A Marine Corps official accuses the Senate majority leader of "pure political posturing on the backs of these dead Marines" and the networks whistle right by it. There is no question what Harry Reid is implying during his disgraceful remarks on the Senate floor. He links the sequester to the deaths of seven Marines, and ABC, CBS, and NBC censor the story by giving it ZERO seconds of coverage.
His conduct is disgusting, and so is theirs. [read more below page break]
If you peruse the Washington Post online, you’d notice that the top five stories didn’t even mention Harry Reid’s egregious comments about the seven Marines that were killed in Nevada yesterday. Likewise, although the fatal training accident itself was reported on page A3, Reid's comments were nowhere in the March 20 print edition.
On the Senate floor yesterday, Reid suggested a link between their deaths and the current budget sequestration. Here's what the Nevada Democrat said which the capital city's newspaper of record apparently finds unremarkable:
Senate Majority Header Harry Reid (D-Nev.) disgustingly implied on Tuesday that a freak explosion killing seven Marines during a training exercise in Nevada happened because of sequester cuts. While MSNBC reported Reid's comments and the "strong exception" taken to them by the Marine Corps, CNN made no mention of them at all on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, just like CBS, ABC, and NBC.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Reid announced the explosion that killed the Marines and transitioned into how the sequester cuts back on military "training and maintenance." He added that "It's just not appropriate, Mr. President, that our military can't train and do the maintenance necessary. These men and women, our Marines were training there in Hawthorne. And with this sequester, it's going to cut back this stuff."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday linked the accidental deaths of seven U.S. Marines to sequester spending cuts. All three networks have, thus far, skipped the story. After highlighting the details of the botched training event in Hawthorne, Nevada, the Democrat manipulated the tragedy: "But one of the things in sequester is we cut back in training and maintenance."
He added, "This sequester should go away...These men and women, our Marines were training there in Hawthorne. And with this sequester, it's going to cut back this stuff." These comments came on the floor of the U.S. Senate, yet ABC's World News and Good Morning America, NBC's Nightly News and Today, the CBS Evening News and the CBS This Morning all ignored Reid's remarks (though they discussed the accident itself). ABCNews.com covered the story, but acquitted Reid of bad motives: "Harry Reid Commemorates Dead Marines, Calls for End to Sequester."
Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin on Tuesday absolutely excoriated Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for implying on the Senate floor that the sequester was connected to the death of seven Marines at the Hawthorne, Nevada, Army depot earlier in the day.
"Harry Reid, you’re the lowest of the lowlives, you know that? You really are at the bottom of the sewer" (video follows courtesy Right Scoop with partial transcript).
If you thought schlockumentary filmmaker Michael Moore went too far last week when he called for pictures of the slaughtered Sandy Hook Elementary School children to be released, you ain't seen nothing yet.
On CNN's Piers Morgan Live Tuesday, Moore actually said that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wouldn't have dropped the assault weapons ban from pending gun control legislation if his grandchildren had been gunned down at school (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Schlockumentary filmmaker Michael Moore on Tuesday called Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) a "weenie" for dropping the assault weapons ban from pending gun control legislation.
Appearing on CNN's Piers Morgan Live, Moore also told viewers that they needed to say to Reid, "Who the hell do you think you are? This is our country," and send ten million email messages to him in revolt (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
This afternoon The Hill's Alexander Bolton and Jonathan Easley opened their story "Reid guts Senate gun control bill," with the Nevada Democrat's admission that Sen. Dianne Feinstein's assault weapons ban has at most 40 votes, while 51 are needed for passage and 60 to end cloture. Democrats, you may recall, control 55 seats in the upper chamber of Congress, including the two held by left-leaning independents. This admission shows just how unwilling red-state Democrats are to sign on to an assault weapons ban, especially one that most certainly go down in flames in the Republican-controlled House.
But in reporting the same development, the AP's Alan Fram waited until the fifth paragraph to get to the cold, hard truth that Senate Democrats are gun-shy on pushing a new weapons ban:
The scare tactics that Democrats from President Obama on down have employed to wring political benefit out of the sequester have apparently hit a despicable new low. In comments made about the deaths overnight of seven U.S. Marines in a training incident in Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Dem from Nevada, reportedly suggested that we may see more such incidents because the sequester cuts put Marines at risk.
NBC military correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, appearing on Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show this afternoon, reported that the Marines have strongly rejected Reid's claim, and that one Marine official accused Reid of "pure political posturing on the backs of these dead Marines." View the video after the jump.
The Washington Post has been around for more than 150 years and is the largest newspaper in the nation's capital. So there's absolutely no excuse why the paper recently commissioned and published a poll related to the looming sequester which failed to account for the Democrats controlling the upper chamber, even though Republicans were noted as controlling the House.
As Ed Morrissey at Hot Air noticed today:
MSNBC's Chris Matthews is starting to get completely unhinged.
On Tuesday's Hardball, he accused Republicans of using "Cold War CIA tactics to destabilize our own country" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer didn't have much sympathy for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) claim that Thursday's failed cloture vote on the Chuck Hagel Defense Secretary nomination "is one of the saddest spectacles I have witnessed in my 27 years in the Senate."
Appearing on Fox News's Special Report, Krauthammer said, "Perhaps he needs an antidepressant. I'd be happy to give him one."