The Daily Broadside - 10/19

White House Advisers Say Fox News Is Not News
(They'll tell you what the news is.)

Karl Rove, a Fox News contributor and former White House adviser to President George W. Bush, said the Obama administration is trying to demonize Fox News for asking questions officials do not like. He compared Obama's approach to that of President Richard Nixon, who included journalists on an "enemies list."

"This is a White House engaging in its own version of the media enemies list," Rove said. "And it's unhelpful for the country and undignified for the president of the United States to so do."

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said Fox News shouldn't be treated as a news organization. "And the bigger thing is that other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way, and we're not going to treat them that way," he said.

Big Wall Street bonuses "offensive": Obama aide

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top White House aide lashed out on Sunday at Wall Street firms that are handing out huge bonuses while the rest of the economy struggles and small businesses cannot create jobs because of a lack of credit.

Highlighting a disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street that has caught the attention of the Obama administration, Goldman Sachs Group Inc's was on a pace to hand out more than $20 billion in bonuses, which could make this year a record.

Compensation is also soaring at several other big firms, which are raking in higher trading revenues amid a recovery in the stock market that lifted the Dow Jones industrial average above 10,000 last week.

But the economy remains weak elsewhere and the U.S. unemployment rate, now at 9.8 percent, is widely forecast to climb above 10 percent.

"The bonuses are offensive," David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said on the ABC News program, "This Week."

Experts doubt effectiveness of US sanctions on Iran

A flurry of congressional measures aimed at toughening US sanctions on Iran to pressure the Islamic republic to abandon its suspect nuclear program will likely have little to no impact, experts say.
Congress sent President Barack Obama legislation on Thursday that bars foreign firms that sell petroleum products to Iran from winning US government deals.

Lawmakers are also studying a number of other measures to punish Iran, which Western powers and Israel claim is seeking to develop an atomic bomb. Tehran has denied the allegations and insists it has only a civilian nuclear energy program for peaceful purposes.

DOWD: Fie, Fatal Flaw!

Havel reached out to touch a glass dish given to him by Obama, inscribed with the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. “It is only a minor compromise,” he said. “But exactly with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones, the real problems.”