Barack Obama's many failings are increasingly apparent.  Consequently, even the mainstream media are finding it difficult to keep up the facade.  So difficult, in fact, that USA Today now deems newsworthy the findings of a 12-person focus group conducted by a longtime Democratic operative.

USA Today's Susan Page reports the happy news in the piece "Obama gets thumbs up from focus group."  It begins:

TOWSON, Md. — President Obama has seen his approval ratings slide, but a dozen independent voters who gathered here for a roundtable discussion about politics were still inclined to give him a break.

The area residents expressed deep worry about the country's direction and a sobering view of the problems ahead. There was also a reservoir of good feeling for a president several referred to familiarly as "Barack."

Asked what he would like to say to Obama, Scott Wood, 35, who has been looking for a job since February, advised: "Don't give up yet; we haven't."

"We've found out he's not Superman," said Nora Seeley, 54, when asked what she had learned about the president during his first six months on the job. Still, she said, "things are starting to turn around."

The focus group, held Wednesday night, was sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

It isn't until the eighth paragraph that readers learn the session was moderated by "Democratic pollster Peter Hart."  The fifteenth paragraph also discloses a relevant fact:

Seven of the participants voted for Obama last year; four for his Republican rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain; and one for third-party candidate Ralph Nader.

And what would an Obama happy-talk article be without a little Rush Limbaugh bashing? 

"Asked whom among a dozen prominent people they would least like to be seated next to on a plane, six picked radio host Rush Limbaugh and four House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif."

Much of the mainstream media invested heavily in Obama.  They will continue promoting him and his leftist agenda, portraying him a success when the truth is very different.

A dozen people in one of the country's most reliably Democratic states realize Obama's not Superman but still hold out hope for their Barack, and it makes headlines.  Perhaps next week will bring the breaking news that Michelle Obama thinks her husband's doing a darn fine job. 

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.