There’s new evidence, obtained by ABC, that the Obama administration did deliberately purge references to “terrorism” from accounts of the attack on the Benghazi diplomatic mission, which killed four people including the US ambassador to Libya.
Conservatives have long maintained that the administration deliberately suppressed the truth about the attacks.
This is the first hard evidence that the state department did ask for changes to the CIA’s original assessment.
Specifically, they wanted references to previous warnings deleted and this sentence removed: “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.”
There’s little doubt in my mind that this will haunt Hillary Clinton if she decides to run for president, unless she executes some pretty fancy footwork.
State department spokesperson Victoria Nuland is directly implicated, and the fingerprints of senior White House aides Ben Rhodes and Jay Carney are there as well.
In the interests of full disclosure I have to say I have not in the past been persuaded that allegations of a cover-up were a big deal. It seemed to me a partisan attack based on very little.
I remember listening to reports from the BBC and others at the time that did suggest the attack in Benghazi was a spontaneous reaction to a rather puerile anti-Islamic video.
[...]
However you read the motives, the state department and apparently the White House did get the CIA to change its story.
This is now very serious, and I suspect heads will roll. The White House will be on the defensive for a while.
The cover-up was obviously politically motivated. The shit hit the fan less than two months before an election. That reaction is understandable and yet still deplorable. So far all the focus has been on the cover-up. But what were they covering up?
Was it merely a case of bad judgment or was this some secret CIA/State Department joint operation that went bad? Hopefully the US media has finally awakened from their five year slumber and will finally begin to do their job.
Yeah, I know. Hope is not a strategy. Hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.
BTW – Whatever they were covering up, then-CIA Director Petraeus apparently didn’t want to play ball. This makes his sudden departure all the more suspicious.
But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works. The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ‘em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!
Fucking lapdogs. They are worse than useless. This media is an active threat to our freedom.
The White House held an off-the-record briefing with reporters on Friday afternoon to discuss recent revelations about the Benghazi investigation, sources familiar with the meeting tell POLITICO.
The meeting began around 12:45 p.m. and postponed the daily, on-the-record White House press briefing to 1:45 p.m. White House press secretary Jay Carney did not respond to a request for confirmation of the meeting.
The off-the-record session was announced to reporters in the wake of an ABC News report showing that White House and State Dept. officials were involved in revising the now-discredited CIA talking points about the attack on Benghazi.
Emails obtained by ABC News show that State Dept. spokesperson Victoria Nuland requested that the CIA scrub references to an Al Qaeda-linked group, which, Nuland told White House officials, “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings.”
“Here is what you are to tell the public.”
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
Every reporter that attended that briefing should either report what was said (in detail) or resign.
The jury has found Jodi Arias guilty of first-degree murder in the death of her one-time boyfriend in Arizona. Arias initially denied involvement and later blamed the killing on masked intruders. Two years after her arrest, she said she killed Travis Alexander in self-defense.
After a four-month trial that included graphic details of their sexual escapades and photos of Alexander just after his death, jurors began deliberating Friday afternoon.
This was the breaking news that was so important that all the news networks cut away from their coverage of the House Oversight Committee’s Benghazi hearing (assuming they bothered to cover it in the first place.)
Between the revelations during the hearing and the media’s virtual embargo of coverage thereof, I am thoroughly disgusted. (I actually started to feel nauseous during the hearing, but that may have just been a bad breakfast burrito.)
I am feeling very pessimistic about the future of our nation right now. Please don’t attempt to cheer me up, that will only make it worse. I think I’ll go down to the park and beat up a mime.
Mitt Romney spoke at Southern Virginia University commencement last week.
SVU is 92 percent Mormon, so Romney mentioned things Mormons are familiar with like the importance of marriage and family.
He quoted from Psalms 127:3-5 where it says a man is blessed for having a “quiver full of” children.
And talked about his own family.
Romney has five sons and plenty of grandkids.
On CNN’s Piers Morgan Thursday, Maeve Reston suggested the reason Romney didn’t poll well with single women voters was because he was “very much into” his family.
And Marc Lamont Hill called Romney a “religious fanatic.”
Marc Lamont Hill also said that Romney told the graduates to have “binders full of children”. I am really surprised that no one on the panel mentioned polygamy.
You don’t have to like Mitt Romney or agree with him, but you have to admit the man practices what he preaches. He’s been pretty damn successful at it too. I could think of worse role models.
Here is a fascinating look at our open-minded, objective, unbiased, not-at-all-liberal media:
At a Los Angeles Times in-house awards ceremony last week, columnist Steve Lopez addressed the elephant in the room.
Speaking to the entire staff, he said, “Raise your hand if you would quit if the paper was bought by Austin Beutner’s group.” No one raised their hands.
“Raise you hand if you would quit if the paper was bought by Rupert Murdoch.” A few people raised their hands.
Facing the elephant trunk-on, “Raise your hand if you would quit if the paper was bought by the Koch brothers.” About half the staff raised their hands.
These provincial, ideological bigots won’t even work for a conservative.
Apparently, too many staffers at the L.A. Times have also deluded themselves with their own propaganda. The media have been working overtime to pretend Obama’s failed economic policies are not failed economic policies. Imagine their surprise at the reality of the job market after these bigots walk out on a good-paying gig.
Please Koch Brothers, please, please, please buy these newspapers.
Somehow I doubt that very many will quit. They’ll check out their job opportunities and find slim pickings, then decide that the Koch Brothers deserve a chance. And even if they do quit I bet there are a lot of talented people out there who would love to take their places.
I do find it amusing and interesting that no one considers it objectionable when a rich progressive wants to own a media outlet. Progressive newspaper reporters and talking hairdos on television will swear that their own political leanings do not affect the totally unbiased way they report the news. That is because “News” is like “Truth”; it has no bias.
If these people really plan to quit they should at least wait until they find another job are told to spin or suppress stories for political reasons. Then they could claim they quit rather than “lie”.
Because a progressive would never lie for money, would they? It would be a fate worse than death.
NBC’s Chuck Todd told an inconvenient truth about Barack Obama on Sunday’s Meet the Press.
CHUCK TODD: What I wonder how many people realized at the end [of Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner] when he did his, you know, there’s always this part at the end where they get serious for a minute. And it’s usually the part where presidents say, “You know, I think the press has a good job to do and I understand what they have to do.” He didn’t say that. He wasn’t very complimentary of the press. You know, we all can do better.
It did seem, I thought his pot shots joke wise and then the serious stuff about the internet, the rise of the internet media and social media and all that stuff – he hates it. Okay? He hates this part of the media. He really thinks that the sort of the buzzification – this isn’t just about Buzzfeed or Politico and all this stuff – he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it. And I think he was trying to make that clear last night.
Todd was likely quite correct, but chose not to disclose why Obama hates new media. It’s because most of it isn’t in the tank for this President and can’t be controlled by him.
That’s obviously not true of folks such as Todd and his colleagues in the old media who echo the current White House resident’s talking points, mercilessly attack his opponents, and cover for his missteps.
It’s therefore no wonder the President hates “the rise of the internet media and social media,” and although Todd is very active on Twitter, one thinks he also hates this rise because it’s making him and his colleagues less relevant.
There are a lot of ways to say it:
“What goes around, comes around.”
“Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
“Karma’s a bitch.”
But they all mean the same thing.
Not that many years ago a guy name Dubya was POTUS and the media were his lapdogs. People on the left weren’t happy with the media chokehold on information and the blogosphere was born. Left Blogistan was a place you could go for stories the major media wouldn’t touch.
Then this media whiz came along and saw the potential to manipulate this new “social media”. That guy is David Axelrod. He packaged up an empty suit with a blank resume and with a $100 million in seed money from Wall Street he turned a nobody into The Lightbringer.
Now the media are lapdogs for The Lightbringer and the right blogosphere (aka: Wingnuttia) is the place to go for stories the major (Lamestream) media won’t touch. And the biggest story they won’t touch?
That was the message that members of the media and others making the rounds at Friday night’s parties had for Tom Brokaw in the face of his renewed criticism of the Correspondents’ Association dinner.
“As a former White House Correspondent, it’s really nice for people in politics and media to come together and have a little weekend of fun,” MSNBC host Alex Wagner told POLITICO at a reception at the Hay Adams hotel. “I understand the idea of the ‘celebrification’ of the event but I think it’s more of a testament to how interesting and compelling Washington politics is to the outside world.”
[...]
Brokaw touched off the debate over the dinner when he told POLITICO’s Patrick Gavin in an interview that he won’t be attending this year’s gathering and that the last straw for him was when Lindsay Lohan was invited in 2012. The veteran newsman bemoaned the number of celebs at the dinner and worried how it all looks.
“What kind of image do we present to the rest of the country?” Brokaw asked. “Are we doing their business, or are we just a group of narcissists who are mostly interested in elevating our own profiles? And what comes through the screen on C-SPAN that night is the latter, and not the former.”
Some journalists said they didn’t see any downside to the dinner on Saturday night and the weekend of parties and events.
New Yorker editor David Remnick, whose magazine threw a Friday night soirée on the roof of the W Hotel, told POLITICO he doesn’t think the White House Correspondents’ Dinner undermines the press.
“Look at what we publish,” he said. “Does it seem like it corrupts us?”
Yes it does.
What is interesting here is Politico didn’t bother soliciting some outside-the-beltway opinions. That’s like polling a NORML convention on pot legalization. Your results will be a little skewed.
There is a reason that cops and crooks don’t hang out together. Their occupations are mutually incompatible. Whenever the two groups mingle it is bad news for the rest of us.
The press is supposed to be watchdogs for the rest of us. They are supposed to keep an eye on our public servants. When the press and politicians join forces the inmates have taken over the asylum.
Numerous polls over the past few decades have consistently shown that public respect and esteem for politicians and the press is declining. Or perhaps “plummeting” is a more accurate term. This trend mirrors the increasing insularity and incestuousness inside Washington DC.
If the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was the only time that politicians and the media socialized together that would be one thing. But in recent years the line between the two groups has become blurred as the players keep switching back and forth between teams.
The WHCD is just a symptom of a much large problem.
President Obama has watched the blood-dimmed tide drowning the ceremony of innocence, as Yeats wrote, and he has learned how to emotionally connect with Americans in searing moments, as he did from the White House late Friday night after the second bombing suspect was apprehended in Boston.
Unfortunately, he still has not learned how to govern.
How is it that the president won the argument on gun safety with the public and lost the vote in the Senate? It’s because he doesn’t know how to work the system. And it’s clear now that he doesn’t want to learn, or to even hire some clever people who can tell him how to do it or do it for him.
It’s unbelievable that with 90 percent of Americans on his side, he could get only 54 votes in the Senate. It was a glaring example of his weakness in using leverage to get what he wants. No one on Capitol Hill is scared of him.
Even House Republicans who had no intention of voting for the gun bill marveled privately that the president could not muster 60 votes in a Senate that his party controls.
President Obama thinks he can use emotion to bring pressure on Congress. But that’s not how adults with power respond to things. He chooses not to get down in the weeds and pretend he values the stroking and other little things that matter to lawmakers.
After the Newtown massacre, he and his aides hashed it out and decided he would look cold and unsympathetic if he didn’t push for some new regulations. To thunderous applause at the State of the Union, the president said, “The families of Newtown deserve a vote.” Then, as usual, he took his foot off the gas, lost momentum and confided his pessimism to journalists.
So much wrong, where do I start?
Barack Obama could not connect with people if he had a zillion miles of fiber optic cable and we all had high speed USB ports on the backs of our heads. He’s a barely adequate speech reader under the best of circumstances and a stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failure without a teleprompter. In order to connect emotionally with other people you need empathy but Obama cares about no one but himself.
When did Obama win “the argument on gun safety with the public”? He took a vague position on gun control that some people already agreed with but many others do not. Is there any evidence that anything Obama said or did budged public opinion even one percent?
Where did MoDo come up with that 90% statistic? Her ass or Obama’s? I’m sure that you could present people with some vague generality like “crazy people shouldn’t own guns” and get a really high level of support for that position. But that’s not the same as getting 90% support for a particular piece of legislation.
I will have to concede that Modo is right about one thing – Obama still hasn’t learned to govern. I guess even a retarded squirrel finds a nut sometimes.
As usual, I want to close this post about something MoDo wrote by pointing out that she is well paid to publish mindless drivel. I guess she is a role model for some young women because Meghan McCain seems to be following in her footsteps.
Meanwhile, my new favorite show premieres tonight on CMT:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Cynthia Tucker, I really want your thoughts and feelings on this. I don’t understand how people can elect somebody like Ted Cruz. Here’s a guy so far right, so unlimited in his notion of the second amendment, that anyone should be able to have any kind of gun. And anybody who says you can’t have any kind of gun is somehow limiting their rights under his view of the constitution.
In other words, Matt Dillon, Wyatt Earp, anybody who ever said leave your gun out of town on the way into town had to be stopped in their tracks because his view of the constitution is the bad guys, the guys in the gangs, they had a right to carry guns anywhere they wanted and any kind of gun they could get their hands on. And then he challenges a grown-up, again, Dianne Feinstein, who I have enormous respect for, who watched her mayor die right in front of her, who has dealt with criminal matters her whole career. She’s an expert on criminality, and have her lectured to by this far-out character, your view on what this has come to, this gun discussion. I think it’s so polarized between the middle, reasonable middle, and the far right. It’s hopeless.
CYNTHIA TUCKER: Well, Chris, not only is Ted Cruz is an extremist, he’s also overbearing, arrogant and condescending. And I can only imagine how Dianne Feinstein felt. How dare he? (Hardball, March 14, 2013)
But wait! There’s more!
SCARBOROUGH: Did they teach Ted Cruz to read what the Supreme Court said? Especially in the landmark, the landmark decision regarding Second Amendment rights over 200 years was written in 2008? I’m just wondering why would he use his seat on the Judiciary Committee if he went to Harvard to — to — to put forward a willfully ignorant statement about this bill violating the Second Amendment, because it does not. And Ted Cruz knows it does not. So who is he playing for? Is he playing for — for — for people who can’t read, for illiterates? I don’t understand…. When you’re condescending and you don’t even have the facts right. When you’re misstating what the Second Amendment says as interpreted by the conservative court, by Scalia. I have a problem with that.
Ted Cruz graduated from 2 Ivy League schools (Princeton and Harvard Law) then clerked for a Supreme Court Chief Justice (Rehnquist) before heading into private practice and then public service:
Cruz was Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to May 2008, appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. He was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, the youngest Solicitor General in the United States, and had the longest tenure in Texas history. He was formerly a partner at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he led the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice.[2]
He previously served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice, and as Domestic Policy Advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. In addition, from 2004 to 2009 Cruz was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation.
[...]
While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society’s Debate Panel won the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship.[12] In 1992, he was named Princeton’s Speaker of the Year and Team of the Year (with his debate partner, David Panton).[12] In 1991 he and his partner came in second to Austan Goolsbee and partner David Gray. Cruz was also a semi-finalist at the 1995 World Universities Debating Championship.
[...]
Cruz served as a law clerk to William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, and J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.[16] Cruz was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States.[17]
In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz drafted the amicus brief signed by attorneys general of 31 states, which said that the D.C. handgun ban should be struck down.[18] Cruz also presented oral argument for the amici states in the companion case to Heller before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Well educated, accomplished, and he’s only in his early 40s. Not only that but he’s Hispanic too! There aren’t a lot of people in this country who can match Cruz’s credentials. Certainly not anyone employed by MSNBC.
So what’s the problem?
He’s a Republican. Even worse, he’s a TEA PARTIER!!!!
The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dûr he was, and his name is remembered in no tale; for he himself had forgotten it, and he said: ‘I am the Mouth of Sauron.’
Today’s Washington journalists are like J. R. R. Tolkien’s ring wraiths, petty lords who wanted a few shiny golden Obama rings — only to end up as shrunken slaves to the One.
The Bob Woodward/Ron Fournier/Lanny Davis psychodrama is another small reminder that the Obama administration continues to assume that the press should be little more than a veritable Ministry of Truth. Its proper duty is to serve the White House and promote the progressive agenda of Barack Obama. Any were considered suspect who questioned whether those exalted ends should really be achieved by any means necessary — but they were so few and far between that it mattered little.
Woodward, Fournier, and Davis, in their surprise at the general paranoia of the Obama administration, must think that freelancing White House zealots are tarnishing the reputation of their president, who, given his own predilections, would otherwise not countenance such clumsy intimidation of journalists.
[...]
In the same way that the operatives of the Nixon White House once channeled the character of Richard Nixon, so too the Obama administration reflects the manner in which Barack Obama has always campaigned and viewed politics. His 2004 Senate run and two presidential campaigns all shared the same modus operandi of unleashing surrogates to tar opponents, bully critics, romance the mainstream media, and caricature the shrinking number of journalistic kulaks — all while deploring the politics of personal destruction.
The Woodward fiasco is different only in that a few liberals now feel that, given that Obama need not face election again, they should be allowed to salvage some journalistic integrity by mild cross-examination and pathetic eleventh-hour confessions of past White House pressure. Or, in the words of journalist Mark Halperin, writing of the Woodward affair, “It’s a little embarrassing none of the rest of us was as aggressive as he was.” Four years ago it was a little embarrassing; now it is only predictable.
Cannot Obama be somewhat magnanimous and give our modern-day Nazgûl a few face-saving measures after they have sold their souls on so many occasions when it counted? Of course not; emaciated wraiths remain wraiths. Dissent is equated with a sort of disloyalty among the supposedly kindred minds of fellow culture warriors. By questioning motives, they have earned justifiable rebuke — or worse.
The Ringwraiths were not just petty lords who wanted shiny baubles, they were kings who lusted for rings of power. The analogy still fits however, because today’s media lusts for the power (along with fame and fortune) that White House access brings.
When Amory Gutierrez from the Pleasanton Weeklywanted to do a puff piece on the Obamas’ helicopter, “Marine One,” the White House put out the welcome mat. After all, Pleasanton is a very upscale bedroom community attached to Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Democrats outnumber Republicans there more than two to one. Gutierrez, however, did not keep to the anticipated script. Her piece gushed over the helicopter flown by a Marine crew, but then went on to repeat what the Marines had told her. In nearly four years of flying the Obamas, Michelle Obama had never so much as verbally acknowledged the crew’s existence.
Intentional or not, the one line in the otherwise celebratory piece made the first lady look aloof and disdainful of the military — or as some people put it, just plain snooty. The White House moved decisively into damage-control mode.
Now, one might see this move as more than a bit of an overreaction. After all, the Pleasanton Weekly is not exactly the Washington Post. But, in many circles, Michelle Obama has a major image problem. There is her statement that she was not proud of her country that seems continually to follow her. Then, there were the vacations that were roundly criticized for masquerading as state visits. Consequently, this small weekly in an overwhelmingly Democratic district was being pressured to remove the line that further tarnished the first lady’s image.
Did the Marines not say this? Was the line inaccurate? Gina Channell-Allen, the president of the PleasantonWeekly, never contested the veracity of the line. In justifying her yielding to the “request” from the White House to have it removed, she made an argument so torturous as to remind us that the First Amendment is too important to be left to journalists to defend.
Channell-Allen told readers that she had been asked by the White House to take out something that compromised the president’s security, and while she was doing this, taking out the other line was no big deal. In fact, Channell-Allen conflated the two requests as if one were part of the other. Here is how she put it: “They also mentioned taking out a line that could be misconstrued about the first lady. It wasn’t going to change lives or destroy administrations by leaving it in or taking it out. When you’ve just been asked to do something to keep the president of the United States from harm, taking a line out about something like that is not a question. Even journalists have to choose our battles.”
Asking the Office of the First Lady for a comment on why it was necessary to pressure a small weekly newspaper to edit its story, The Daily Caller received an email from Michelle Obama’s press secretary, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, that denied the office knew of the story or ever had interacted with the paper.
I’m not holding my breath waiting for the media to come to Jeebus. They already sold their souls. Obama owns them. They are damned for eternity.
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” -Auric Goldfinger
“I had a young reporter asking tough, important questions of an Obama Cabinet secretary,” says one DC veteran. “She was doing her job, and they were trying to bully her. In an e-mail, they called her the vilest names — bitch, c–t, a–hole.” He complained and was told the matter would be investigated: “They were hemming and hawing, saying, ‘We’ll look into it.’ Nothing happened.”
He wound up confronting the author of the e-mail directly. “I said, ‘From now on, every e-mail you send this reporter will be on the record, and you will be speaking on behalf of the president of the United States.’ That shut it down.”
Why are we only hearing about this now? Why was this not front-page news the day it happened? Was a formal complaint made? If not, why not? Who is the author of the e-mail? Where is a copy of the e-mail?
Is this person still on the public payroll and if so, why?
This story says as much about the sad state of our media as it does about the Obama Fratboy Administration.
Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a “very senior person” at the White House warned him in an email that he would “regret doing this,” the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.
CNN host Wolf Blitzer said that the network invited a White House official to debate Woodward on-air, but the White House declined.
“I think they’re confused,” Woodward said of the White House’s pushback on his reporting.
So now the “most transparent administration ever” is threatening reporters who tell the truth about them.
I’m not making any predictions but this is the kind of thing that can be a game changer. If the media turns on Obama he’s toast and they don’t like it when one of their own gets attacked.
Nine days after his arrest in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Oscar Pistorius has been released on bail.
A judge granted bail to the double-amputee athlete Friday on the fourth day of his bail hearing.
In announcing his decision, Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair said that the state had not provided enough evidence to convince him that the international athlete was a flight risk.
Pistorius is charged with one count of premeditated murder over the Feb. 14 killing of Reeva Steenkamp. He says he accidentally shot her, thinking she was a dangerous intruder inside his home, lurking in a toilet stall off his bedroom.
The magistrate set bail at 1,000,000 South African rand (approx. $112,800), Reuters reported. Pistorius was also ordered to stay away from his home and witnesses, is prohibited from drinking alcohol, and must turn in his passport and his firearms He must also report to the police station twice a week.
The prosecution vehemently opposed bail, calling the Olympian also known as the “Blade Runner” a flight risk.
Who the hell is Oscar Pistorius and why should I care? Why is my twitter stream been clogged for days with his name?
Near as I can tell he is a minor sports celebrity from South Africa who is accused of killing his girlfriend. So what? Murders are a dime a dozen here in the U.S, we don’t need to import them.
The fact that Oscar Pistorius is a “story” tells you all you need to know about our news media. (They seriously suck.)
Let’s get back to the important stuff like the breathless blow-by-blow coverage of Chris Brown and Rihanna.
When we reported on the sick prank caller who inserted himself into live coverage of the Christopher Dorner standoff, we had no idea that his call wouldn’t even rank among the dumbest things said on the air this afternoon. Howard Kurtz and Wolf Blitzer were vying for the title of most ridiculous observation, but Chris Matthews isn’t about to be outdone. We had hoped the idiotic #negrospotting trend would have been left behind with the last of the campaign confetti, but progressive of pallor Matthews will not be contained.
Once again I would like to point out that Tweety gets paid a seven-figure salary to come up with such astute questions.
For a while yesterday it looked like Anderson Cooper was gonna give Tweety some competition in the Asshat Olympics but it turned out he was only mildly retarded:
Anderson Cooper asked if "the coming darkness" is a problem when hunting a fugitive in the woods, not if blacks are hard to find at night.— Cord Jefferson (@cordjefferson) February 13, 2013
Even though that was still a stupid question, it was only good enough to earn Anderson the third-place trophy. Coming in second for the day was Suzi Parker:
With this issue, we relaunch The New Republic. Our goals may be somewhat different from those of the magazine’s founding fathers, but we share their unabashed idealism. We believe that our new hyper-information age is thrilling, but not entirely satisfying. We believe that there must remain space for journalism that takes time to produce and demands a longer attention span-writing that is at once nourishing and entertaining. We aim to tell the most important, timely stories about politics, culture, and big ideas that matter to you.
The journalism in these pages will strive to be free of party ideology or partisan bias, although it will showcase passionate writing and will continue to wrestle with the primary questions about our society. Our purpose is not simply to tell interesting stories, but to always ask why these stories matter and tie their reporting back to our readers. We hope to discern the hidden patterns, to connect the disparate facts, and to find the deeper meaning, a layer of understanding beyond the daily headlines.
I must say, I’d never paid any attention to Chris Hughes before, and I didn’t yesterday until pushed by my commenters. On the evidence of the interview he and Franklin Foer did with the President, I saw him as another media suckup doing Democratic Party politics under cover of journalism. Seeing this “free of party ideology or partisan bias” business now only inclines me to scoff. If that’s what you wanted as your brand, why did you lead off with that interview?
But I realize I need to get up to speed on this Chris Hughes character. I didn’t even bother to name him in yesterday’s post, and I’ve only just made a tag for him now. Sorry, I didn’t bother watching “The Social Network.” To the extent that I follow celebrities, I’m not particularly drawn to new media businessmen. I can keep track of Mark Zuckerberg up to a point, but I’ve never paid attention to the lesser Facebookians.
Here‘s a HuffPo article from last March about Hughes’s purchase of TNR, noting that he was “a key player in President Obama’s online organizing efforts in 2008.” Why would we expect this man — who’s only 29, by the way — to strive to be free of party ideology or partisan bias? I’ve got to assume the striving is toward seeming to be free of party ideology and partisan bias, because that’s what journalists always say they are doing when they have ideological and partisan goals.
Partisans have just as much right to be journalists as anyone else. But they should be honest about their point of view. Otherwise the foundation for everything they say is based upon a lie.
The blowup came after the two argued repeatedly about the diversity in President Obama’s cabinet, which has become an issue in recent days as one white man after another is nominated to top positions. Scarborough said that a Republican would be facing far more criticism than a Democrat for such actions. Brzezinski defended Obama, saying he had had women at all levels of his government and that his policies had benefited women.
Scarborough began jokingly mentioning things like the Lily Ledbetter act under his breath. Brzezinski grew increasingly angry.
“You need to be quiet right now,” she said, before really taking the plunge.
“I’m actually trying to ignore the — I’m afraid to use the word, because it will not be good for you, because you’re being chauvinistic right now,” she said. “It’s not funny.”
“You’re calling the wrong guy a chauvinist,” Scarborough said angrily, as Brzezinski laughed. She started to turn away, and he snapped his fingers at her to get her to pay attention.
“Stop! Let me help you,” she said. “No! Let me help you,” he snapped back. “You really, knowing me and seeing me work around here for five years, you want to call me a chauvinist on television?”
“I said the way you’re acting is chauvinistic, especially the way you were handling this conversation,” she said. “It’s not funny.”
Oh my, stop the presses! Joe treated Mika like she’s stupid.
Guess what? She IS stupid. (That’s pretty much a job requirement to work at MSNBC.)
chau·vin·ism noun \ˈshō-və-ˌni-zəm\
Definition of CHAUVINISM
1: excessive or blind patriotism — compare jingoism
2: undue partiality or attachment to a group or place to which one belongs or has belonged
3: an attitude of superiority toward members of the opposite sex; also : behavior expressive of such an attitude
It’s only chauvinism if he treats her that way because she’s a woman.
This is one of my pet peeves. It’s playing the gender card.
Sexism and misogyny are bad things. So is racism. But equality means nobody gets a free pass. There are lots of dumbasses out there. Some of them are women and/or minorities. Women and minorities have an equal right to be called out for stupidity just like white men.
Mitt Romney and the GOP lost, but it wasn’t for lack of money. They spent a lot; they just didn’t get enough bang for the buck.
Billionaire Sheldon Adelson alone donated $150 million. But Romney lost anyway, especially among unmarried women.
Which is why I think that rich people wanting to support the Republican Party might want to direct their money somewhere besides TV ads that copy, poorly, what Lee Atwater did decades ago.
My suggestion: Buy some women’s magazines. No, really. Or at least some women’s Web sites.
One of the groups with whom Romney did worst was female “low-information voters.” Those are women who don’t really follow politics, and vote based on a vague sense of who’s mean and who’s nice, who’s cool and who’s uncool.
Since, by definition, they don’t pay much attention to political news, they get this sense from what they do read. And for many, that’s traditional women’s magazines — Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, the Ladies Home Journal, etc. — and the newer women’s sites like YourTango, The Frisky, Yahoo! Shine, and the like.
The thing is, those magazines and Web sites see themselves, pretty consciously, as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. So while nine out of 10 articles may be the usual stuff on sex, diet and shopping, the 10th will always be either soft p.r. for the Democrats or soft — or sometimes not-so-soft — hits on Republicans.
When a flier about getting away with rape was found in a college men’s bathroom, the women’s site YourTango (“Your Best Love Life”) led with the fact that the college was Paul Ryan’s alma materin a transparent effort to advance the Democrats’ War on Women claim that Republicans are somehow pro-rape. A companion article was “12 Hot Older Men Who Endorse President Obama.”
Similar p.r. abounded across the board: Sandra Fluke is a hero; Sarah Palin is a zero. Republicans are all old white men (women or minority Republicans get mocked or ignored).
This kind of thing adds up, especially among low-information voters. They may not know or care much about the specifics, but this theme, repeated over and over again, sends a message: Democrats are cool, and Republicans are uncool — and if you vote for them, you’re uncool, too.
If the feelthy riche are gonna buy up some women’s magazines, who are they gonna buy them from? Can you name a major media outlet (internet, dead tree, boob tube or talk, talk, talk radio) that isn’t owned by a rich person or big corporation? (NPR and PBS don’t count as “major” media.)
Ask a Vile Prog and they’ll tell you that the Evil One Percenters control all the media in this country and there is a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy to enslave us all. Ask a Wingnut Tea Partier and he’ll tell you that all the media except Fox News, Rush and Glenn Beck is the Lamestream Librul Media and Fox, Rush and Glenn are the only Fair & Balanced news sources in the country.
When Matthews first arrived in Washington, D.C., he worked as a police officer with the United States Capitol Police.[9] Subsequently, he served on the staffs of four Democratic members of Congress, including Senators Frank Moss and Edmund Muskie. In 1974, he mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Pennsylvania’s 4th congressional district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in which he received about 24% of the vote in the primary.[10] Matthews was a presidential speechwriter during the Carter administration and later worked for six years as a top aide to longtime Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O’Neill, playing a direct role in many key political battles with the Reagan administration.
Despite having worked for Democrats, Matthews has said, “I’m more conservative than people think I am…. I voted for George W. in 2000.”[11] Salon.com has called him the “most conservative voice” on MSNBC’s primetime lineup.[12] Matthews has been accused by media watchdogs[13] of having panels of guests that skew to the right and of supporting Republicans in his own questions and comments.
Tweety made his bones on cable news during l’affaire Lewinsky. Five nights a week for the better part of four years his fans were treated to regular discussions of the distinguishing characteristics of the Presidential Penis (aka “The Clenis”) and interviews with Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick and Cashmere McCloud. If you had dirt to dish on Bill or Hillary, Chris Matthews wanted to interview you. No tinfoil hat conspiracy theory was too improbable to discuss, and no leaked detail from the Starr Chamber Investigation was too salacious to report. Tweety helped make Paula Jones and Vince Foster into household names.
Then starting in 1999 Chris joined the Get Gore Movement. Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler spent years documenting how Tweety and the rest of the media set out to ruin the reputation of Al Gore and install George W. Bush as our 43rd POTUS. Chris remained a Bush supporter until sometime around 2007 when he performed an abrupt reversal and became a born-again Democrat and a flaming Obot.
Chris Matthews makes over $5 million dollars a year by playing the fool on MSNBC. He’s not getting paid for his wealth of knowledge (he got creamed on Jeopardy) or his keen insights. He is typically unprepared and obnoxious to his guests. His ratings are that great either. So why does he make so much money?
Answer: He is doing exactly what his employers want him to do. Think about that for a minute – why do his employers want him to play the fool?
All of the major media in this country share one common goal – supporting the establishment they work for. I don’t mean the Obama Administration, they work for the same people. I am talking about the corporatist/capitalist system.
This is not a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. There is no conspiracy. It’s all out in the open. All you have to do is open your eyes and look.
Try as he might, Mitt Romney could never sell voters on the idea that he was just like regular folks who shop at Costco.
But the gossip website TMZ captured Romney and his wife, Ann, on an expedition to the warehouse store near their home in La Jolla, Calif., loading up on pantry staples and paper products. The TMZ photo gallery is worth clicking through.
The photographer captured Romney inspecting toy cars — made in China, natch — and pushing his cart loaded with Christmas wrapping paper, Kirkland paper towels (i.e. the store brand), V8 drinks and Arrowhead bottled water. Plus there are photos of Romney unloading a gigantic box of Bisquick and other purchases into a black Audi Q7 SUV. Ann Romney pushes her own cart of Costco purchases behind her husband.
I really don’t know how to deal with all this excitement!
I am glad to see that Gannett has their priorities straight. But what about Sarah Palin? What is she doing today?
