as that King James version, Sarah's version of what happened. They will love her forever. She will become a talk show host where she will also blast Obama for bowing before foreign powers and being a closet socialist.

That part of America has become so predictable, it's hardly worth paying much attention as it continues shouting, primarily to itself.

Then we have the PDS symptoms exhibited by columnist Steve Chapman in "Sarah Palin and the conservative descent."  He didn't care much for the book:

But the priorities of "Going Rogue" are striking poses and attitudes, not making actual arguments about the proper role of government. The book is meant to create an image, or maybe a brand -- folksy but shrewd, tough but feminine, noble but beset by weaklings and traitors, ever-smiling unless you awaken her inner "Mama Grizzly Bear" by scrutinizing her loved ones. No one could be more pleased with her than she is with herself. Reading the book is like watching Palin preen in front of a mirror for hours as she tirelessly compliments herself for courage, gumption, devotion to family and maverick independence.

Sarah Palin just doesn't have the requisite "gravitas" apparently.  But he can think of someone who does:

You could almost forget that for well over a year, Republicans have ridiculed Barack Obama as lighter than a souffle, an inexperienced upstart who owes everything to arrogant presumption and a carefully crafted image. But Obama wrote a 375-page book, "The Audacity of Hope," that shows a solid, and occasionally tedious, grasp of issues.

It is hard to imagine Palin (as opposed to a ghostwriter) producing anything comparable. Almost as hard as it is to imagine that modern conservatives would expect it.

Leaders who can think? That's so 20th century.

Today's Tribune also includes a Sarah Palin paper doll.  One reader's reaction: "I bet a lot of the editorial writers at the Trib would LOVE a Palin BLOW UP DOLL better!"

These are dark days in much of the mainstream media.  Despite the most adamant admonitions from the superior people in the press, those common people in their common communities persist in liking and trusting Sarah Palin.  So when the news is bad, as it is today, the only thing they can do is provide "balance" by slamming her elsewhere in their pages.

They can assert that Palin's America is "hardly worth paying much attention," yet they simply can't stop obsessing on it. 

You might think a major metropolitan newspaper that boasts "The Midwest's largest reporting team" on its front page would report on a suburban demonstration attracting thousands of people.  In the case of the Chicago Tribune, you'd be wrong.

Today's Tribune print edition makes no mention of yesterday's Tea Party Express protest in New Lenox, Illinois, located only 36 miles from Chicago's Loop.  The Southtown Star did cover the event on its Web site, noting:

About 6,000 people packed the hillside venue at The Commons Performing Arts Pavilion for the protest, part of a nationwide Tea Party Express tour that includes speeches, musical performances and updates from a traveling Fox News correspondent.

Monday's audience was the largest yet, organizers said.

Today's Tribune devotes two stories, six pictures, and two maps to Oprah Winfrey's "takeover of downtown Chicago Monday."  And there are stories on disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's media blitz to hawk his new book, Chicago students getting free haircuts with which to start the new school year, and how more stores are now accepting food stamps.

Then there's the story titled, "After all the fuss, president to urge kids: stay in school," complete with a photo of Obama smiling.  A large picture of a woman holding a "Health Care Can't Wait" sign accompanies an Obama's Labor Day AFL-CIO speech story, subtitled "President decries 'lies' about health care plans, says debate time is over."

The Tribune even finds space to devote to an article to a suburban man who's installed a faux drawbridge for his Tudor-style home.

Yet the Chicago Tribune, with "The Midwest's largest reporting team," doesn't report on a true grassroots phenomenon.  As this is written, there's no mention of the story on the newspaper's Web site either.  Maybe the mainstream media are just hoping that if they ignore them long enough, Tea Parties, and the people who attend them, will just go away.  I don't think so.     

Monday's Chicago Tribune featured the article "Powell 'still a Republican': Rebutting critics, he criticizes party's far right voices."  The article starts:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Sunday that ideological conservatives, particularly radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, have gained a hold over the Republican Party that risks driving the GOP into an extended exile from power.

Powell cast his warnings in unusually personal terms as he answered recent charges from two champions of the Republican right -- Limbaugh and former Vice President Dick Cheney -- that he was no longer a Republican.

"Rush will not get his wish, and Mr. Cheney was misinformed," said Powell, whose resume includes work as military adviser to President Ronald Reagan, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush's Cabinet. "I am still a Republican."

Obviously, the "far right voices" referenced in the piece's headline are those of Limbaugh and Cheney.

If Rush Limbaugh is on the far right, surely MSNBC's Rachel Maddow qualifies to be characterized as far left.  Yet only last month, the Tribune carried an article from the Los Angeles Times (another Tribune newspaper) that asked this burning question about Maddow:

Politics, not to mention television, thrives on conflict, but how much of that will there be with a left-leaning host in a time of a left-leaning president?

So Maddow and Obama are merely left-leaning.  That was also used in a June, 2007 Chicago Tribune article titled "Carefully crafting the Barack Obama 'brand.'"  Describing how Obama went about writing "The Audacity of Hope," it notes:

In keeping with the original game plan, staff members spent nights and weekends scouring the chapters as they rolled in, looking for potential political pitfalls -- a vetting committee Obama didn't have when he published his earlier, more provocative memoir.

For instance, when Obama was seeking to name someone as the epitome of left-leaning politics, an aide urged him to use a House member instead of a Senate colleague. So the book names now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), though Obama's voting record is similar to hers.

Clearly, "left leaning" is the description of choice when it comes to liberal extremists.  In a short blurb that appeared last September 12, the Tribune reported:

MSNBC dumped high-maintenance and allegedly left-leaning yakkers Keith Olbermann  and Chris Matthews  from election anchor duties. Some of their critics cheer as they tune back to "Fair and Balanced" Fox News.

Allegedly left-leaning yakkers?  Who does it take, you may ask, to drop the allegedly, Fidel Castro?  As it turns out, not necessarily.  On November 2, the paper's television critic wrote:

In another skit, (actor Ben) Affleck played a scarily intense version of the left-leaning Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann."       

And all this time I've considered the real Olbermann to be the scarily intense version.

So now we've been instructed that Obama, Pelosi, Olbermann, Matthews and Maddow aren't liberal extremists as many of us have thought.  They aren't far left voices.  They're just left leaning.  Sort of like the Chicago Tribune.