A Dog With A Bone

The President took October 26, 2012 off from the campaign trail and did a number of interviews, including one with MTV and satellite chats with a handful of local reporters from swing states like Colorado’s KUSA 9News' Kyle Clark. In regard to the President describing Romney as a bull shitter in an interview with the Rolling Stone, Obama said - You know, this was a conversation after an interview, a casual conversation with a reporter. The basic point that I've been talking about throughout this campaign, is people know what I mean and they know that I mean what I say and what I care about, who I'm fighting for and you know a major issue in any election is can you count on the person you're putting into the Oval Office fighting for you having a clear set of convictions that they believe in. Clark also asked about the loans to Abound Solar, what some are calling Colorado's Solyndra and a pair of questions on: whether Americans under attack in Libya requested help and were denied. Clark's interview was all over the national news, on the Daily Caller, Real Clear Politics and repeated on Fox News. I don’t call this good reporting as it was not unbiased.

Per Wikipedia Abound Solar started its research in the late 1980s at the Colorado State University, in 1991 they received a patent for their process, by 1998 had developed a pilot process and received support from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the National Science Foundation; by 2004 they received funding from NREL and the Solar America Initiative and in 2006 private funding was provided to commercialize the technology (one investor was Bohemian Companies, based in Fort Collins, and chaired by Pat Stryker, who according to the Center for Responsive Politics, donated $50,000 to President Obama's inaugural fund and $35,800 to his victory fund in 2008). Abound Solar received a $400 million loan from the US government in 2010; the loan had support from several Republicans including Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. On June 28, 2012 Abound Solar announced it suspended operations and would file for bankruptcy protection after burning through $70 million from taxpayers. Company employees have since come forward saying Abound officials knew their solar panels were defective and sold them anyway in order to meet benchmarks, so the company could get the Department of Energy (DoE) loan. One of Abound Solar’s competitors is First Solar, an American owed company that is surviving – the catch, it has some manufacturing overseas. Abound and the DoE blamed the company's failure on competition from China. So Abound got federal money from Bush and had Republican support at the time by received more money in 2010.

Using what was considered to be an off-the-record comment, repeating debate rhetoric, not waiting for all the facts on Benghazi and not comparing unethical behavior of other politicians, in my opinion makes reporters like Clark just as bad as Republicans - they’re like a dog with a bone when they want to discredit someone.