Who were those guys on Morning Joe today—two Feinstein staffers? Nope, they were Mark Halperin and Jeremy Peters, making like Dem aides in defending the report on the CIA that Dem Senator Diane Feinstein released yesterday.
Halperin, head of Bloomberg Politics, had the chutzpah to claim that the report was not "political." Peters of the New York Times then chimed in to say that in releasing the report, the Senate conducted itself in a "very sober" way.
The New York Times continued its annoying, Winston Smith-like habit of rewriting history in virtually real time yesterday.
Helene Cooper's original Monday afternoon report on Chuck Hagel's sacking as Secretary of Defense is no longer available at the Times. However, since I anticipated that the paper would conduct a comprehensive cleanup yesterday when I posted on the paper's original coverage, it is available here at my web host for fair use and discussion purposes. Cooper's Tuesday Page 1 print edition replacement is starkly different from her original effort. Side-by-side comparisons of certain sections follow the jump.
As is the case with so many executive changes in both the public and the private sector, there is vagueness in the circumstances surrounding the end of Chuck Hagel's stint as Obama administration Secretary of Defense.
While it's not unusual for an exec to be asked to resign to avoid being formally fired, which was apparently the case with Hagel, the higher-ups involved are usually smart enough to pay tribute to the departed official and move on without letting contrary information get out. Apparently not this White House, and not the New York Times — unless their joint mission is to subtly discredit Hagel. The contradictions in today's report by Helene Cooper (saved here for future reference and fair use purposes) seem too obvious to be accidental (bolds are mine):
Remember when dissent was patriotic? When people like Hillary Clinton screeched that "we have a right to disagree with any administration?" Forget about it. That's so, like, 2003. You know, when George W. Bush was President.
Things are different today. Now, criticizing a sitting president is wrong. Very wrong. Just ask Joe Scarborough, who on today's Morning Joe accused Leon Panetta of a "lack of character" for criticizing President Obama in his book and public appearances.
On Tuesday afternoon, a graphic at CNN described Former Obama administration Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as a "former aide."
Tuesday evening Eastern Time, the network, in video seen after the jump, also let long-time Obama loyalist Bill Burton smear Panetta as "sad," "dishonorable," and "small and petty." Burton also came within inches of accusing Panetta of betraying his country because we are now "at a time of a lot of instabilities around the world." It appears not to have dawned on Burton that President Obama's policies have at a minimum created the power vacuums which have caused those "instabilities" to arise.
Left-wing academic Marc Lamont Hill blasted atheists Bill Maher and Sam Harris on Monday's CNN Tonight for their blunt views about the Islamic faith: "When he [actor Sam Harris] says that Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas, that is horrific; it is offensive; and, as Ben [Affleck] said...quite frankly, it's racist." Hill contended that "Islam is not uniquely violent or primarily violent or any more prone to violence than any other religion."
Bill O'Reilly's opening talking points on his show tonight went after President Obama's claim that the intelligence community underestimated and did not adequately communicate the dangers of ISIS/ISIL in Iraq and Syria with both barrels.
As documented in several NewsBusters posts in the 48-plus hours since Obama's Sunday night "60 Minutes" interview, O'Reilly's no-holds-barred analysis assessment, as seen in the video which follows the jump, is a stark contrast to what has been seen on other broadcast networks:
On Monday's Fox News's Hannity, Islamist cleric Anjem Choudary accused the Western media and Blackwater of framing ISIS for the atrocities that the terrorist group has freely admitted to. When host Sean Hannity raised the beheading of British aid worker David Haines, Choudary contended that "the information that we received...is very biased....I don't take my news from Fox News or the BBC. If you look at the people on the ground, I think you'll find that they have a completely different story. The Christians and Jews are living quite peacefully, in fact, in the Islamic State."
The Politico's Josh Gerstein wants readers not to have a problem with President Barack Obama singing the praises of American exceptionalism when in front of U.S. audiences but deep-sixing it when speaking at the United Nations. Though Obama has almost always avoided actually using the E-word, he has recenlly taken to speaking of this nation's "unique" abilities and capabilities, and for some time has described the U.S. as "the one indispensable nation."
But Gerstein, in his column today, indicated that it's okay that "Obama watered down his noble-America rhetoric" at the U.N. today. Oh, and in the Politico reporter's fantasy world, Obama's back-and-forth foreign policy postures — it's hardly accurate to call them genuine "positions" — are really no different than what we saw under George W. Bush. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
President Obama cited American exceptionalism at least ten times in his speech at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa today.
Early in his administration, Obama went out of his way to downplay the nature of U.S. exceptionalism, claiming that it was really no different than how any other nation's citizens saw their own country's uniqueness. So his speechwriters knew better than to use that word. But Obama cited how America is "unique" (read: superior) six separate times, and told his audience — and the rest of the world — that "when the world needs help, it calls on America." Time's Zeke J. Miller is one of the first among many who are choosing or will choose to ignore this change in posture, choosing primarily to obsess over whether U.S. ground troops will be called upon to quash the ISIS/ISIL threat.
Rachel Maddow frets about all President Obama has on his plate and concludes: "aren't you glad you're not President?"
MSNBC’s Krystal Ball substituted for Ronan Farrow as host of his MSNBC show on Friday and remarked with a guest during a segment on the Islamic terror group ISIS that their reported waterboarding of their captives, including the late James Foley, can be blamed on the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and what happened at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
After shifting gears from talking about the increased terror alert in the United Kingdom and fears across western Europe that hundreds of their citizens have joined ISIS and could return to commit terrorist attacks, Ball mentioned an article in The Washington Post that reported ISIS captives were waterboarded. She then asked MSNBC terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann what he thought about this news. [MP3 audio here; Video below]