Friday, March 1, 2013

When this petulant juvenile encounters real journalists

When the Obama Administration Goes After a Journalist for Reporting the Truth  "As the broken bodies of journalists abused by this Adminstration begin to pile up -- making the Nixon Administration look like boy scouts -- media types just might begin to report the news objectively and with greater regard for the truth than their personal, ideological predilections have, to date, allowed.  This is a change we can all hope for.  And, to honor the first fallen heros, we should call it "Marinucci-Woodward Journalistic Integrity.""  Read more:
Political Cartoons by Eric Allie
From the UK: The Mutt and Jeff of the Obama administration
"Is the United States about to become a laughing-stock to the rest of the world? It seems to have accrued a Defence Secretary who is the toast of Iran, and a Secretary of State who is a blithering idiot.
"It was hard to imagine that the new guy at State, John Kerry, could make himself look even more stupid than he has done by his science-denying belief that the planet is about to fry through man-made climate change. Well, he has indeed now exceeded such expectations."
....
"Not so much a Defence Secretary, then, as an Offence Secretary – upsetting America’s allies and sucking up to its mortal enemies.
"Kerry and Hagel – the Mutt and Jeff of the Obama administration.
"And Iran, not surprisingly, is beating its chest in delight and racing towards building its genocide bomb."
Political Cartoons by Michael Ramirez
Senator: Obama has media 'enemies list'  "Inhofe, a Republican, told nationally-syndicated "Andrea Tantaros Show" Friday morning that he wasn't surprised when Washington Post Watergate sleuth Bob Woodward and other mainstream reporters revealed that they have been threatened by Obama aides for criticizing the administration's tactics, especially during the fight over the sequester."
George Will; “I will do many things for my country and my profession,” Will said. “I will not take seriously Mr. Carney.”  "During the White House press briefing on Thursday, Obama press secretary Jay Carney had a dire warning if the sequester deadline passed, which was those “severe cuts” would take their toll on middle-class jobs and “slash vital services for children, seniors and our troops and military families.”

WaPo Fact-Checker Blasts White House Sequester Scare Tactics " So, Obama lies. And for the most part the media had blindly played right along. But thanks to Bob Woodward leading the way, a few brave members of the media's Cult of Obama have woken up (if only for a moment) and risked a backlash from their colleagues by reporting the truth about Obama and his sequester lies."

The President's schedule for today, March 1

White House.gov
10:05 am
The President hosts the bipartisan, bicameral leadership of Congress at the White House; the Vice President also attends
Oval Office Closed Press
11:35 am
The President delivers a statement
Brady Press Briefing Room Closed Press

Mr. Obama, cartoonists wonder if this is what you call governing

More Frankenquester follies  "Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) claimed today that "over 170 million jobs" could be lost due to sequestration. Later in the presser, Rep. Waters corrected herself, saying it was only "750,000 jobs" that could be lost." Oh, well then...that's different.
Political Cartoons by Gary Varvel
How Bad is the Sequester?  "Nearly every news report describes the horrendous $85 Billion across-the-board cuts. The legacy media outlets are wrong on two accounts."....
Political Cartoons by Lisa Benson
What Happens Next on the Sequester? "But it's hard to imagine either Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn or John Boehner agreeing to turn off sequester in exchange for any taxes -- all of them would be watching their political careers flash before their eyes if they do." "
Political Cartoons by Glenn McCoy
Political Cartoons by Gary McCoy
This looks bad. Really bad: "Female passengers, who undergo nearly nude full–body scans, will be relieved to learn this drastic reduction torpedoes the ink budget. TSA can no longer afford to print particularly comely images for posting in the lunchroom."....

This man will wish he were never born. And Bob Woodward as well.

Ron Fournier: Why Bob Woodward's Fight With The White House Matters to You

All the President's men are dumping on Bob Woodward.

National Journal ".... I essentially broke ties with a senior White House official.
"Yes, I iced a source– and my only regret is I didn’t do it sooner. I decided to share this encounter because it might shed light on the increasingly toxic relationship between media and government, which is why the Woodward flap matters outside the Beltway."
...."I had angered the White House, particularly a senior White House official who I am unable to identify because I promised the person anonymity. Going back to my first political beat, covering Bill Clinton’s administration in Arkansas and later in Washington, I’ve had a practice that is fairly common in journalism: A handful of sources I deal with regularly are granted blanket anonymity. Any time we communicate, they know I am prepared to report the information at will (matters of fact, not spin or opinion) and that I will not attribute it to them."

Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate papers that brought down the Nixon Administration  "Between 1972 and 1976, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein emerged as two of the most famous journalists in America and became forever identified as the reporters who broke the biggest story in American politics."


Remember when Robert Redford played Bob Woodward in this movie?
All the President's Men  "All the President's Men is a 1976 Academy Award-winning political thriller based on the 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post. The film starred Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, respectively; it was produced by Walter Coblenz, written by William Goldman, and directed by Alan J. Pakula."
 

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Alan Caruba: Too Much Obama


...."Peggy Noonan, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, put her finger on Obama’s growing problems. “It’s always cliffs, ceilings and looming catastrophes with Barack Obama. It is always government by freakout.” After a while, even his supporters grow weary of that and, more importantly, it creates an image in their minds that he is incompetent and either unable or unwilling to govern.
....
" “Government by freakout carries a price,” said Noonan. It wears people down. It doesn’t inject a sense of energy, purpose or confidence in those who do business in America, it does the opposite.”"....

Why Does Anyone Need to Read About Celebrities?

Ann Coulter  " "I don't see why anyone needs ..." is code for: "I don't do it, so let's ban it." The corollary is: "I enjoy this, so you have to subsidize it."
Environmentalists say: "I don't know why anyone needs to shower once a day -- my French friends and I take two showers per month. We think we smell fine."
"That's the difference between a totalitarian and a normal person. Liberals are obsessed with controlling what other people do.
"As Sen. Dianne Feinstein said this week, so-called "assault weapons" are a "personal pleasure" and "mothers and women" have to decide whether this personal pleasure "is more important than the general welfare."
"The "general welfare" is every tyrant's excuse, going back to Robespierre and the guillotine. Free people are not in the habit of providing reasons why they "need" something simply because the government wants to ban it. That's true of anything -- but especially something the government is constitutionally prohibited from banning, like guns. "
Political Cartoons by Henry Payne

UPDATED: Ladies, Uncle Joe says to buy a shotgun. Buy a shotgun!


"According to Delaware attorneys contacted by U.S. News, in Biden’s home state it is only legal to use deadly force if there is reason to fear imminent loss of life. Shooting a gun in the air could result in felony reckless endangering and aggravated menacing charges, in addition to misdemeanor charges, the lawyers said."
 
"The governor will also correct a mistake in the quickly passed and shoddily written bill, which makes all New York law enforcement’s guns illegal due to having magazines that hold more than seven shots. The country’s laws are in the best of hands."

Jewish baby stoned by Arabs near Haifa, Israel (Revised)

"This is a Jewish baby who got stoned by Arabs today, if it was on the other side, it would have [been] posted by all the media in the world. Now with Facebook we have the power to spread it out all over the net."
Odelya Rottem on Facebook; Hat tip to Rich Cutter Avallone

What do you expect from these people?

92 Year Old Palestinian Woman: Palestinians Should Massacre Jews Like We Massacred Them in Hebron.

Home: The Tunnel Wall

Bob Woodward begins to pay the price for taking on the regime of Obama

Breitbart gives us a wealth of information:

Cult of Obama: List of Journalists Throwing Woodward Under Bus When the news hit that the Obama White house had threatened [B]ob Woodward, many in the media immediately chose to protect Obama by ridiculing Woodward, questioning his motives, and/or dismissing his reporting. Meet the members of the Cult of Obama…

Lanny Davis: Obama White House Threatened Washington Times Over My Column  "Lanny Davis, who served under President Bill Clinton as special counsel to the White House, told Washington, D.C.'s WMAL this morning that the Obama White House had threatened the Washington Times over his column, warning that the Times would suffer limited access to White House officials and might have its White House credentials revoked. Davis, a centrist Democrat, is sometimes critical of the Obama administration's policies."

Woodwardgate: Media Gang-Tackle Iconic Journalist to Save Obama  "It's an incredible story of the White House attempting to bully Bob Woodward, the most iconic reporter of the 20th century – the reporter who, along with Carl Bernstein, took down a president of the United States. So you might expect the rest of the media to stand with Woodward. You’d be wrong. They’re too busy spending time playing defense for the White House."
 
 WH Senior Adviser Plouffe: Woodward Washed Up "Wednesday night, in the aftermath of the blow-up regarding the White House’s email to Bob Woodward suggesting he would "regret" his reporting of sequestration, White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe took to twitter to bash Woodward as a past-his-prime hack."

Media Matters' Boehlert Mocks Bob Woodward's Age  "Today, though, because Woodward's reporting has uncovered facts inconvenient to Obama's sequester narrative, Boehlert's publicly mocking Woodward as "funny" and "sad" because he "doesn't seem to understand" sequester. Boehlert then takes a direct shot at Woodward's age with this parting shot: "time to retire." "

Woodward Emails Back Claim of White House Intimidation  "The emails reveal a kind of psychological manipulation and intimidation that many should be familiar with. I call them "screamers." Others might call them bullies; but these are people who intimidate through screaming when they don't get their way. Then, when that doesn't work, they always come back and apologize but the passive-aggressive bullying remains. "
 

The horror of sequestration!

Frankenquester unraveling: DHS official 'retires' over release of illegals  "It didn't a lot of brains to call out the administration for releasing illegal aliens from prison and then blame budget cuts that hadn't even occurred yet." 
 
Frankenquester fail #2: Education Secretary Duncan lies about teachers getting 'pink slips' already  "This is getting silly. And it is turning into a political disaster for Obama."
Political Cartoons by Steve Kelley
President Obama’s Legacy: Government Greed "You can’t grow the economy by taking money out of the economy. Yet that’s the president’s plan, and it’s leading us down a dangerous path."
Political Cartoons by Chuck Asay
 

Gene Sperling is the guy who threatened Bob Woodward (Updated)

Yid With Lid  "Well that didn't take long! This morning the liberal political site Buzzfeed it was Gene Sperling, the director of the White House Economic Council who sent the threatening Email to Wapo reportner(sp) Bob Woodward:

Bob Woodward called a senior White House official last week to tell him that in a piece in that weekend’s Washington Post, he was going to question President Barack Obama’s account of how sequestration came about - and got a major-league brushback. The Obama aide “yelled at me for about a half hour,” Woodward told us in an hour-long interview yesterday around the Georgetown dining room table where so many generations of Washington’s powerful have spilled their secrets. Digging into one of his famous folders, Woodward said the tirade was followed by a page-long email from the aide, one of the four or five administration officials most closely involved in the fiscal negotiations with the Hill. “I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today,” the official typed. “You’re focusing on a few specific trees that give a very wrong impression of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here. … I think you will regret staking out that claim.”
 
Gene Sperling was a guest on a recent Fox News Sunday. See the difficulty of interviewing an Obama administration official as they filibuster each question. Numerous times Brett Baier tries to cut Sperling off with another question, but like a robot, Sperling refuses to stop until he has read off the Democrat talking points.  I'd say he seems perfectly able to lecture Mr. Woodward for half an hour, wouldn't you?
 You knew this next was coming, didn't you?


Update with added posts:
'What the hell happened to Bob Woodward?'  "Is there dissension in the ranks of the Big Media over the Obama administration’s heavy hand on even friendly media?"
...."But far from the press establishment rallying around Woodward, some elements are wondering how and why he wandered off the reservation with his criticism of the administration."
Many in the press will eat their own to protect Obama.
 
Proof: White House Threatened Bob Woodward "Now the left is toning it down and claiming that Woodward is exaggerating, but think about it for a minute. A top spokesperson, a lawyer for the President of the United States, tells a far less powerful man that he will regret reporting the truth, how would you take it? What if it were you?"

; War on Woodward May Be a Tipping Point
 "But there is more at work here than just a case of White House flacks picking a fight with the wrong guy. The problem here for President Obama is that the willingness of Woodward to expose the falsity of the administration’s position on the sequester, as well as their threat, could mark the beginning of the end of the administration’s magic touch with the mainstream press."

One can hope, but we're taking on a celebrity president here, remember.