Lefty journalists who originally supported Obama are changing their tunes. Among these is Mort Zuckerman, whose latest article reflects his increasing disappointment with “The One.”

Zuckerman takes a big step here. From Day-1 he was a big supporter of Obama. But now he is coming about, whether due to his sense of a diminished world-view of the US or more specifically some bias toward Israel. It’s fairly obvious that the whole team, Left and Right field, are getting to the point of “enough already.”

Cascading events may compel Obama to do something ill-advised. If hostile folks were swift, they’d be considering which buttons to push. As no doubt many out there are. We should be worried with such an inexperienced leader at the helm, very worried…

America right now appears to be unreliable to traditional friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies. One renowned Asian leader stated recently at a private dinner in the United States, “We in Asia are convinced that Obama is not strong enough to confront his opponents, but we fear that he is not strong enough to support his friends.”

The United States for 60 years has met its responsibilities as the leader and the defender of the democracies of the free world. We have policed the sea lanes, protected the air and space domains, countered terrorism, responded to genocide, and been the bulwark against rogue states engaging in aggression. The world now senses, in the context of the erosion of America’s economic power and the pressures of our budget deficits, that we will compress our commitments. But the world needs the vision, idealism, and strong leadership that America brings to international affairs. This can be done and must be done. But we are the only ones who can do it.

The rest of the erstwhile supposedly unbiased journalists (and former Obama fan club) are also deserting the ship:

Barack Obama was supposed to be the best, the very best, and yet he is always, reliably, consistently mediocre.

His speech on oil was no better or worse than his speech on race. Yet the Obammyboppers who once squealed with delight are weary of last year’s boy band.

At the end of the big Oval Office address, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and the rest of the MSNBC gang jeered the president….

In the Washington Post, the reaction of longtime Obammysoxer Eugene Robinson was headlined “Obama Disappoints From the Beginning of His Speech.”….

His eve-of-election rally for Martha Coakley “disappointed” the Massachusetts electorate so much, they gave Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican.

His speech for Chicago’s Olympic bid “disappointed” the Oslo committee so much, they gave the games to Pyongyang, or Ougadougou, or any city offering to build a stadium with electrical outlets incompatible with Obama’s prompter….

“He carries us from meditative bead to meditative bead, and invites us to contemplate,” wrote Stanley Fish in the New York Times….

We suspect Chris Matthews’ leg is no longer tingling. Problem is, BIG Problem at that, his narcissistic personality may demand he make some grandstand play. And such an event will equally demand that it take minds away from the Gulf.

Chris Matthews and the other leg-tinglers invented an Obama that doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, they’re stuck with the one that does, and it will be interesting to see whether he’s capable of plugging the leak in his own support. If not, who knows what the tide might wash up?

U.S. News & World Report — World Sees Obama as Incompetent and Amateur

Investor’s Business Daily — Even His Supporters Are Noticing: Obama Never Fails To Disappoint

Liberal media personnel who “bend” the truth have not been faring well this month. Have you noticed?

First, we learned that Air America has finally been taken off life support. The leftwing talk radio network started programming on March 31, 2004 but failed to operate profitably. Mounting debts resulted in filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 13, 2006, with original capital lost. Brothers Stephen and Mark Green bought the outfit for $4.25 million on March 6, 2007 but in less than three years their investment is also kaput. Live programming ended on January 21 last month and all remaining operations ceased on January 25. We need not feel too sorry for the first and second rounds of owners — liberals do not believe in profit and capitalism anyway, or so their politics would lead us to believe.

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Keith Olbermann is not doing well either, and many predict that he will soon be departing the scene. It won’t be his first failure. A sportscaster for the first twenty years of his journalistic career, he left ESPN amid controversy in 1997. He then became a sports anchor for Fox Sports, but was canned by Rupert Murdoch himself in 2001. Next he lost his job covering the 2008 election for MSNBC after maligning a tribute to the victims of the 9/11 terror attack. This week the buzz is all about the possible end of his cable TV hour-long show Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

Daily Finance — Is America Getting Over Keith Olbermann?

In the important demographic of adults 25 to 54 — the group advertisers are looking to reach — Countdown was down 44% year-over-year in January. It averaged 268,000 viewers in that demo, only 3,000 more than Nancy Grace’s show on HLN, and 12,000 more than CNN’s Campbell Brown. Fox News’s O’Reilly Factor dominated the hour with 964,000 viewers age 25 to 54, and was the only cable news show in the time period to increase its audience, by 55%.

Los Angeles Times — Countdown begins for end of Keith Olbermann’s ‘Countdown’??

Remember Keith Olbermann? He was the one-time must-see anti-Bush ranter who helped rescue MSNBC (yes, it’s still on at night) from even worse oblivion years ago. Well, quietly last month while no one was looking, hardly anyone was watching Keith Olbermann anymore….

NPR Blog — ‘Countdown With Keith Olbermann’: Could The End Be Near??

…one of the memes of the day seems to be that Countdown with Keith Olbermann isn’t doing so well ratings-wise and might soon be history.

KO has made his way by being an unprincipled, irrational and untruthful attack dog. Those who live by the sword die by the sword.

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And then there is Katie Couric, who tried to parlay a cutsie face and short skirts into a serious prime-time news anchor career. She is a newsreader, not a news reporter, and so has been way overpriced at $15 million per year. This past Monday morning, CBS execs made cuts to Katie’s staff and salary, as well as cuts in many other areas, due to declining ad revenues:

Much of Ms. Couric’s staff would not [return]. Dozens of employees—including staff members in D.C., San Francisco, Miami, London, Los Angeles and Moscow—were being let go. The changes were effective immediately. There would be no buyouts. According to one longtime staff member, the network had long ago negotiated away most of the severance clauses in staff members’ contracts….

And Drudge reports:

COURIC FACES PAY CUT; DEEP LAYOFFS HIT CBSNEWS
Wed Feb 03 2010 09:11:21 ET

CBSNEWS anchorwoman and 60 MINUTES contributor Katie Couric faces a dramatic pay cut at the network, insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

CBS boss Les Moonves is determined to save money and trim expenses — from top to bottom — at the former crown jewel of broadcasting.

Couric, the highest paid TV news personality in history, commands over $14 million a year, plus bumps for non-EVENING NEWS appearances.

But her salary is now in the direct line of fire, network insiders explain, and a populist backlash against Couric’s cash is said to be forming inside the newsroom.

“She makes enough to pay 200 news reporters $75,000 a year!” demands a veteran producer. “It’s complete insanity.”

The angry source continues: “We report with great enthusiasm how much bankers are making, how it is out of step with reality during a recession. Well, look at Katie!”

She may not last at CBS, according to the New York Post:

With a little more than a year to go on her contract, Katie Couric is dressing up her resumé. The CBS anchor, now 53, is facing a huge pay cut in her unprecedented $15 million-a-year salary. More importantly, her bosses at CBS have not yet said whether they want to keep her — at any price….

No matter, the idea of paying Couric eight figures to anchor a news show that is in last place does not sit well in the upper echelons of CBS News, where her hiring as TV’s first female anchor is seen as a noble but failed experiment….

Here’s what Katie Couric looks like, posing for Harper’s Bazaar:

Here’s what a real news anchor looks like:

Speculation based on misinformation characterizes what has become known as “the Kanjorski meme.” So here is a timeline of the events to set the record straight.

Last September, years of bad economic policy encouraged by Congress exacerbated by inept oversight caught up with the financial markets in the United States. Between the failure of Lehman Brothers on September 14 and the heavy institutional withdrawals from money market funds on September 18, a severe loss of liquidity occurred in the financial markets. To stem the tide of withdrawals from money market funds, the US Treasury Department announced a guarantee program for money market funds on September 19.

On September 21, the New York Post carried an alarming article based on word-of-mouth reports from unnamed sources:

ALMOST ARMAGEDDON
MARKETS WERE 500 TRADES FROM A MELTDOWN
September 21, 2008

The market was 500 trades away from Armageddon on Thursday, traders inside two large custodial banks tell The Post….

According to traders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, money market funds were inundated with $500 billion in sell orders prior to the opening. The total money-market capitalization was roughly $4 trillion that morning.

Felix Salmon of Portfolio.com has recently observed that these were mostly institutional investors that were selling. It should also be noted that this wasn’t a pure loss. It was selling, which implies that at some attractive lower price, there would be buyers. That’s the way the market works. Also, the only documented source for the figure of $500 billion, or 12% of the money markets, is a newspaper article that doesn’t name attribution.

The current kerfuffle began on January 27, 2009 when Democratic U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski (PA-11) appeared on the morning television show Washington Journal on C-SPAN. The video and transcript are included in our earlier post here. On television, Kanjorski asserted that the US had faced the loss of $550 billion in two hours, with the implication that this numerical information came from then Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke.

The next day a video clip of the interview was posted on YouTube, where it sat for ten days. The blog Zero Hedge examined the story on February 8:

How The World Almost Came To An End At 2PM On September 18

….Democratic Representative Kanjorski explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a “tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars.” According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occurred over the period of an hour or two. And it gets worse. Kanjorski paraphrases the … disclosure by Bernanke and Paulson….

Some other blogs picked up the story from Zero Hedge. But it went mostly unnoticed until Rush Limbaugh played the video clip on his radio show on February 10th, and the Kanjorski meme went viral. Also on Tuesday, February 10, the MSNBC show Countdown with Keith Olbermann discussed Kanjorski’s televised interview. The Shamokin, PA News Item discussed Kanjorski’s rising notoriety:

Kanjorski hits the spotlight

For the last 24 years, Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski has toiled in Washington, D.C. in relative obscurity, known best to his constituents who have elected him their representative 13 times….

Jan. 27: Kanjorski spends half an hour on “Washington Journal,” the morning television program of C-SPAN, the cable network whose main mission is airing the official proceedings of the House and Senate.

The C-SPAN appearance gained Kanjorski spinoff air time. His statement that the national and world financial markets came close to a major meltdown in September was picked up Tuesday by the MSNBC program, “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.”….

Kanjorski said all the attention is partly a benefit of his seniority.

“I’ve been preparing 24 years … that if the problem ever did occur, I’d be able to be a major participant in it,” he said. “And it so happened that it did occur in September and I became very active in it. Now that role has just continued to grow.”

He’s also looking, he said, to be more of a crusader….

After that “talk show Tuesday,” the blogs were abuzz with the subject, but by then there was enough misinformation extant to cause problems. Then Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke actually visited Capitol Hill on September 23 and September 24, but in his C-SPAN interview, Kanjorski recalled the date incorrectly as September 15. So when he said that the crisis occurred the previous Thursday, bloggers who didn’t do due diligence pegged the crisis on September 11, which gave rise to a whole plethora of Islamic jihad theories.

Here’s one example of how the meme started from the popular Mudville Gazette, which supplies the incorrect conclusion about the date as parenthetical information:

9/11/2008 CATASTROPHIC FINANCIAL TERRORIST ATTACK CAUSED ECONOMIC MELTDOWN?

Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania explains what former Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke told congress in a closed door session in September 2008 .

“On Thursday [Thursday was September 11th] at about 11 o clock in the morning The Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the USA to the tune of $550 Billion dollars in a matter of an hour or two. Money was being removed electronically.” says Kanjorski.

Whooah! Why are we just now hearing about this? Where’s the media? Why wasn’t there an official statement?

The widely read blog Atlas Shrugs also propagated the incorrect date:

9/11/2008 CATASTROPHIC FINANCIAL TERRORIST ATTACK CAUSED ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

THURSDAY was …….SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

This was a Financial Terrorist Attack on the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Aren’t the American people entitled to know who was behind the run on the banks?

Why was this kept from the American people before the most important election in US history?…

Once those two much-visited blogs used the incorrect date, the problem multiplied as other bloggers wrote derivative posts. Sixteen days after the actual C-SPAN interview, the Scranton, PA Times-Tribune discussed the rising furor in the Blogosphere:

Kanjorski: Economy teetered near collapse
Thursday, February 12, 2009

U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski is telling anyone who will listen lately the nation and world came within hours of economic collapse in September.

….Mr. Kanjorski’s Jan. 27 appearance on C-SPAN’s morning Washington Journal program is now rocking the blogosphere….

In essence, Mr. Kanjorski said there was an “electronic bank run.” ….

What actually happened? Transcripts of testimony before congressional committees and subcommittees are a matter of public record.

The US Department of the Treasury maintains a list of all the official appearances by Treasury Department spokespersons on its “Press Room” website. Then secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. made only two appearances on Capitol Hill in September 2008, a 9/23 visit to the Senate Banking Committee and a 9/24 visit to the House Financial Services Committee. The only statements from those transcripts relevant to the Kanjorski allegations are given below. The testimony before both houses of congress is almost identical. In the second transcript, I have italicized the two words that are different.

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September 23, 2008
HP-1153

Testimony by Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. before the Senate Banking Committee on Turmoil in US Credit Markets

….last week our credit markets froze — even some Main Street non-financial companies had trouble financing their normal business operations. If that situation were to persist, it would threaten all parts of our economy….

We have … taken a number of powerful tactical steps to increase confidence in the system, including a temporary guaranty program for the U.S. money market mutual fund industry….

….We saw market turmoil reach a new level last week, and spill over into the rest of the economy.

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September 24, 2008
HP-1154

Testimony by Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. before the House Committee on Financial Services Hearing on Turmoil in U.S. Credit Markets

….last week our credit markets froze up — even some Main Street non-financial companies had trouble financing their normal business operations. If that situation were to persist, it would threaten all parts of our economy….

We have … taken a number of powerful tactical steps to increase confidence in the system, including a temporary guaranty program for the U.S. money market mutual fund industry…. We saw financial market turmoil reach a new level last week, and spill over into the rest of the economy.

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Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, also visited Capitol Hill on the exact same two days as Paulson. His first visit, on September 23, was also before the Senate Banking Committee. His second visit, on September 24, was to a joint committee from both houses. This is the only testimony during that timeframe that could be characterized as remarks to both senators and representatives.

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September 23, 2008

Statement of Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate

….While perhaps manageable in itself, Lehman’s default was combined with the unexpectedly rapid collapse of AIG, which together contributed to the development last week of extraordinarily turbulent conditions in global financial markets. These conditions caused equity prices to fall sharply, the cost of short-term credit–where available–to spike upward, and liquidity to dry up in many markets. Losses at a large money market mutual fund sparked extensive withdrawals from a number of such funds….

Despite the efforts of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and other agencies, global financial markets remain under extraordinary stress. Action by the Congress is urgently required to stabilize the situation and avert what otherwise could be very serious consequences for our financial markets and for our economy….

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September 24, 2008

Statement of Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System before the Joint Economic Committee, United States Congress

While perhaps manageable in itself, Lehman’s default was combined with the unexpectedly rapid collapse of AIG, which together contributed to the development last week of extraordinarily turbulent conditions in global financial markets. These conditions caused equity prices to fall sharply, the cost of short-term credit–where available–to spike upward, and liquidity to dry up in many markets. Losses at a large money market mutual fund sparked extensive withdrawals from a number of such funds….

Despite the efforts of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and other agencies, global financial markets remain under extraordinary stress. Action by the Congress is urgently required to stabilize the situation and avert what otherwise could be very serious consequences for our financial markets and for our economy….

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There is no question that last September was a turbulent period for the financial markets. But it was a result of years of bad legislation by Congress and failure of our regulatory institutions to do their jobs. It was also a result of a pervasive American culture of living beyond our means. The excesses simply caught up with us. We do not need Islamic jihad to do us in, when we are so profligate and careless ourselves.

Our economy provides the means for all of us to have the necessities of a good and decent life — wholesome food, warm and comfortable clothing, safe and adequate housing. But when we stretch beyond our income to acquire large cracker box McMansions, drive gas guzzling sport utility vehicles, and constantly try to outspend and impress our peers, we get into trouble. We are simply experiencing a very severe correction that is a logical result of our rampant materialism.

Other reports:

Testimony Concerning Turmoil in U.S. Credit Markets by Chairman Christopher Cox, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate — September 23, 2008

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UPDATE (Thursday, February 19): The Zero Hedge post cited in the above article includes an update referencing a video that purports to substantiate Kanjorski’s claims.

Update – for all who claim that Kanjorski is yapping with a few screws loose upstairs, take a look at this clip…. This is archived footage from the September 24 House Financial Services hearing at which both Paulson and Bernanke are present. Kanjorski asks Paulson this very question, and states to Paulson, that the information came originally from him. Now, Kanjorski may be anything but not senile as he is merely repeating facts that Paulson tells him. And Paulson does not refute the facts.

The assertion is basically that Kanjorski wouldn’t have said the information came from Paulson in the subcommittee hearing if it were not true, and that it must be true because Paulson did not contradict Kanjorski. But that is, in fact, no proof of anything. I didn’t bother to mention this in the original article, because I didn’t think anyone would be illogical enough to buy into it, but apparently some people have. So I add the following….

I was well aware of this update to the Zero Hedge post when I wrote the original post. So I checked it out thoroughly before I published.

Note the technique that Kanjorski used. Kanjorski made the $550 billion assertion, and told Paulson that the information came from him (Paulson). But there is no record of Paulson actually saying that. The way Congress works, while Kanjorski had the floor, Paulson could not interrupt and correct him. All are bound by strict “rules of order.” So the comment “Paulson does not refute the facts” has no evidentiary value relevant to the credibility of Kanjorski’s assertion.

When Paulson finally got a chance to speak, he wisely didn’t waste time going back to that. He used every second of his speaking time to advance his own purpose. He didn’t need to correct Kanjorski for the people who count, because there is an accurate record of what was said — the Congressional Record — which is published and available to the public.

Nor would it have been prudent for Paulson to correct Kanjorski. Paulson is a reasonably class act academic, while Kanjorski is a grandstanding politician. No percentage for Paulson in getting into a dogfight with him. The educated Paulson, although more highly qualified professionally than Kanjorski, a political hack from a coal-mining district, is a political appointee who will be replaced. Kanjorski is rather securely elected from a congressional district somewhat gerrymandered to include the heavy Democratic population centers along PA Route 11 and Interstate 80, among them Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.

If a newspaper repeated Kanjorski’s intentional or unintentional mistake as fact, they could get sued. So they would either check the Congressional Record, or if lazy, just leave the subject alone or repeat the remarks in quotes by Kanjorski (which is what they did). Therefore Paulson did not have to worry about this misinformation propagating as legitimate news. Unfortunately, most blogs are a lot sloppier, and so less credible.

When you want to find out what really happened, you can go through the Congressional Record for the day of the session. Go to this page to select the year that contains the day you want to study — Congressional Record Index

From there you can go to a specific year by selecting “Browse the Congressional Record by Day of Session” and inputting a year. For the present discussion, that’s 2008, and the index for 2008 is here — Congressional Record: Browse 2008-2009

Scroll down to September 23 and 24 for 2008 and you will find that there are 30 records of testimony for those two days. To be sure of your ground, it is necessary to scan all of them. If Paulson quoted the $550 billion figure, it would be in there somewhere.

Now this is difficult and tedious to do, because the PDF is lousy to work with. But I went through them, isolated the relevant testimony, and included links to it for all four complete testimonies in my article. I scrupulously reproduced the wording that had a bearing on the subject, and documented my work all round with hyperlinks.

I had already used Zero Hedge as an example of a blog that propagated the story based on Kanjorski’s TV interview without vetting it. I didn’t bother to dispute their update material at the end of the post because I didn’t want to excoriate them any more than necessary and because it didn’t further the point of my original article.