RSC Lampoons Obama's Pre-Fab Questions [Kevin D. Williamson]
Apparently, the RSC has finally hired somebody with a sense of humor:
It’s no secret that President Obama often relies on pre-packaged remarks and teleprompters to convey his pie-in-the-sky rhetoric. But, after watching the President’s latest “town hall” event on health care, one might think he’s been working on his ability to speak off-the-cuff. Of course, that’s only if you ignore the fact that it was a staged event with pre-selected questions and an audience of fawning Obama enthusiasts.
“The questions posed from social media networks were selected by White House staffers, and the three people he called on from the audience all were affiliated with advocacy groups that support Obama.” (USA Today, 7/2/09)
“All turned out to be members of groups with close ties to his administration: the Service Employees International Union, Health Care for America Now, and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee.” (Washington Post, 7/2/09)
So all the questions were either pre-selected or asked by devoted supporters? Get outta here. There must be an explanation. Regarding the three audience questioners being on-the-record Obamaphiles, The Washington Post adds:
“White House officials said that was a coincidence.” (Washington Post, 7/2/09)
Of course. And while you’re mulling that remarkable improbability, they’d love to tell you about all the jobs they’ve been saving or creating lately. Why all the stagecraft, Mr. President? Are you afraid to answer unscreened questions from concerned Americans? In case you didn’t realize it, that’s your cue for an answer …
Pro-democracy campaigners in Iran are so distraught to find news of their ongoing protests all but gone from our TV screens (despite news that six Mousavi supporters may have been hanged yesterday) due to the worldwide saturation coverage of Michael Jackson’s passing, that they have converged the two stories in an effort to stay in the public eye.
Today, ABC's Jeffrey Kofman, who covers Latin America for the network, walked right up to the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa, Honduras to get an interview with the new, but internationally unrecognized, president Roberto Micheletti. All Kofman had to do was go to the palace, show his ID and about five minutes later, he entered the inner sanctum and sat down for an interview with Micheletti, his first with an American network.
Micheletti told Kofman he'd like to be called "Mr. President."
"You have to because I am the President," he said, adding, "or you can call me Roberto if you want."
Two Post executives familiar with the planning, who declined to be identified discussing internal planning, said the fliers appear to be the product of overzealous marketing executives. The fliers were overseen by Charles Pelton, a Post executive hired this year as a conference organizer. He was not immediately available for comment.
The Los Angeles Times shares the view of Adam Paul in their editorial today, but adds a second "cataclysm" (emphasis mine):
Democrats and the governor, and the Republican lawmakers who take pride in never voting in favor of any budget, have set us on a road toward two possible cataclysms: a popular revolt that will further diminish the power of government as we know it, and ruinous default that keeps the recession alive for another decade and plunges Californians, and perhaps all Americans, into nearly unimaginable misery. Sacramento players should check their rearview mirrors. Both objects are closer than they appear.
It would be a calamity if the power of government after all of this was actually reduced? Not from where NRO readers sit, I imagine.
Newsbusters Is Keeping Track of Sanford Stories [Greg Pollowitz]
How much is the MSM in the tank for Dems? Newsbusters is counting the number of Gov. Sanford stories and comparing that to the number of stories on Democratic malfeasance. 49 stories on Sanford, 0 for Charlie Rangel, for example. Well worth a read.
The Washington Post's executive editor said today he is "appalled" by a plan to charge lobbyists as much as $250,000 for off-the-record gatherings at the home of the paper's publisher — with Obama administration officials, members of Congress and the paper's reporters and editors — and insisted that the newsroom will not participate.
"It suggests that access to Washington Post journalists was available for purchase," Brauchli said in an interview. The proposal "promises we would suspend our usual skeptical questioning because it appears to offer, in exchange for sponsorships, the good name of The Washington Post."
Brauchli was responding to fliers, circulated by the paper's parent company, offering an "intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth." The fliers, which said participants would be charged $25,000 to sponsor a single salon and $250,000 to underwrite an annual series of 11 sessions, were reported this morning by Politico.
"We do not offer access to the newsroom for money," Brauchli said. "We just are not in that business."
The proposal put Brauchli in the position of balking at an explosive proposal by the company's business operation. Weymouth, the chief executive of Washington Post Media, hired Brauchli last year after he was forced out as the Wall Street Journal's top editor. He told the staff in an e-mail this morning that the newsroom would have no part of this plan, writing, "Our independence from advertisers or sponsors is inviolable."
California, they say, is the American bellwether, the sign of things to come. Let's hope Adam Paul is wrong about that. Writing at TCS Daily, the AEI researcher notes:
California is both the largest state economy, accounting for almost 13 percent of US GDP, and one of the most financially mismanaged. The state faces a $24 billion budget deficit. Yet the state legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger have been unable to agree on a budget. Thus the state begins its fiscal year with no cash on hand and must begin issuing IOUS. In a release, California's Controller, John Chiang, who would issues IOUs, said ""Next Wednesday we start a fiscal year with a massively unbalanced spending plan and a cash shortfall not seen since the Great Depression."
The need to issue short-term debt could hardly come at a worse time. The large budget deficits will likely require cutting spending and tax increases, a situation that an LA Times interactive budget planner makes clear will involve difficult choices. Standard and Poor's cut the state's credit score in February, giving it the lowest rating of any state, which could make creditors less likely to accept promises rather than cash. The LA Times reported on Wednesday that only one financial institution, Golden 1 Credit Union, has publicily discussed plans to accept warrants; a spokesperson for the Controller's Office explained that no institution has formally agreed to honor the warrants.
And what does that suggest for the United States as a whole?
Even after the spike in spending to solve the current crisis passes, Obama's first budget predicts a ratio of federal spending to GDP not seen since WWII. Standard & Poor's, the same agency that downgraded California's debt, has said that the national financial outlook could force it to remove the much-prized AAA-rating from US government debt by 2017, a move that will make it more expense for the government to borrow. California has soon that last-minute fixes are susceptible to failure; the national government should begin seriously addressing its finances now, while there's still some sunlight left.
For $25,000 to $250,000, TheWashington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few" —Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."
The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.
And it's a turn of the times that a lobbyist is scolding The Washington Post for its ethical practices.
"Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate," says the one-page flier. "Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. ... Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders …
'Barack Obama is a Big Fat Liar,' Illustrated [Guy Benson]
During President Obama's "townhall" event on healthcare reform today, the pesky subject of taxing employer-based benefits again reared its head. It's a policy proposal for which Obama savaged John McCain during the campaign. As Jim Geraghty reminds us in "Barack Obama is a Big Fat Liar," Team Obama spent $44 million on more than a dozen ads specifically denouncing McCain's supposedly reckless idea in the fall. But now the White House — desperate for revenue — seems to be changing its tune:
In early October [Obama] went even further, calling McCain’s plan “so radical, so out of touch with what you’re facing, and so out of line with our basic values.”
On Capitol Hill, however, Democrats have long liked the idea as a new form of tax revenue. Obama’s relentless denunciation of the proposal would seem to preclude his signing it into law, but “would seem to” is not “does.” Back in March, White House budget director Peter Orszag said taxing employer benefits was among several ideas that “most firmly should remain on the table,” and some congressional Democrats told the Washington Post that White House officials said Obama would accept such a tax “as long as he didn’t have to propose it himself.”
Finally, during Wednesday’s p.r. push for his health-care plan, Obama refused to rule out the proposal that he once said made John McCain unfit for office.
I went back and found a number of the ads Obama ran against McCain on this front. The impending expiration of this particular campaign promise is especially galling when one actually views the ads themselves — bearing in mind that the risky, out-of-touch, unaffordable, deal-breaking healthcare policies these ads ruthlessly targeted are now on the brink of being embraced by their one-time chief critic. Marvel:
This last one's especially laughable in light of this story.
Finally, for good measure, here's top Obama strategist David Axelrod explaining on Sunday why "formulations" may force his boss to, well, change his mind.
Biotech company Geron Corp. agreed to provide stem cells to General Electric Co.'s GE Healthcare for use in tools that will test for the toxic effects of drug treatments, a move that takes GE further into stem-cell research.
The agreement marks the first time that a company of GE's stature and size has announced a business venture involving the controversial field of embryonic stem cells. That could reflect a more tolerant climate for the technology in the wake of the Obama administration's recent relaxation of restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research.
It also means that GE has a built-in media arm through the Obama surrogates at its MSDNC division.
Given GE's interest in the smart-grid, alternative energy, and now stem cells, I think MSNBC should have a disclaimer on how parent company GE might benefit from whatever Obama proposal the talking heads are heralding at the time.
LOS ANGELES — In a production office here, at least a couple of would-be film workers were still hanging around on Monday, hoping in vain to score with their troubled baseball movie “Moneyball.”
But they had swung, and missed.
The powers at Sony Pictures, which was supposed to finance the film, and the Creative Artists Agency, whose prize client Brad Pitt had agreed to star in it, were, meanwhile, wrapping up a rhubarb with the director Steven Soderbergh, a clutch of producers and each other. This followed Sony’s decision to halt the picture just days before shooting was to have begun in Los Angeles, Oakland and Phoenix last week.
The last-minute demise of a high-profile film project, especially one starring an A-list star like Mr. Pitt, is Hollywood’s equivalent of a bridge collapse. Painful, expensive, and damaging to all involved, the spectacle is rare. It happened with “Used Guys,” a high-priced comedy at 20th Century Fox in 2006.
But such disasters — this one is estimated to have cost Sony $10 million in development and pre-production costs — may become more common as an increasingly nervous film business comes to terms with a sharp decline in home video revenue, the diminishing power of even the most popular stars to muscle their projects into production and new uncertainty over complicated bets like “Moneyball.”
So, if President Obama isn't listening to those most senior around him with actual foreign policy experience on what to do with Iran, who was telling the president to use the go-soft approach?
On Monday’s broadcast of Democracy Now! on Pacifica Radio, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa demonstrated how the Latin American left will follow the geopolitical lead of Hugo Chavez like poodles. If Hugo supports Ahmadinejad, then the Iranian protesters are loco, their protests "can’t be explained."
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about President Chavez and his comments recently supporting the Iranian president Ahmadinejad. What are your views toward what’s happening right now in the disputed Iranian elections?
PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] We’ve spoken with our chargé d’affaires in Tehran, and he tells me that it’s an exaggerated reaction, because President Ahmadinejad won by too large a margin. We’re talking about at least six million votes. All the surveys show that he was the winner. So this reaction on the part of the opposition can’t be explained. Now, I don’t want to meddle in internal Iranian affairs, but a response of this sort vis-a-vis such a broad victory is somewhat suspect.
Correa even suggested that murdered Iranian protesters may not mean "repression, violation of human rights and so forth."
AMY GOODMAN: And the killings of a number of the protesters, do you condemn that?
PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Well, one would have to see in what situation those deaths took place. We’re talking about a country of 80 million, in which there have been serious street protests. I am not familiar with the specific conditions in which the lamentable deaths have taken place. Everybody should lament their deaths and be in solidarity with the victims and their families. But obviously, if there’s protest and violence in a country of 80 million, it’s likely that such things can come to pass without that necessarily meaning repression, violations of human rights and so forth. But all the investigations should be undertaken to determine.
Calorie Counts for Thee, but Not for Me [Greg Pollowitz]
The New York Times has a piece out today on the "perfect hamburger." Here's the recipe, which calls for a half-pound of 80/20 ground beef per burger. Sounds yummy.
Now, here's an old editorial from the New York Times lecturing us on our caloric intake and the need for the calorie count to be posted at fast-food restaurants. An excerpt (emphasis mine):
Health officials around the country are pushing to adopt New York’s “Read ’Em Before You Eat ’Em” postings as another way to attack obesity.
Some restaurants are suing to overturn the requirement. Many restaurants also back the LEAN Act, recently introduced in Congress. This deceptively named bill would pre-empt New York’s law, and a similar law in California, allowing restaurants to tuck calorie information at the back of the menu or in a separate brochure. Try getting a teenager aching for a supersized pizza to check calories in a brochure. Congress should instead look to a bill introduced by Senator Tom Harkin that would essentially apply the New York system nationwide.
It is heartening to see that some corporations have already volunteered to disclose calorie counts.
Unfortunately, the New York Times is not such a corporation and does not disclose the calorie count of its half-pound belly-bomb recipe in today's paper.
Vibe magazine, which had been located a few floors below National Review, is no more:
Vibe, a popular-music magazine, is closing immediately, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The decision leaves two major magazines, The Source and XXL, focusing on hip-hop or R&B. The Source has had its own troubles, going through a bankruptcy and emerging under new ownership last year. A rock-focused magazine, Blender, folded last year. The musician Quincy Jones and Time Warner created Vibe in 1992. The Wicks Group, a private equity firm, bought it in 2006. Vibe reported circulation of 818,000 in the second half of last year, a healthy figure, but like most magazines, it suffered from falling advertising.
Fortunately, NR readers can still get their hip-hop news from Robert VerBruggen.
