JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Obama Advisor Openly Brags About Lying to Public, Media Yawns.
I’m not sure though, that doing everything possible to ensure that this story doesn’t develop legs counts as yawning. Silence definitely implies consent in this case.
JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: White House Press Corps Asks Obama Three Questions About Trump, None About Ben Rhodes.
Related: As You Would Guess, There Are No Republicans In the White House Press Corps.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: The New York Times profiles Ben “Lonesome*” Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, or as they dub him “The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru,” who all but tells the Grady Lady their reporting stinks on ice:
The job he was hired to do, namely to help the president of the United States communicate with the public, was changing in equally significant ways, thanks to the impact of digital technologies that people in Washington were just beginning to wrap their minds around. It is hard for many to absorb the true magnitude of the change in the news business — 40 percent of newspaper-industry professionals have lost their jobs over the past decade — in part because readers can absorb all the news they want from social-media platforms like Facebook, which are valued in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars and pay nothing for the “content” they provide to their readers. You have to have skin in the game — to be in the news business, or depend in a life-or-death way on its products — to understand the radical and qualitative ways in which words that appear in familiar typefaces have changed. Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
As John Podhoretz writes at the New York Post in response to Rhodes making perhaps the ultimate Kinsley gaffe, “Congratulations, liberals of the Washington press corps and elite organizations: You’re a bunch of suckers. We all know this because the Obama White House just told us so.”
Tough break, Juicebox Mafia; you did everything you could for Obama, but he and his staffers still have no respect for such cheap dates, especially as they kick back and play out the remaining string until January.
As for Rhodes’ foreign policy skills — or the lack thereof — Ace of Spades has you more than covered, as he fisks wide swatches of the article, including this passage:
His lack of conventional real-world experience of the kind that normally precedes responsibility for the fate of nations — like military or diplomatic service, or even a master’s degree in international relations, rather than creative writing — is still startling.
Gee, wait ’till the Times discovers who Rhodes’ boss is.
But wait, there’s more! “Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru Boasts of How the Administration Lied to Sell the Iran Deal,” Lee Smith writes at the Weekly Standard: “Those readers who found Jeffrey Goldberg’s picture of Obama in his March Atlantic profile refreshing for the president’s willingness to insult American allies publicly will be similarly cheered here by Rhodes’s boast of deceiving American citizens, lawmakers, and allies over the Iran deal. Conversely, those who believe Obama risked American interests to take a cheap shot at allies from the pedestal of the Oval Office will be appalled to see Rhodes dancing in the end zone to celebrate the well-packaged misdirections and even lies—what Rhodes and others call a ‘narrative’—that won Obama his signature foreign policy initiative.”
* Sorry, cheap joke. Though to be fair, the real Lonesome Rhodes spent his last days as an Obamacare pitchman, thus bringing his career full circle.
JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Vice-Chair Tulsi Gabbard Resigns From DNC; AP Buries the News in a Timeline. “Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard resigned her position as Vice Chair at the DNC and immediately endorsed Bernie Sanders for President… Perhaps AP is awaiting word from either Team Clinton or the White House as to what they’re going to be allowed to report.”
JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO WRONG: Media Pundits Often Fail to Disclose Financial Ties to Hillary Clinton.
DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Inviting foreigners to intervene in US elections.
WHY, IT’S LIKE THEY’RE DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES OR SOMETHING: CNN’s Cooper Lets Slip: White House Press Corps ‘Agrees’ With Obama.
DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Politico Abandons Veil of Objectivity, Pushes Democrat Narrative on Gun Control.
DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Suspended CNN Reporter Conspired With Clinton Campaign to Smear Rand Paul.
DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES ALL THE WAY DOWN: NBCUniversal Executive Hosts Fundraiser for Hillary Clinton.
BECAUSE THE MSM CONSISTS LARGELY OF DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Why Do Democrats Get Away With Lying About Guns?
DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, THEN AND NOW: “Drew Pearson is probably a forgotten name these days* to the young and ambitious racing about the capital. But few had more influence — and played on both sides of the journalist/politics boundary line quite as routinely — as Pearson during decades as one of the two or three most influential political columnists:”
His professional life involved very obvious quid pro quos; doing favors for powerful people by writing about something or, occasionally, not writing about something (like a senator’s tax-avoidance legislation to help a big company in his state).
Writing about a Kennedy press conference, he acknowledges that he’d wanted to assist Kennedy but didn’t get to his press secretary (Pierre Salinger) in time. “I had planned a question about the Free University of Cuba but couldn’t get hold of Salinger to coach Kennedy in advance.”
His was a world of exchanges where information was bartered. While he voted for Democrat Hubert Humphrey in 1968, he still withheld from readers knowledge that Republican candidate Richard Nixon had received psychotherapy. He was looking to get something in return.
He withheld, too, investigating tax breaks that then-Senator Lyndon Johnson had obtained for a Texas company in return for Johnson backing Pearson’s preferred Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Years later, Pearson helped to write Johnson’s 1964 State of the Union address, though their relationship was complex and, yes, he was still a syndicated columnist.
He operated in a pantheon of potent columnists, led by Walter Lippman and Walter Winchell, with no real counterpart these days (perhaps Tom Friedman of The New York Times when it comes to issues of foreign affairs.).
The Friedman comparison is apt, considering the latter man’s pet phrases seem to wind up each year in Obama’s State of the Union addresses, and he’s a frequent golfing partner of our semi-retired president.
* I dunno — he was on the NFL’s All Decade Team of the 1970s…
(H/T: Kathy Shaidle.)
TOP DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND MEXICAN DRUG LORDS AGREE: Donald Trump really should shut up about the dangers of illegal immigration, says Al Hunt of Bloomberg View on MSNBC…and escaped Mexican drug lord “El Chapo,” who “has gloated on Twitter about his escape from a maximum security jail by taunting authorities and threatening US-presidential hopeful Donald Trump.”
But following his escape he has took to Twitter and used it to hit back at Trump, who has said that [Joaquin Guzman, billionaire head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel] embodies ‘everything that is wrong with Mexico’ and added he would ‘kick his ass’.
On the account, administered by Guzman’s son Ivan, the escapee reportedly wrote: ‘If you keep p****** me off I’m going to make you eat your words you f****** blonde milk-s*****’.
There’s a bright future ahead for El Chapo as the next MSNBC pundit and/or Daily Kos blogger if this whole illegal drug cartel thing fails to work out.
I’m not at all a fan of Trump for a myriad of reasons, but as the Insta-Professor notes in USA Today, “when the members of the ‘Outer Party’ feel sufficiently ignored, a champion appears who will take their interests to heart, or at least sound as if he does.”
DEMOCRATIC PARTY BRASS BECOMING INCREASINGLY ANGRY AT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Biden campaign brings top journalists to Wilmington.
Two people with knowledge of the situation told Semafor that during meetings with reporters from outlets like The New York Times, the Washington Post, and others, campaign officials have invoked a coverage spreadsheet laying out areas where the team believes their reporting has fallen short.
In particular, campaign officials have chafed at some of the coverage of former President Donald Trump, feeling that outlets are too focused on his legal troubles and haven’t paid enough attention to some of his incendiary recent statements on the campaign trail. A source familiar told Semafor that with the exception of its recent meeting with the Times, the campaign meetings had been “substantive” and “productive,” and that Biden staffers were scheduled to meet in the coming days with political reporting teams from ABC, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, Fox, NPR, Reuters, Bloomberg, and others in Wilmington.
And of course, it’s worth nothing: If Donald Trump Did This, the Establishment Media’s Heads Would’ve Exploded.
This team knows that every aspect of the narrative must be controlled for them to have a shot at re-election. It’s creepy and un-American. If they’re this worried about bad press concerning Joe Biden, maybe Democrats shouldn’t have doubled down on this bad bet. The man is being led off by his wife at events, unable to comprehend his surroundings. If he can’t handle two events in one day without falling, bumbling, drooling, or looking lost, this endeavor isn’t worth entertaining. I don’t see Biden surviving a campaign season that isn’t handicapped by COVID procedures. Those are long over, and voters expect the president to have the stamina to do multiple events in various states for days on end until we all vote in November.
On that issue, no meeting could smooth over Biden falling or suffering a blown mental fuse a la Mitch McConnell on the stump.
This is the inevitable twilight years of a politician who at the peak of his power (and faculties) loved nothing more than insulting journalists and locking them in closets.
Exit quote:
Same energy https://t.co/QLlDO2EX7S pic.twitter.com/SVtFluReJg
— Matthew Foldi (@MatthewFoldi) January 8, 2024
DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES RECEIVE THEIR MARCHING ORDERS: White House Sends Letter To Media Allies Directing Them to Intensify ‘Scrutiny’ of House Republicans Investigating Biden Corruption.
The Biden White House sent a letter to its media allies Wednesday, directing them to intensify their “scrutiny” of House Republicans after Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry into the Biden family’s influence-peddling operation.
“It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies. Impeachment is grave, rare, and historic. The Constitution requires ‘treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter to top U.S. news executives, according to CNN. “After nearly 9 months of investigating, House Republicans haven’t been able to turn up any evidence of the President doing anything wrong,” Sams added inaccurately.
In reality, Republican investigators have produced a mountain of evidence in the form of bank records, suspicious activity reports, wire transfers, text messages, whatsApp messages, emails, voicemails, photos, along with the testimonies of whistleblowers, and Hunter Biden’s former business partners, not to mention Joe Biden’s admission on tape that he got the Ukrainian prosecutor general fired by withholding $1 billion in US loan guarantees in exchange for his ouster.
Democrats, on the other hand, launched an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump in 2019 based on the complaint of one then-anonymous Democrat operative (who was aware of Biden’s corruption) who blew the whistle after Trump asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to look into the Biden family’s shady business dealings in a phone call.
The White House memo reportedly includes a 14-page appendix that “comprehensively addresses the 7 key lies House Republicans are suggesting they are basing an impeachment on.”
Sams alleged that an impeachment inquiry with no supporting evidence should “set off alarm bells for news organizations.”
David Frum swings into action!
GRAY LADY REALLY TAKING THAT WHOLE “DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES” MEME TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL: Emails Show New York Times Collaborating with State Government to Target Orthodox Jews.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Reuters photos of young kids at Indiana NRA event slammed as ‘set-up’ by parents who say they never gave consent.
THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Liberal Media Scream: Press trying to block GOP investigations, impeachment of Biden.
I wouldn’t impeach Biden, though. Or maybe I would: The Dems will be trying to figure out a way to scuttle him, and if the GOP tries to get rid of him they may decide to keep him out of stubbornness. . . .
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Why aren’t the news media celebrating trailblazers like Giorgia Meloni and Rishi Sunak?
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Why Are Journalists Hiding These Radical Democrats Who Support Abortion Up Until Birth?
Whatever happened to “safe, legal, and rare?”
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Barack Obama and Company Dishonestly Lecture UChicago Students on ‘Disinformation.’
And inadvertently put on quite a show in the process:
● Atlantic journalist Anne Applebaum: I still don’t care about Hunter’s laptop.
DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AT WORK: Chicago’s Palace Guard Media Shields Pritzker From Ken Griffin’s ‘Gun Violence’ Criticism. It’s not just that I call them that, and accurately so. It’s that they actually see themselves as such.
THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: The Washington Post Invents a Vaccine Claim Ron DeSantis Didn’t Make.
Nowhere in this quote does DeSantis suggest that getting the COVID-19 vaccine can affect fertility.
The speech, which was given at an event where DeSantis announced $2.3 million for nursing and vocational programs, focused on the critical medical worker shortage seen not just in Florida but around the country. The Post, as well as MSNBC and other outlets, are cutting off a key sentence from the DeSantis quote. A local outlet in Florida gives you the context you need. . . .
In one sentence, it’s clear that DeSantis is talking about how vaccine mandates will only make a shortage of nurses worse. Young nurses who are wanting to get married and start families are getting let go because they aren’t getting vaccinated. It’s a controversial policy because on one hand, potentially spreading the virus from staff to patients is a medical and legal nightmare, but on the other hand, you’re looking at a shortage of nurses because of the virus and other circumstances already and letting more go only hurts the quality of care you can give.
DeSantis is looking at the mathematical equation here and deciding that it’s silly to look at a health care worker shortage and think “We need more barriers to work,” which is not an unreasonable conclusion to draw.
But the media looks at the DeSantis quote, cuts off a sentence, and declares he is spreading some conspiracy theory because he’s a successful Republican governor and he’s speculated to be a frontrunner in 2024. He has dismissed the media on multiple occasions as the hacks they are, and they don’t like being undermined.
At this point, I no longer assume that they’re biased or sloppy. I assume that they deliberately make things up for partisan reasons.
WELL, THEY SEE THEMSELVES AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, SO WHY SHOULDN’T SHE? Pelosi: Reporters need to do a better job selling Biden’s agenda.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE. Hypocrites: Media Hail ‘Vindication’ for Newsom, Grumbled at Walker’s Recall Win.
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