Media on the Field

Not just calling it for Obama, but actually on the field tackling Romney.

Here's the alarm being sounded by Democratic political operative and pollster Pat Caddell. Read what he writes here, critical of the Romney campaign's refusal to confront the media.

Listen to what he says (below).

Obama's Foreign Policy in Disarray...and Yet

We are only now just beginning to hear reporting in the dominant media about the attacks on the embassy in Libya in which a U.S. ambassador was assassinated (assassinated--he didn't die of smoke inhalation, contrary to early reports).

The reporting, however, is timid, tepid, muted, and in some cases, ignored. The story was covered on page A-7 in today's Los Angeles Times, for example, but didn't even make the cut in last night's PBS News Hour. While a few honest journalists are beginning to ask the hard questions--CNN's Wolf Blitzer, for example, and ABC's Jake Tapper, and Fox News (see below)--mostly, the story is being downplayed, at best.

If a Republican administration were at the helm, this story would be covered day in, day out, analyzed, discussed, and dissected in various stages of outrage and condemnation. And rightly so. It is, as some conservatives are suggesting, a scandal of the highest order.

But this is not a Republican administration. This is Barack Obama's administration. What would happen if the mainstream media were to cover this story with at least a modicum of scrutiny? Would voter approval of Obama plummet? Would undecided voters take a second look at Romney? Would (God forbid) the election tilt in Romney's favor?

This must not happen. The American public must not be alarmed. Hence, the whitewash.

With the economy in shambles, the administration's foreign policy a train wreck, and Obama's own credibility in doubt (lying for two weeks about the attacks in Libya and continuing to insist that the attacks were the result of an incendiary YouTube video and not a pre-planned, highly coordinated attack on the anniversary of 9/11), Romney should be way ahead in this race. Yet polls still seem to suggest a stubbornly close race, with some pundits claiming Obama is beginning to pull ahead.

Does anyone doubt that the media are doing everything in their power to protect this president and prevent the American public from knowing the truth?

Please watch this video presentation of the timeline of events of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2012. It's pretty damning.

News, News, and More News

Where to begin?

First Item: Let's get the Chick-fil-A story out of the way: reports about Chick-fil-A caving to the bully alderman in Chicago was enough to send me into a funk...until I got "the rest of the story," or perhaps it would be better to say, until I got the actual story. The phrase "the rest of the story" (RIP Paul Harvey) is now becoming quaint, since the mainstream media no longer actually report on the news (see next item). Here's the actual story from the Baptist Press.

Next Item: A recent Gallup poll reveals that 60% of Americans don't trust the media "very much" or "not at all." Gee, I wonder why (see next item).

Next Item: So here it is, nine days after the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Libya and the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, and the Obama administration finally acknowledges that these attacks were, in fact, terrorist attacks. We had to endure endless hand-wringing and apologizing about the offensive YouTube video from Hillary Clinton, Jay Carney, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, even Barack Obama himself, all of whom blamed the 10-minute amateur video clip of a movie that apparently nobody has actually seen (is there even an actual movie? See next item).

Nine days later, the administration is saying this violence, committed on the anniversary of 9/11, was a planned terrorist attack! Ya think? About 52% of the country had already figured this out. So the question is not, Why did it take the Obama team so long to figure this out but rather, What did they know, when did they know it, and why wouldn't they tell the American people what they already knew? Equally important: why weren't the media asking these questions?

Next Item: Great article in the Wall Street Journal by Bret Stevens called "Muslims, Mormons, and Liberals," sub-titled, "Why is it OK to Mock One Religion but Not Another?" Noting that the Broadway hit musical "The Book of Mormon" won nine Tonys, Stevens points out that Hillary Clinton actually attended last year "without registering a complaint" (see previous item). Meanwhile, he writes, "the administration is falling all over itself denouncing...a film that may or may not exist; whose makers are likely not who they say they are; whose actors claim to have known neither the plot nor purpose of the film; and which has never been seen by any member of the public except as a video clip on the Internet."

Dennis Prager was in rare form yesterday, responding to this article. I wish I knew how to upload the podcast. It's worth listening to. It's a scathing, seething, rebuke to the spineless left and this pandering president. I just listened to it again, transcribing as he spoke. Here's most of what he said:

The obsequiousness vis-à-vis the Islamic world is disgusting. You would think liberals would be really big on freedom of speech and freedom of the press… nah. 

 If you mock Mormonism, you get awarded. If you just make a picture, don’t even mock, Mohammed, you get potentially killed. Does that tell you anything? Is there anything left to be said? 

 On Hillary Clinton attending a performance of "The Book of Mormon": Do you think Hillary Clinton would have attended a performance of a play called "The Book of the Koran"? 

 Commending the left-wing newspaper in France for publishing cartoons of Mohammed: I give them complete credit, they are an absolute exception to the rule, I want to salute them. 

 I have no interest in mocking Muslims, or Islam, or Mormons. But I believe in freedom of speech. You want to mock my religion? You are free to do so. 

 Referring to a piece in The Onion: It was hilariously obscene. The most ridiculously vulgar picture depicting Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and Ganesh, the Hindu elephant god. The ending of the article is so brilliant. Religious Jews, religious Christians, religious Buddhists, religious Hindus, rolled their eyes, shrugged their shoulders, and went on with their day's work. Get it? Get it? If Mohammed had been added to this obscene cartoon, what would have happened? 

 Commenting on recent events in the Middle East, the killing of our ambassador and his security detail, the ongoing riots: This notion that is being expressed by the administration that the entire reason for the deaths of our diplomats and these explosions of violence all over the Middle East is this little snippet of a film that nobody saw of a video on the Internet. And you know why the administration wants you to believe that? Because they have spent the last four years doing whatever it could to placate the Islamic world. 

 And we were assured, weren’t we, Hey, we get out of Iraq, they’ll love us. The only reason they hate us in the Middle East is because of our war-like stance. Of course, we died to liberate them from their own butchers. But it doesn’t matter. Even if we hadn’t gone to Iraq, the hatred would still be there. 

 Maybe, maybe the conservatives were right, when they said that 9/11 took place because they hate our freedom, they hate our prosperity, they hate our values. Maybe that’s true. All of these riots? Because of one video? No other religious group on earth does this. None. Anything to be learned? Or is the question unfair? 

An entire evening laughing at Mormonism wins nine Tony awards. Any riots in Salt Lake City? We would be stunned. If one Mormon acted out, one, we would be stunned. But you’re not allowed to draw one conclusion from that. You’re only allowed to apologize for something you didn’t do. 

Yep.

Next Item: Mohammed is now being officially referred to as "The Prophet" Mohammed by this administration and the media. So the obvious question becomes, If Jesus Christ is brought up in conversation, will President Obama and the media now refer to Him as "The Lord and Savior Jesus Christ"?

New Item: Romney plays by his own rules, or, as Guy Benson so aptly pust it, "Democrats, Media Get Punk'd: Romney Releases Tax Returns." Touchdown, Romney, plus 2-point conversion.

Last Item: Am I the only one creeped out by this?

The Mainstream Media: Fooling No One But Fools

Today, the Los Angeles Times colluded with others in the mainstream media in a cynical attempt to change the subject and make the 9/11/12 attacks on the Libyan and Egyptian embassies about Mitt Romney and not about President Obama and his failed Middle Eastern policies.

If that sounds a bit paranoid, eavesdrop on members of the press corps prior to Romney's press conference following his supposed gaffe in criticizing Obama's response to the embassy attacks. In this audio clip , CBS news reporter Jan Crawford is caught on open mic prompting the other reporters on what to ask Romney. At the end of this clip she says she just wants to make sure that "no matter who he calls on, we're covered on the one question."

Ah, nothing like a bit of open mic. Sort of reminds you of Toto pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz.

Aren't we getting tired of the press literally not doing its job?

Do members of my liberal/left-leaning family really want to live in a country in which the press covers for their "guy" in office rather than holding his feet to the fire? I desperately fear that they do, for the "greater good."

Today's LAT lead editorial was called "Romney's Opportunism," and they blasted Mr. Romney for criticizing Obama's response to the attacks, calling it an "outrageous exercise in opportunism." They conclude thusly: "In mixing sympathy with specious attacks and self-promotion, Romney has diminished himself."

Not surprisingly, I disagree. In fact, I'd say it's the Times that has diminished itself, having lost all credibility and objectivity.

Anyway, so here's my Letter to the Editor:

Re. “Romney’s Opportunism” (9/13/12):

In your editorial, you accuse Mitt Romney of cynically playing politics with these horrific attacks at the Libyan and Egyptian embassies. 

This is a complete red herring. 

According to your own front-page story, these attacks, which occurred on the anniversary of 9/11, appeared to be “planned and complex,” yet apparently no Marines were stationed at these embassies to provide security. 

Libya and Egypt are still volatile hotbeds of anti-American sentiment, and their governments are anything but stable. 

President Obama was indeed belated in his response to the Egyptian embassy’s statement about hurting Muslims’ feelings. 

Secretary of State Clinton seems mystified that anyone would attack America.

Today, there was an attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen, and there’s more unrest in Egypt. 

And Mitt Romney’s the story? 

Instead of focusing on Mitt Romney, who as a presidential candidate has every right to weigh in on this debacle, the question you should be asking is: Who’s in charge of this circus? This attempt to divert attention away from the incompetence of the Obama administration by focusing on Romney fools no one but fools. 

It’s not Romney who’s playing politics but the Los Angeles Times.

Update (9/17): My letter to the editor wasn't published, but an even better letter was in yesterday's paper. Mary Bono Mack (Republican representative from Palm Springs), wrote the following:

The editorial is off the mark. The Middle East has undergone a historic shift. How the United States conducts its foreign policy there is always important and often decisive. 

The direction that the president has steered the State Department ship counts. But rather than raising valid questions about the Obama administration's handling of a monumental international crisis, rather than exploring the root causes of why American embassies are under assault, your editorial lambasts Mitt Romney for failing to raise his hand before he spoke. 

 The steady foreign policy constant over the last half a century is that American leadership matters. Romney provided leadership in the moment, and the Obama administration did not. 

As chaos erupts in the Middle East, your readers deserve a substantive debate on the implications of two competing visions of America's foreign policy.

I sent Ms. Mack a personal email, thanking her for her letter. 

On another note, the notion that the mainstream media focused more on Romney's comment and less on Obama's foreign policy, here's an interesting analysis from the Media Research Center: 

The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) Wednesday evening newscasts devoted more than 9 minutes (9 minutes, 28 seconds) to the flap over Mitt Romney's statement criticizing the administration's handling of the Libyan crisis but spent just 25 seconds on questions regarding Barack Obama's Middle East policy, a greater than 20-to-1 disparity. 

No media bias?

You can read their entire report here, along with transcripts.

Food for Thought for Independent Voters

I just happened to be in the kitchen fixing a little snack and turned on the radio just in time to catch a snippet of Dennis Prager's interview with Michael Medved on Prager's radio show.

Medved has just published an e-book called The Odds Against Obama in which he argues (among other things) that, historically-speaking, the numbers just don't add up when it comes to Obama being re-elected. I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on this. However, the few moments that I tuned in were interesting more from the phone call from a listener than anything Mr. Medved had to say about his book.

The caller introduced herself (I think her name was Kim) and labeled herself as a "Christian Independent Gay Person" (or CIGP, as Dennis joked). The gist of her call was that she was not impressed with Obama in the aftermath Democratic National Convention but that she wasn't entirely sold on Romney, either, and she didn't know what to think.

I thought Michael's response to her was very good. He asked her if, as an independent, she wanted to see more cooperation between the parties in Washington.

Of course, she replied. Like most people, she's tired of the gridlock.

Then ask yourself, Michael responded, which of the two candidates is more likely to cooperate with members of the opposite party: Romney, a successful Republican governor of Democrat-leaning Massachusetts whose legislature was comprised mostly of Democrats, or Obama, who early in his tenure alienated members of the opposite party (he famously shut down Republicans objecting to the size of his stimulus package by saying, "I won"), who rejected Republican input regarding his health care reform bill and ended up passing it without a single Republican vote, whose entire campaign is based on characterizing the Republican party as not only wrong but evil?

Point well taken. Kim seemed to agree.

After Kim hung up, Dennis asked Michael to explain the caller's ambivalence. Michael attributed it to the possibility that she, being gay, might still struggle with the perception of the Republican party as being anti-gay (it is not). He hopes people like Kim are able to understand that there's a difference between believing the one man/one woman definition of marriage and being anti-gay.

I'd add that I feel the gay marriage issue has become a red herring in terms of its relevance (or irrelevance) to this election. In my view, the key issues that should matter to voters are the economy, the deficit, taxes, and the size and scope of government (which is related to the previous three). Social issues like gay marriage and even abortion, which is only back in the spotlight because of the asinine comments of an irrelevant Republican senator, should be subordinate to these other issues.

Meh...

Love BuzzFeed's Ben Smith's tweet after Obama's acceptance speech last night: Oba-meh. Pretty clever.

That's the sense I got listening to the speech while making supper. Obama has nothing new to say. It was just a re-hash of stuff we've been hearing over and over again.

I'd go so far as to say "meh" sums up the entire Democratic party right now. The "face" of the party is either old (Clinton, Biden, Carter, Reid), sleazy (Emmanuel), old and sleazy (Pelosi, Frank), strident (Strickland), and dishonest (Wasserman Schultz).

It portrays itself as the party of women, but their women come across as either victims (Sandra Fluke) or extremists (Nancy Keenan).

It portrays the Republican party as racist, but in attempting to divide the country along racial lines, it becomes the more racist of the two parties. When 90% of African Americans cast their votes in 2008 for Obama, that's racist. And when people of color are considered more likely to vote Democrat than Republican, this has less to do with the Republicans being (supposedly) racist than it does with the Democratic party pandering to minorities by promising cradle-to-grave protection a la The Life of Julia or telling lies about how the evil Republicans want to protect millionaires and billionaires, abandon the middle class, yank the safety net out from under the poor, and end Medicare as we know it (well, that part may be true since even Democrats acknowledge that Medicare as we know it is not sustainable).

Contrary to the tired cliche that the GOP is the party of old white men, I actually see a GOP on the rise, featuring fresh, young, and yes, diverse faces. Mia Love, Susanna Martinez, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, Condi Rice, Scott Walker, to name a few.

Even Mitt Romney, though not young compared to (say) Paul Ryan, comes across as fresh, if for no other reason than he brings a new skill to a previously unmet resume item for presidential candidates: business acumen. Obama had very little on his resume in this regard to commend himself back in 2008. In fact, he had very little to commend himself at all, other than the ability to tap into the zeitgeist and offer a nebulous "hope" and a symbolic victory over racial prejudice. And though he now claims to have more foreign policy experience than Romney, back in '08, Obama had no experience in this regard either. And critics of the president point out that Obama has quietly adopted many of George Bush's foreign policy decisions despite having trashed them in the lead-up to his election back in '08.

So what's new and fresh about Obama? Nothing. All he can say this time around is that "change" doesn't come easy, that it's going to be a long, hard slog, so he needs four more years to finish the job. In other words? "Hey, folks, cut me some slack. I never promised you a rose garden." But in fact, yes he did. That's exactly what he promised. In soaring rhetoric surrounded by phony Greek columns, he assured us that he was the change we were waiting for, that the oceans would stop their rising, etc.

Last night, there were no Greek columns and no pandering promises. Just a plea. Let me keep my job.

Meh.

Tell Us What you Really Think, Democrats

No secret here. The Democrats not only want God persona non grata in their party platform, they also would rather not acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Of course, that's not what Anthony Villaraigosa, the head of the Democratic National Convention, would have you think. Here's what apparently happened. Yesterday, the Democratic National Committee in charge of writing the party platform approved wording that removed both God and Israel from their 2012 platform. Today, Governor Ted Strickland asked the committee to suspend the rules of the platform in order to vote on two amendments reinstating wording to the platform that "invokes God and affirms Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."Approval for such action requires a two-thirds majority. Villaraigosa called for the votes, instructing the delegates to vote yay to approve or nay to reject the amended language.

You have to watch the video to understand just how bizarre this moment truly was. Villaraigosa has to ask for the vote three times. Each time, the no's out-shout the yays. Nevertheless, Villaraigosa declares that the yays have the majority. You can actually hear boos in the chamber.

I guess this is how the Democrats operate: it's not the actual vote that counts but what the top dog wants, in this case, Barack Obama himself, who realized belatedly that the platform language was a political disaster (even though he had apparently approved the platform prior to the convention, according to Politico). Chicago-style politics in all its glory.

Incredible.

OK, so the Democrats have revised their platform to embrace both God and Israel. So what? It's another charade. Because in spite of Villaraigosa's gavel-pounding declaration, the delegates clearly voiced their preference opposing the revised language. Thanks to YouTube and other media outlets, the heart of the Democratic party has been laid bare. In the aftermath of this comedy, Villaraigosa looks like a silly puppet, Obama looks like a panderer, and the Democratic party looks like it has lost its soul.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this is not my mother's Democratic party. I'd go so far as to say this is not my father's Democratic party, if only he would take a moment to listen to what they're saying.




Update! Debbie Wasserman Schultz couldn't tell the truth if she were offered a hundred dollars tax free! Here she is, calmly lying throughout an entire interview with a CNN reporter. Even Anderson Cooper seemed a bit slack-jawed afterwards. He actually seems to be mocking her when he observed she must live in an alternate universe. When CNN begins to point out the Democrats' dishonesty, you know the party is in trouble.

Clint Eastwood and Mitt Romney: Timing is Everything

Two days out and still lots of reaction. Everything from spluttering outrage to expressions of pity. I've read conservative commentary postulating that it was all choreographed: the tousled hair, the long pauses, the stammering and the stuttering, the occasional blistering zinger. I've read liberal analysis from political pundits and film critics speculating about everything from Eastwood's diminished mental state to his underlying motives (maybe deep down he supports Obama, which is why he seemingly sabotaged Mitt Romney's long-awaited moment in the spotlight!). There have been the expected cheers from the right ("Go ahead--make my day!") and charges of hypocrisy ("they can dish it out but they sure can't take it"), as well as the occasional point-well-taken (stand-up comics have simply not dared to mock Obama--Clint Eastwood was simply doing their job).

In fact, pretty much every point is well-taken. For what it's worth, here's my take on Clint Eastwood's appearance at the GOP Convention on the night Mitt Romney made his acceptance speech as the nominee for president of the United States: