Has The President "Lost" The New York Times?

Following a Walter Cronkite editorial report, where the most trusted  that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

One of President Obama's "propaganda arms, the NY Times has published two stories this weekend showing the President in a very bad light. One promoting the theme that the BP oil slick is Obama's Katrina, the other essentially calling the GM loan payback a fraud.

Yesterday The NY Times Editorialized about the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is quickly becoming an ecological disaster:

Now we have another disaster in more or less the same neck of the woods, and it takes the administration more than a week to really get moving.

The timetable is damning. The blowout occurred on April 20. In short order, fire broke out on the rig, taking 11 lives, the rig collapsed and oil began leaking at a rate of 40,000 gallons a day. BP tried but failed to plug the well. Even so, BP appears to have remained confident that it could handle the situation with private resources (as did the administration) until Wednesday night, when, at a hastily called news conference, the Coast Guard quintupled its estimate of the leak to 5,000 barrels, or more than 200,000 gallons a day.

Only then did the administration move into high gear.

Also in yesterday's edition, the Grey Lady ran an article admitting what many of us have been saying for days, the GM loan payback is a fraud.

G.M. trumpeted its escape from the program as evidence that it had turned the corner in its operations. “G.M. is able to repay the taxpayers in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu and Buick LaCrosse,” boasted Edward E. Whitacre Jr., its chief executive. 

G.M. also crowed about its loan repayment in a national television ad and the United States Treasury also marked the moment with a press release: “We are encouraged that G.M. has repaid its debt well ahead of schedule and confident that the company is on a strong path to viability,” said Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary. 

Taxpayers are naturally eager for news about bailout repayments. But what neither G.M. nor the Treasury disclosed was that the company simply used other funds held by the Treasury to pay off its original loan. 

The report also mentions that the CBO estimates that around $30 Billion of the GM loans will never be paid back.

The Administration deserves all the criticism thrown at it based on the GM loans, this supposedly transparent administration is deliberately trying pull the wool over the eyes of the American public.  I am not sure that the comparison to Katrina is fair, as the fault of Katrina lies more in the local and state governments than the federal government, in the case of this oil spill the federal government could have acted much quicker.

Yesterday's NY Times may very well have been the President Obama's "losing Uncle Walter" moment? It just might be. Progressives have already objected to Obama's Afghanistan plans and his announcement about offshore drilling (even though he actually cut the amount of drilling authorized by the previous administrations).  It very may well be that the NY Times is beginning to believe that the "progressive messiah" has no clothes. On the other had, it could be that has it begun to snow in hell.