In Iowa, the President, again, finds himself seated next to a poorly groomed Republican woman.

Still battling another reoccurrence of this year’s stubbornly persistent flu, I haven’t had the energy or the heart to even glance at mainstream media political stories.
This morning, while confirming my prediction that the domestic US corporate media would ignore yesterday’s shirtless Daily Mail photo of a sagging, elderly Arnold Schwarzenegger, I skimmed a few news accounts of the President’s Wednesday visit to Iowa.
It is astonishing to reread supposedly straight news accounts or even headlines that attempt to recast the President’s hackneyed catchphrases or his heavily formatted and preselected “Town Hall Meetings” as fresh news.
While the President’s drooping poll numbers and the public’s widespread distrust of Mr. Bush’s “vague” Social Security “outline”, in a sop to traditional journalism and reality, are given a glancing mention, most national press reports stress the President’s gosh darned positivity as they manufacture or massage those ubiquitously pesky details.
This morning’s worst offender award goes to a Los Angeles Times story headlined Bush Invites Critics to Show, Tell.
The curious headline implies that a freewheeling debate took place on the Kirkwood Community College campus and laughably attempts to portray Iowa’s Republican Senator, Bush supporter and Finance Committee Chairmen Charles Grassley as a critic because of an accurate evaluation of the Bush outline’s political viability:

Grassley, who has expressed doubts about the prospects of passing restructuring legislation this year…supported the president's personal account plan but still thought that the prospects of passing it this year were no better than 50-50. "But remember, I would have been more pessimistic two months ago.”

I’m guessing Grassley was admitted into our impish President’s hypersensitive bubble because he did not have his accurate political evaluation displayed as a button, tee shirt or bumper sticker.
The LA Times, also, fails to notice protesters who, according to the Des Moines Register must have been hard to miss gathered as they were around the entrance to the Community College:

Bush's visit prompted objections and demonstrations by those who oppose private accounts…About 100 demonstrators…gathered at the entrance to the college, some holding signs such as one that read "Don't privatize."

As the President’s bubble lifts from the Iowa cornfields and wafts its blinkered way back toward a divided Oz the traveling corporate press can return to their comfy perches until duty, the White House political office or the promise of a shirtless Arnold press conference calls them eagerly forth.

Image: Des Moines Register
- posted by Sean @ 8:20 AM