Enjoy Meet the Press, Sunday, November 9, 2008.
Nov. 9: A look ahead at the Obama presidency with Valerie Jarrett, the newly appointed co-chair of the president-elect’s transition team. Plus, former RNC Chair Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) & House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) and a political roundtable with Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jon Meacham & Mary Mitchell.
After eight years of avoiding-the-press Constitution-shredding George W. Bush, silencing and insulting Helen Thomas, corralling protesters like swine far from W’s view, suspending Habeas Corpus, exposing CIA spy Valerie Plame, and more, now conservatives are claiming President-Elect Barack Obama is suppressing free speech.
From an angry right-wing blogger:
First, there were the repeated references to FOX News during the campaign. Then, three newspapers which endorsed John McCain for President – The Washington Times, The New York Post, and The Dallas Morning News – were booted off the campaign airplane because of overcrowding. Today, President-Elect Barack Obama took a few questions after his statement on the economy at his first news conference since the election. Noticeably, Obama took questions from the AP, Reuters, ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, and both major Chicago papers, the Tribune and Sun-Times — but not FOX News.
Wha-a-a? Obama neglect “Fair and Unbalanced” FOX? Say it ain’t so, Joe! The writer claims there “is legitimate reason for Christians and conservatives to be concerned about an intensified effort to suppress the possibility of dissenting speech.”
We have only experienced a paucity of Presidential press conferences in the past eight years. President-Elect Obama already has one under his belt.
My favorite line is here:
Of course, FOX News is not conservatively biased. It just seems that way to liberals because there is actually a free-flowing discussion of ideas, policies, and news-making events.
That really makes me smile.
This week I had a discussion with a teenager who was bemoaning what she called the “liberal press coverage” the night of the election. How, she wondered, did the networks call states for Obama with 0% of the vote in?
I wondered the same thing for a while, until I remembered that the networks had massive ground operations doing exit polls in every state. Their projections were their own, and they offered them at their own risk.
Liberal media? That’s the conservative rally cry every time the media does it’s job. That’s the cry of the conservatives when the media dares to ask questions. “W” received so many free passes over the past eight years it’s not even funny. The media dropped the ball time and time again.
Did FOX News report that Palin did not know Africa was a continent? Yes, they did. Perhaps the real problem isn’t the “liberal” media after all. Perhaps the problem is the conservative/Republican agenda to suppress the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (The United States Constitution)
I’m looking forward to a President standing before the media again – even far right FOX. Frankly, it will be a delight to have a President who actually knows the language, and isn’t afraid to use it.
And it will be nice to watch as the Constitution, all of it, is restored.
The United States Secret Service has linked remarks by for Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to subsequent death threats against President-Elect Barack Obama.
Sarah Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama’s patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.
The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of “palling around with terrorists”, citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.
The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling “terrorist” and “kill him” until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.
But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.
The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin’s attacks.
True to character, Palin offers not a single apology:
Irate John McCain aides, who blame Mrs Palin for losing the election, claim Mrs Palin took it upon herself to question Mr Obama’s patriotism, before the line of attack had been cleared by Mr McCain.
That claim is part of a campaign of targeted leaks designed to torpedo her ambitions, with claims that she did not know that Africa was a continent rather than a country.
The advisers have branded her a “diva” and a “whack job” and claimed that she did not know which other countries are in the North American Free Trade Area, (Canada and Mexico). They say she spent more than $150,000 on designer clothes, including $40,000 on her husband Todd and that she refused to prepare for the disastrous series of interviews with CBS’s Katie Couric.
In a bid to salvage her reputation Mrs Palin came out firing in an interview with CNN, dismissing the anonymous leakers in unpresidential language as “jerks” who had taken “questions or comments I made in debate prep out of context.”
Palin denied the spending spree claims, saying the clothes in question had been returned to the Republican National Committee.
“Those are the RNC’s clothes, they’re not my clothes. I asked for anything more than maybe a diet Dr Pepper once in a while. These are false allegations.”
Then why did the RNC send a lawyer to Alaska to retrieve the clothes? A lawyer? Are you kidding me? Who is paying that bill?
Palin should take another call from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He seemed to have a sympathetic ear the last time around.
And she better watch her mouth down the road. An investigation by the Secret Service would not look well on her resume.
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