Politics

The DC Morning – July 20, 2010

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Progressive ‘journalists’ coordinated smear against critics of Rev. WrightReporters harangue a sweaty Robert Gibbs after Obama mischaracterizes fight over unemployment benefitsDueling Tea Party leaders channel Hamilton and Burr (sort of!)Congressman points out that signs heralding stimulus are not a good use of the stimulus How is Obamacare helping FLOTUS? Oh right, it’s notCops don’t want to be filmed doing anything ever again

1.) Conspiracy to squash Rev. Wright reporting reveals Journolist not just place for doods to talk about sports — Remember when The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait wrote in the wake of Weigelgate, “[Journolist] was private not because the conversations were too explosive to be made public, but because they were too mundane”? Well, check out this mundanity: “According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate” by attempting to coordinate a media blackout on stories about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage,” reports The Daily Caller’s Jonathan Strong. But otherwise, it was all sports, right?
Share: 2.) Obama lies about the motivations of Senate Republicans, reporters call him on it –It seems one of the president’s highly paid beer-guzzling speechwriters may have helped the boss really put his foot in it. Just hours after Pres. Obama attributed the stalemate over emergency unemployment benefits to Republicans’ “lack of faith in the American people” at the Rose Garden–adding, “They’re not looking for a handout. They desperately want to work”–White House reporters grilled Robert Gibbs over the stupidity of the remarks, pointing out that Republicans want to pass unemployment benefits, they just want them to be paid for. “Couldn’t Democrats have solved this instantly by simply saying, we’re going to extend unemployment benefits and we’re going to pay for it with offsetting cuts?” asked one reporter. “‘Pay as you go’ is the very principle the President has put forward himself. They’re saying that now because of big deficits we need to pay our way,” said another. And yet another noted, “So you say that we ought not to be playing politics, and yet it seems that the President himself was suggesting that the Republicans were playing politics. He said, it was time to look past the election out there this morning. And yet when everybody knows this is going to pass tomorrow, how can you say that the President is not indulging in a little politics?” All of which leads one to ask, WHY DO JOURNALISTS HAVE NO FAITH IN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?
Share: 3.) Tea Party slap-fight rages on — “The bad blood between some of the country’s most well known Tea Party organizations was unmistakably on display by two prominent activists from rival groups Monday,” reports The Daily Caller’s Alex Pappas. “‘The man is a disgusting, vile, racist, pig…I don’t stand with people like that,’ said Tea Party Patriots national coordinator Mark Meckler, when asked about Mark Williams of the Tea Party Express.” And what did Williams have to say about Meckler? “I loved the guy until I found out that he was an opportunist out looking to cash in on sincere peoples’ fears about their nation,” Williams told The Daily Caller by e-mail. “He loved me until he realized that I knew what he is.” Now, you might think that all of this is bad, that political groups that cannot keep from spanking each other in public are immature or not ready to lead, but you would be forgetting your history. What is happening between Williams and Meckler is no less than a re-happening of formery Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton getting all shot up by Vice President Aaron Burr, except with slapping and name-calling instead of guns. Also, there is no dignity in any of it, so that’s different, too.
Share: 4.) Republican congressman asks why gov is using stimulus money to brag about how much stimulus money it has — “Republican Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock was no fan of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which passed last year and he far from relishes the constant reminder of the stimulus from the signposts that litter the country’s landscape,” reports The Daily Caller’s Caroline May. “To save America from his scourge, Schock submitted a proposal last week to stop the funding for advertising for the stimulus with signs.” A statement from House Republicans summed up the goal thusly: “This week’s proposal would eliminate funding of the signs and require federal agencies to not only report the costs of the signs, but also find their own administrative cuts to recapture the funds.” Good luck with that, Team Fiscal. We will be over here in Realityland, nursing a G&T and listening to Gordon Liddy pitching gold coins again.
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5.) FLOTUS claims Obamacare changed her life, fails to explain how — “For moms like me, [Obamacare] makes our lives easier,” First Lady Michelle Obama wrote in an email to supporters. Our only question: How? How does your husband’s insanely expensive health-care bill make your life easier? Are you not provided with government health insurance? Did your husband not make millions last year? Did you yourself not make hundreds of thousands of dollars last year? DO YOU NOT LIVE IN A FREE MANSION SURROUNDED BY DOCTORS AND ARMED GUARDS? Actually, upon reading the entire letter, it seems that the “moms like me” line was just a rhetorical flourish that FLOTUS used to make her defense of her husband’s crazy policies seem more personal; the rest of the letter is all “you can do this” and “you can take advantage of that” and “it will only cost you an arm and a leg.”
Share: 6.) Remember when cops used to like being on TV? — Those days are gone. Collectively, the donut-inhaling, coffee-swilling, ‘roid-injecting Dirty Cops of America (not to be confused with law enforcement officers who do their jobs) have decided they don’t want to be filmed anymore. According to ABC News, videotaping a police encounter is “probably the most effective way to protect citizens against police officers who exaggerate or lie,” which explains the rash of attempted prosecutions across the country of citizens who dared record a traffic stop or police encounter. While state agencies have charged that the conversations between copper and citizen are private, it’s actually the worrywarts at the ACLU who have it right this time: “It’s not that recording any conversation is illegal without consent. It’s that recording a private conversation is illegal without consent,” he said. “So then the question is, ‘Are the words of a police officer spoken on duty, in uniform, in public a ‘private conversation.’ And every court that has ever considered that question has said that they are not.”
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