Military

AP Ignores Minnesota Terror Suspect's Involvement With Airport De-Icing
By Tom Blumer | December 25, 2015 | 11:58 PM EST

In a year-end interview with National Public Radio, President Barack Obama largely blamed "a saturation of news" coming from a media which "is pursuing ratings" for growing concerns in America over the ability of ISIS and other terrorists to conduct attacks on U.S. soil, and indicated that "it's up to the media to make a determination about how they want to cover things."

It's reasonable to believe that Obama was telling the press corps, which already works furiously to prop him up, that they need to cut back on their reporting of domestic terrorist activities, arrests and court proceedings. It seems fair to say that the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, quickly took that advice to heart in its selective coverage of the saga of Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame, and that its selectivity has kept a noteworthy story very quiet.

Historian Rick Perlstein: George Lucas and Ronald Reagan ‘Gave Us Permission to Stop Growing Up’
By Tom Johnson | December 24, 2015 | 11:16 AM EST

By the late summer of 1977, Jimmy Carter had been president for only a few months, but if you knew which way the cultural and political winds were blowing, he seemed unlikely to win a second term. That’s because on May 25 of that year, Star Wars had opened, and its colossal success both foreshadowed and helped to revive a mindset that carried Ronald Reagan to the White House. That’s the word from Perlstein, who laid out his theory last Friday in The Washington Spectator.

Maddow Producer: On Foreign Policy, GOP Has Gone From Dominant to ‘Cringe-Worthy...Pathetic’
By Tom Johnson | December 21, 2015 | 8:48 PM EST

Though Steve Benen, who's also the primary blogger for the MSNBC program's website, is a true-blue liberal, he thinks highly of the foreign-policy chops of some recent Republicans. In a Thursday post, Benen wrote that GOPers such as Richard Lugar and Brent Scowcroft were “learned” and “approached international affairs with [a] degree of maturity.”

That was then; this is now. Benen touched on, among other things, Ted Cruz’s pledge to “carpet bomb” ISIS and Marco Rubio’s remark that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was “not a mistake” to build a case that today’s Republican party “approaches foreign policy…with all the maturity of a Saturday-morning cartoon…The national GOP candidates are speaking to (and for) a party that has no patience for substantive details, historical lessons, nuance, or diplomacy.”

Brit Hume Unloads on Obama over Cable News/Terrorism Comment; Seems ‘Impatient’ with Americans
By Curtis Houck | December 20, 2015 | 3:49 PM EST

Commenting on how The New York Times removed a phrase from a Friday article explaining how President Obama told a group of columnists that he hadn’t consumed enough cable news to fully understand the anxieties of Americans over terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Fox News Sunday panelist Brit Hume lambasted the President for his “snark” and frame of mind that makes him “impatient with the American people.”

New Republic's Brian Beutler: Democratic Debaters Should Denounce GOP’s ‘Appeal to Paranoia’
By Tom Johnson | December 19, 2015 | 11:49 AM EST

Debbie Wasserman Schultz may not want you to know about it, but there’s a Democratic presidential debate on Saturday evening, and Beutler believes that the candidates therein “would be doing the country a service by placing the right wing appeal to paranoia in its proper context—and then rejecting it forcefully.”

In a Friday piece, Beutler described this week’s Republican presidential debate as “an elaborate group sermon on the importance of being afraid”; opined that the GOP candidates “have made almost no attempt to argue” that their proposals “will reduce the terrorism risk, which is so small to begin with”; and asserted that Republicans’ “position on Jihadi terrorism (that no risk is too small to ignore) is practically the opposite of their position on mass shootings in general (that no risk is worth mitigating at all).”

Networks Censor NYT Deleting Obama Quote Saying He Didn’t ‘Appreciate the Anxiety’ Post-Terror Attacks
By Curtis Houck | December 18, 2015 | 9:29 PM EST

The major broadcast networks on Friday morning and evening showed no interest in reporting to viewers that The New York Times had scrubbed from an article on its website that contained a quote from President Obama telling columnists that he did not watch enough news coverage of the Paris and San Bernardino terror attacks to truly grasp the anxiety of the American people. 

Only ABC Sees Latest Use of Private E-Mails as ‘Embarrassment’ for Obama
By Scott Whitlock | December 17, 2015 | 11:41 AM EST

All three network morning shows on Thursday covered the breaking news that Defense Secretary Ash Carter used private e-mails for government work. But only ABC deemed it an “embarrassment” for Barack Obama himself. Good Morning America’s Mary Bruce asserted, “This is no question this is an embarrassment for the White House and will likely draw attacks from Republicans who say the administration isn't doing enough to safeguard sensitive information.” 

AP: San Bernardino Terrorist Massacre Was a 'Mass Shooting'
By Tom Blumer | December 17, 2015 | 10:04 AM EST

Pity the poor folks at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press.

The Obama administration, usually hyper-reluctant to characterize a domestic terrorist attack on U.S. soil as, well, a domestic terrorist attack, has actually had to admit in the face of overwhelming evidence that the San Bernardino massacre on December 2, during which 14 were killed and two dozen injured, was indeed a terrorist attack. Failing to adapt at sufficient speed, the headline writers, tweeters and Obama fans disguised as journalists at the AP, so used to avoiding the T-word at all costs, have made fools of themselves.

Carl Bernstein Bemoans GOP for ‘Their Belliocosity,’ ‘Recklessness That Was Astonishing’ in Debate
By Curtis Houck | December 16, 2015 | 10:29 PM EST

Chiming in with his latest ramble against conservatives, CNN political commentator and former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein took to the airwaves of Wednesday’s AC360 to denounce the GOP candidates for “their bellicosity” in Tuesday’s debate that featured “a recklessness that was astonishing.”

Left-Wing Pundits On GOP Presidential Debate: Winners Included Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and ISIS
By Tom Johnson | December 16, 2015 | 9:57 PM EST

Many of the lefty writers who analyzed Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate at the Venetian suggested that had the event been promoted as if it were a Vegas show, the marquee might have read “Fright Night,” or perhaps “Be Afraid…Be Very Afraid,” given how much the candidates hyped the threat of jihadist terrorism.

Begala Whines GOP’s ‘Dominant Emotion’ of ‘Fear’ Post-Terror Attacks Has Hurt Americans
By Curtis Houck | December 16, 2015 | 12:08 AM EST

Offering his initial thoughts on Tuesday’s GOP presidential debate on the 11:00 p.m. Eastern edition of CNN’s AC360, CNN political commentator and Hillary Clinton super PAC head Paul Begala complained that Republicans possess “dominant emotion” of “fear” that they’ve somehow used to instill fear in Americans following recent terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. 

Networks Cheer Hillary as ‘Grown Up’ on ISIS Compared to GOP, Chelsea Joining Campaign Trail
By Curtis Houck | December 15, 2015 | 8:04 PM EST

Just after the undercard Republican presidential debate began on Tuesday night, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC offered previews of the impending “freewheeling and fiery slugfest” debate and contrasted that with plenty of laudatory rhetoric for “grown up” Hillary Clinton as she spoke in Minnesota about ISIS and “slamm[ed] Republicans for fearmongering.”