Liberal politicians often get a free pass from the media when they receive millions in support from billionaire activists like Tom Steyer. But when Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, associates with pro-Israel donors and activists, liberal bloggers call this a "political nightmare."
AlterNet criticized Cruz in an article December 1 for being overly pro-Israel. Cruz was reportedly "courting" conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson and "a wide set of pro-Israel extremists in New York City."
The author of The Beauty Myth alleged over the weekend on Facebook that the U.S. government isn’t really fighting the terrorist group and the deadly disease, but instead is engaged in a power grab.
The science is settled. General Electric Vox is now widely recognized as a tedious Web laughingstock.
I could Voxsplain it to you with a whole bunch of annoying and condescending Voxcards but others have already done so including James Taranto last month in the American Spectator. However, while his criticism and that of others might be Voxsplained away by founder Ezra Klein as just having a political axe to grind, now even the liberal Politico has written Vox off as mostly hype and little substance as you can see in the article by Dylan Byers:
Last Saturday, we noted that three well-known liberal bloggers had written that criticism about presidential vacations is silly and dopey. Vox’s Ezra Klein not only agrees with his brethren, but further contended in a Friday post that when a POTUS goes on vacation, he should get some real R&R, to the point that the vice president would “take over for a week or two,” with the president “get[ting] a call if something really goes wrong.”
Klein mused that “it's probably good for vice presidents to get a few weeks in the Oval Office now and again — that way, if they do have to step up to the presidency, they have a bit of experience. If Acting President Joe Biden had delivered the US's response to ISIS while Obama vacationed with his family, that would have been better for everyone involved.”
The major left-right disagreement regarding President Obama as a speechmaker hasn’t been over whether he’s talented (most conservatives concede he’s got a flair) but over whether he’s effective. Now, however, Ezra Klein thinks that a certain key group of liberals has lost confidence that Obama speeches in general, and specifically one about the situation in Ferguson, Missouri, would bring about the desired results. This group is known as...the Obama administration.
“If Obama's speeches aren't as dramatic as they used to be,” wrote Klein in a Monday post on Vox, “this is why: the White House believes a presidential speech on a politically charged topic is as likely to make things worse as to make things better. It is as likely to infuriate conservatives as it is to inspire liberals. And in a country riven by political polarization, widening that divide can take hard problems and make them impossible problems.”
Vox's Max Fisher shamelessly invoked medieval history in a Monday post about Pope Francis. Fisher highlighted the pontiff's support for action against ISIS's "unjust aggression" in Iraq, and hyped that "there is good precedent for this...between 1096 and 1272 AD, popes also endorsed the use of Western military action to destroy Middle Eastern caliphates. Those were known as the crusades; there were nine, which means that this would be number 10."
The former Washington Post journalist immediately set the tone with the title of his post: "News from 1096 AD: Pope endorses military force to destroy Middle Eastern caliphate." Fisher continued in this vein in his lead paragraph:
Chris Matthews is apparently no fan of blogs or websites, even when they are run by his comrades at MSNBC.
On the August 8 edition of The Reid Report, guest host Jonathan Capehart welcomed the Hardball host to the program to discuss Iraq. He got a whole lot more than he bargained for. Capehart read an excerpt from a piece appearing on Ezra Klein’s Vox.com, which purports to be in the business of ‘explanatory journalism,’ but acts more as an Obama administration mouthpiece. Klein frequently shows up on MSNBC programs, either as a contributor or a guest host. In responding to the excerpt, Matthews angrily ripped Vox: [MP3 audio here; video below]
Serving on Friday as the substitute host for Now with Alex Wagner, Vox founder and Editor-In-Chief Ezra Klein had a science reporter from Vox.com on to discuss the current outbreak of the Ebola virus in Africa and the arrival of two Americans who were working there to an Atlanta-area hospital. The segment was very informative, but it left out one key detail: Klein failed to disclose his own ties to Vox and the obvious conflict of interest that presents. Not only that, but Klein never even mentioned once his full-time job during the entire show.
At the conclusion of the previous segment, Klein provided this look ahead to the segment after the break by saying that: "Coming up, new reports that Ebola is coming to the U.S., so what will it mean to treat American patients with Ebola in the states? I will talk with Vox science reporter Susannah Locke next." [MP3 audio here; Video below]
Jonathan Gruber absolutely did not mean what he clearly said over and over and over again. That pretty much sums up the left's rationale for "Speak-O" Gruber stating again and again and again that states with federal health care exchanges would not be eligible for subsidies. Of course, Gruber made these quite clear statements before it became obvious that the vast majority of states would refuse to set up their own exchanges and the threat of withholding the subsidies fell flat.
Among the more amusing of those performing desperate damage control is Ezra Klein of General Electric Vox. Unfortunately for poor Ezra there is a large body of Obamacare documents besides the very language of the Obamacare law itself that contradict his assertion that it was intended all along that the federal exchange set up for the states would be eligible for subsidies. First let us allow Ezra to entertain us with his conniption fit over Speak-O:
Jonathan Gruber, along with Ezekiel Emanuel, is considered one of the architects of Obamacare. So when he is caught on video admitting the plaintiff's premise of Halbig vs Burwell which was this week ruled in favor of the plaintiffs it went viral on the Web. The court (and Gruber in 2012) agreed that Congress meant that the states would receive subsidies as an incentive to set up their own Obamacare exchanges. Although, Gruber vociferously denied this recently by claiming the problem was merely a "typo" in the legislation, he is completely contradicted by his earlier statement in January 2012 which you can see after the jump.
So how does the left and their media enablers explain this away? As of this writing the answer is they haven't...with the notable exception of General Electric Vox. And if the lame Vox excuses are any indication, they sure have their work cut out for them since Vox writer Adrianna McIntyre admits Gruber validates the case against Obamacare.
No, Vox blogger Matthew Yglesias has not suggested that an appropriate slogan for the current Republican party would be “Get off our lawn!” Yglesias did, however, argue in a Tuesday post that these days, conservative politics reeks of “oldsterism,” as evidenced by developments including righties advocating large budget cuts except for programs benefiting those 55 and older; “constant bickering about Ronald Reagan”; and George Will’s “column-length rant against blue jeans.” All that and more, Yglesias declared, adds up to a “cranky” GOP that won’t win the votes of most young people.
From Yglesias’s post (bolding added; italics in original):
Up a creek without a paddle. That pretty much describes the situation next year facing states that decided to set up their own Obamacare exchanges. And who is reporting this gloomy outlook? None other than one of the biggest media cheerleaders for Obamacare, Sarah Kliff of General Electric Vox.
Kliff delivers the sad news in a story appropriately titled, "States don't know how they'll pay for year two of Obamacare." And since almost all the states in question are Blue states, that also means their finances are already in bad shape. Here is Kliff playing a mournful dirge lamenting a massive Obamacare problem that seems to have taken her by surprise: