Monday, June 9, 2014

Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington

Amazon  "Seasoned CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson reveals how she has been electronically surveilled while digging deep into the Obama Administration and its scandals, and offers an incisive critique of her industry and the shrinking role of investigative journalism in today’s media.

"Americans are at the mercy of powerful figures in business and government who are virtually unaccountable. The Obama Administration in particular has broken new ground in its monitoring of journalists, intimidation and harassment of opposition groups, and surveillance of private citizens.
Sharyl Attkisson has been a journalist for more than thirty years. During that time she has exposed scandals and covered controversies under both Republican and Democratic administrations. She has also seen the opponents of transparency go to ever greater lengths to discourage and obstruct legitimate reporting.

"Attkisson herself has been subjected to “opposition research” efforts and spin campaigns. These tactics increased their intensity as she relentlessly pursued stories that the Obama Administration dismissed. Stonewalled is the story of how her news reports were met with a barrage of PR warfare tactics, including online criticism, as well as emails and phone calls up the network chain of command in an effort to intimidate and discourage the next story. In Stonewalled, Attkisson recounts her personal tale, setting it against the larger story of the decline of investigative journalism and unbiased truth telling in America today.


Exclusive: Sharyl Attkisson on Journalism’s Very Dangerous Trend    "Sharyl Attkisson, an award-winning investigative reporter who resigned from CBS News earlier this year, says the news media are heading down a dangerous path with attempts to “censor or block stories” that don’t align with their preferred agenda.

“ 'There’s a tendency in the news media, on the part of some managers, to censor or block stories that don’t fall in line with the message they want sent to the viewers,” Attkisson said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Signal. “I think that’s really a very dangerous perspective to have.”...

Remembering D-Day in 18 Photos

Soldiers crowd a landing craft on their way to Normandy during the Allied Invasion of Europe. (Photo: US Army/Flickr)
Soldiers crowd a landing craft on their way to Normandy during the Allied Invasion of Europe. (Photo: US Army/Flickr)

Hundreds of dead soldiers in stretchers covered with a blankets after D-Day. Killed during Normandy landings, they lie in a temporary cemetery on the cliff of Colleville-sur-Mer, overlooking Omaha Beach, ca. June 8-10, 1944. This scene took place a little west of the permanent Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. France, World War 2. (Photo: Newscom)
Hundreds of dead soldiers in stretchers covered with a blankets after D-Day. Killed during Normandy landings, they lie in a temporary cemetery on the cliff of Colleville-sur-Mer, overlooking Omaha Beach, ca. June 8-10, 1944. This scene took place a little west of the permanent Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. France, World War 2. (Photo: Newscom)

A moment of truth for the Tunnel Wall

Quite some time back, the TW posted a photo of Code Pink carrying a banner praising the murder of American troops, much the same as Westboro Baptist Church. The picture I published was this one:
 
Here is their refutation of the faux banner  "In response to CODEPINK's vibrant and loud presence on Capitol Hill in recent months, we have become the target of far-right hatred that has filled staff emailboxes with profane and insulting messages suggesting that, among other things, we should be run over by trucks, forced to wear burkas, or shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan where we would get what we deserved." ...
 
This is the photo that they say has been changed:
 
More on this at the link. TW still strongly condemns CP's failure to denounce those who support the murder of Israeli men, women and children, launching rockets into population centers with the desire to kill indiscriminately.
They may not have carried a banner praising the death of American troops, but they have given support to those who cause just that, who hand out celebratory treats after Muslims murder families with small children in their beds.
I find their goals and actions to be reprehensible. The Tunnel Dweller

The Fruits of Progressivism; It’s academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle.

George Will  "Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous..., and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle."
...
"Academia is learning that its attempts to create victim-free campuses — by making everyone hypersensitive, even delusional, about victimizations — brings increasing supervision by the regulatory state that progressivism celebrates.

"What government is inflicting on colleges and universities, and what they are inflicting on themselves, diminishes their autonomy, resources, prestige, and comity. Which serves them right. They have asked for this by asking for progressivism."
 

Sacrifices on the Altar of Obama’s Vanity

Jonathan S. Tobin  "By ordering the Environmental Protection Agency to enact sweeping new regulations that will transform the U.S. economy by essentially putting hundreds of coal-fired power plants on the road to extinction, President Obama is finally making good on his famous campaign promise that his election would signal “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal.” The goal of the new regulations that bypass Congress is to reduce power plant carbon emissions by 30 percent by the year 2030. But in order to do that, hundreds of the more than 600 coal-burning plants will have to close. Though it is impossible to say with any certainty how much damage this will do to the U.S. economy, what Obama is doing with a stroke of a pen will turn the energy industry upside down, send energy prices skyrocketing, and likely send those regions of the country that are dependent on either the coal industry or the plants that use the stuff into crisis." More...
 

Psaking it to State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki

Thomas Lifson  "Highly visible among the hacks who are now in charge of US foreign policy (such luminaries as Ben Rhodes and Susan Rice) is Jen Psaki, official spokesperson for the United States Department of State. Psaki is now an object of ridicule on Russian television, which has created the word “psaking” to describe “when someone makes a dogmatic statement about something they don’t understand, mixes facts up, and then doesn’t apologize.' ”
 
...
As Ed Lasky has chronicled on these pages, Psaki's background as a campaign aide to Obama ill-qualifies her for her serious diplomatic responsibilities.  But in the Obama administration, political loyalty trumps expertise every time, even in the most sensitive positions.
 
We see that will apply to Obama's judgeships as well.

The Daily Obamanation

'I've Had Enough:' When Democrats Quit on Obama (Yeah, but who was it?)

 
Ron Fournier  ... "I share this email to make the broader point and to offer a disclosure: In the 18 months since I began writing columns focused on the presidency, virtually every post critical of Obama has originated from conversations with Democrats. Members of Congress, consultants, pollsters, lobbyists, and executives at think tanks, these Democrats are my Obama-whispers. They respect and admire Obama but believe that his presidency has been damaged by his shortcomings as a leader; his inattention to details of governing; his disengagement from the political process and from the public; his unwillingness to learn on the job; and his failure to surround himself with top-shelf advisers who are willing to challenge their boss as well as their own preconceived notions.
 
" 'Dem Party is F****d," wrote a Democratic consultant with strong ties to the White House and Capitol Hill during the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act website." ...

"The new approach: Frame the criticism as another example of Republicans complaining about something just because Obama was the one to do it."  Politico

GOP Senator Lindsay Graham warned President Obama the Senate Republicans would move to impeach him if he releases more prisoners from Guantanamo. The president can dodge that. The key is getting Michelle to okay the sex scandal that'll keep the public on his side.   Argus Hamilton