Thursday, October 30, 2014

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, October 30, 2014


There was a priest, a rabbi, an imam, and a wet nurse...

 (Just kidding! Seriously... I've got nothing...)

 On to newsbites!


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10 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/19121-with-ice-growing-at-both-poles-global-warming-theories-implode

In the Southern Hemisphere, sea-ice levels just smashed through the previous record highs across Antarctica, where there is now more ice than at any point since records began.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

In the Arctic, where global-warming theorists preferred to keep the public focused due to some decreases in ice levels over recent years, scientists said sea-ice melt in 2014 fell below the long-term mean. Global temperatures, meanwhile, have remained steady for some 18 years and counting, contrary to United Nations models predicting more warming as carbon dioxide levels increased.

As The New American reported last month, virtually every falsifiable prediction made by climate theorists — both the global-cooling mongers of a few decades ago and the warming alarmists more recently — has proven to be spectacularly wrong. In many cases, the opposite of what they forecasted took place. But perhaps nowhere have the failed global-warming doom and gloom predictions been more pronounced than in the Antarctic, where sea-ice levels have continued smashing through previous records. For each of the last three years, ice cover has hit a new record high.

The most recent data show that the Antarctic is currently surrounded by more sea ice than at any other point since records began. In all, there are right now about 20 million square kilometers of frozen sea area surrounding the Antarctic continent. That is 170,000 square kilometers more than last year’s previous all-time record, and more than 1.2 million square kilometers above the 1981-to-2010 mean, according to researchers.

“This is an area covered by sea ice which we've never seen from space before,” meteorologist and sea ice scientist Jan Lieser with the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) told Australia’s ABC. “Thirty-five years ago the first satellites went up which were reliably telling us what area, two dimensional area, of sea ice was covered and we've never seen that before, that much area. That is roughly double the size of the Antarctic continent and about three times the size of Australia.”

Despite having predicted less ice — not more — as a result of alleged man-made global warming, some alarmists have comically tried to blame the record ice on “global warming.” Indeed, in a bizarre attempt to explain away the latest findings, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC boss Tony Worby tried to blame “the depletion of ozone” and the “warming atmosphere” for the phenomenal growth in sea ice — contradicting previous forecasts by warming alarmists, who warned that ice would decrease as temperatures rose along with CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

The biggest problem with Worby’s claim, however, is the fact that the undisputed global temperature record shows there has been no warming for about 18 years and counting — contradicting every “climate model” cited by the UN to justify planetary alarmism, carbon taxes, energy rationing, massive wealth transfers, and more.

* THERE'S MORE, FOLKS, BUT THIS GIVES YOU THE IDEA...

October 30, 2014 at 2:35 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2814208/Quarantined-Ebola-nurse-defies-orders-stay-home-goes-bike-ride-boyfriend.html

Nurse Kaci Hickox defied Maine's mandatory Ebola quarantine on Thursday and headed out for a bike ride with her boyfriend.

* AND GOT AWAY WITH IT.

The 33-year-old nurse left her home in Fort Kent, Maine with partner Ted Wilbur this morning, wearing gloves, a safety helmet and couple of layers of fleece to combat the bitter cold.

Miss Hickox broke her quarantine at 9am and took an ATV trail behind her home for the hour-long ride. A state trooper who had been stationed outside the house followed her in a police cruiser.

* WHAT QUARANTINE? OBVIOUSLY THERE WAS NONE. WHAT A JOKE. WHAT A WASTE OF POLICE RESOURCES. WHAT A COWARDLY GOVERNOR. WHAT AN IRRESPONSIBLE PRESIDENT.

Maine police were monitoring her movements and public interactions but there was no court order to arrest the nurse.

* AGAIN. NO COURT ORDER WAS NECESSARY. EITHER THE LAW ALLOWS FOR QUARANTINE OR IT DOESN'T. UNLESS MAINE HAS NO EXISTING QUARANTINE LAW (WHICH I FIND HARD TO BELIEVE) THEN ALL THAT'S NECESSARY FOR THE STATE TO TAKE ACTION IS A LEGAL DECLARATION OF QUARANTINE!

As she returned home, she said: 'There is no court action against me. There is nothing to stop me from going for a bike ride in my home town.'

* THIS... IS... INSANE...

Under Maine's official health guidelines she is not supposed to be in public until the three-week period is over. That is not until November 10. The guidelines are not mandatory but are voluntary.

* OK. SOUNDS INSANE... BUT I'M READING WHAT YOU'RE READING... I HEREBY WITHDRAW MY ERRONEOUS STATEMENTS CONCERNING THE LAW. (HARD TO BELIEVE... AND IT IS INSANITY... BUT UNLESS THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH IS WRONG...)

(*SHRUG*)

After she made it clear that she doesn't intend to stick to the rules - which are more stringent than those imposed by the CDC - Maine officials are preparing to secure a court order to force her to stay away from the public.

* "RULES?" WHAT RULES? FOLKS... HERE'S THE PROBLEM: THE POLITICIANS AND LAWYERS HAVE SO BASTARDIZED THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE THAT OFTEN IT'S REDUCED TO MEANINGLESS BLATHER. CLEARLY THE WORD "RULE" DOESN'T APPLY HERE.

Hickox contends there is no need for quarantine because she’s showing no symptoms.

* MIGHT AS WELL TAKE THE WORD "QUARANTINE" OUT OF THE VOCABULARY...

Maine Governor Paul LePage told ABC on Thursday that he would give up on the state's demand to keep the nurse under quarantine if she agrees to take a blood test.

* MAINE GOVERNOR PAUL LEPAGE IS A COWARD AND AN ASSHOLE.

According to Ebola experts, a blood test for Ebola would only be positive if Hickox was displaying symptoms of the virus - which she says she is not. The Ebola virus is only detectable in the blood if the disease has significantly progressed.

* DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM, FOLKS... AND THE RATIONALE FOR QUARANTINE...?

On Wednesday night, Miss Hickox left the home she has been ordered to stay inside for 21 days in order to speak with the press about her 'frustrating' situation. Standing in front of her boyfriend's house, as the police tasked with watching her looked on from across the street...

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

* AGAIN... WHAT A WASTE OF MANPOWER.

* GOD HELP US...

October 30, 2014 at 2:52 PM
William R. Barker said...

* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391474/non-citizens-are-voting-john-fund

North Carolina features one of the closest Senate races in the country this year, between Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan and Republican Thom Tillis.

What guerrilla filmmaker James O’Keefe, the man who has uncovered voter irregularities in states ranging from Colorado to New Hampshire, has learned in North Carolina is disturbing. This month, North Carolina officials found at least 145 illegal aliens, still in the country thanks to the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, registered to vote.

Hundreds of other non-citizens may be on the rolls.

O’Keefe had a Brazilian-born immigrant investigator pose as someone who wanted to vote but was not a citizen. Greg Amick, the campaign manager for the Democrat running for sheriff in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), was only too happy to help.

Greg Amick: Here’s a couple of things you can do. You do not have to have your driver’s license, but do you have any sort of identification?

Project Veritas investigator: But I do have my driver’s license.

Amick: Oh, you do. Show ’em that and you’re good.

PV: But the only problem, you know, I don’t want to vote if I’m not legal. I think that’s going to be a problem. I’m not sure.

Amick: It won’t be, it shouldn’t be an issue at all.

PV: No?

Amick: As long as you are registered to vote, you’ll be fine.

But North Carolina officials shouldn’t be “fine” with Amick, who appears to be afoul of a state law making it a felony “for any person, knowing that a person is not a citizen of the United States, to instruct or coerce that person to register to vote or to vote.”

* YEP! THAT'S WHAT THEY'VE CAPTURED ON FILM!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 30, 2014 at 3:12 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)

The anything-goes attitude towards non-citizen voting crosses party lines.

A campaign worker for the Republican running against Amick’s candidate for sheriff even called her boss before telling the O’Keefe investigator that it was for fine for non-citizens to vote: “Welcome aboard.”

* FOLKS... I DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHO IT IS... I WANT THESE PEOPLE JAILED!

Martin Kelly, whose son is running as a Democrat for superior-court judge in Mecklenburg, was blasé when asked whether non-citizens could vote. Kelly: “If you registered . . . [shrugs shoulders]. All they can do is say no. They can’t do anything else.”

* DISGRACEFUL. (I KNOW... ONE DOESN'T HEAR THAT WORD OFTEN NOWADAYS. SOUNDS OLD-FASHIONED. WELL... PERHAPS OLD-FASHIONED IS WHAT WE NEED TO GO BACK TO!)

Hans von Spakovsky, my co-author on a book we wrote on voter fraud in 2012, was in Charlotte on Monday for an NPR town hall on voting issues. “The local audience seemed skeptical that anyone in their state would be willing to commit fraud despite prior incidents,” he told me. “The O’Keefe video shows just how naïve they were.”

It’s no wonder that the two Old Dominion professors concluded that non-citizen votes may have been responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. “Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.”

(*PURSED LIPS*)

The authors’ paper is consistent with other credible reports of non-citizen voting. For example, Colorado’s Republican secretary of state, Scott Gessler, unveiled a study in 2011 showing that almost 5,000 illegal aliens cast votes in the U.S. Senate election in that state in 2010.

In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that up to 3% of the 30,000 people called for jury duty from voter-registration rolls over a two-year period in one of the 94 current U.S. district courts were non-citizens.

In 2012, a local NBC station in Fort Myers, Fla., found that at least 100 individuals in one county had been excused from jury duty because they were not citizens but were registered to vote. Hinako Dennett, who is not a citizen, told the station that she voted “every year.”

* AND WAS SHE ARRESTED... TRIED... CONVICTED... AND JAILED? (MY GUESS IS "NO.")

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 30, 2014 at 3:13 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)

A 1996 congressional race in California may have been stolen by non-citizen voting. Democrat Loretta Sanchez won by only 979 votes, and an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight turned up 624 invalid ballots cast by non-citizens who were on federal immigration records, along with 124 improper absentee ballots. The committee found “circumstantial” evidence of 196 additional non-citizen votes that it did not include in its tally.

* SO... BOTTOM LINE... PROBABLY A STOLEN ELECTION...

An accurate assessment of the magnitude of non-citizen voting is difficult. There is no systematic check of voter-registration rolls by states to find non-citizens, and the relevant federal agencies refuse — in direct violation of federal law — to cooperate with those few state election officials who attempt to verify citizenship status.

* BECAUSE... THERE... IS... NO... LONGER... THE... RULE... OF... LAW... IN... OBAMA'S... AMERICA...!!!

In declining to cooperate with a request by Maryland for information on the citizenship status of registered voters, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service mistakenly declared that the agency could not release that data because “it is important to safeguard the confidentiality of each legal immigrant.” One result of this policy: In 2004, a guilty verdict in a murder trial in Maryland was jeopardized because a non-citizen was discovered on the jury, which had been drawn from local voter rolls. Maryland’s frustrated elections administrator complained, “There is no way of checking. . . . We have no access to any information about who is in the United States, legally or otherwise.”

* THIS... IS... INSANE...!!!

Some states have tried to take action. Kansas and Arizona have put in place new commonsense proof-of-citizenship requirements for registration to prevent illegal voting. But activist groups such as the League of Women Voters and Common Cause routinely challenge such measures in the courts.

* WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS, FOLKS? ASK YOURSELVES...

To demand compliance with our laws — all of our laws — requires no more of an alien than we demand of any citizen. It is a violation of both state and federal law for immigrants who are not citizens to vote.

* TOO BAD WE'VE DEVOLVED INTO A KINDA "2ND WORLD" SOCIETY WHEN IT COMES TO THE RULE OF LAW. (DEPENDING UPON WHO - OR "WHAT" - YOU ARE, THE LAWS MAY OR MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU... DEPENDING UPON WHO IS IN POWER.)

The violations effectively disenfranchise legitimate voters by diluting their votes.

We can show respect for the rights of those within our borders and at the same time prevent people from violating our voting laws either through willful intent or because they were led astray by others.

* HELL... WE CAN - AND SHOULD - EXECUTE THOSE WHO DELIBERATELY DISENFRANCHISE LEGITIMATE VOTERS BY DILUTING THEIR VOTES!

October 30, 2014 at 3:14 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/10/29/massive-non-citizen-voting-uncovered-in-maryland/

An election integrity watchdog group is suing the state of Maryland, alleging that it has discovered massive and ongoing fraudulent voting by non-U.S. citizens in one county. But because of the way that the non-citizens are able to cast votes in elections, the fraud is likely happening in every single county and subdivision across the state. The group believes that the illegal voting has been happening for years.

The group, Virginia Voters Alliance, says that it compared how voters in Frederick County filled out jury duty statements compared with their voting records. The group’s investigation found that thousands of people in Frederick County who stated that they are not U.S. citizens on jury duty forms went on to cast votes in elections. Either they failed to tell the truth when they were summoned for jury duty, or they cast illegal votes. Both are crimes. The same group previously found that about 40,000 people are registered to vote in both Virginia and Maryland.

* OH... BTW...

One in seven Maryland residents are non-U.S. citizens.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Maryland issues drivers licenses to legal and illegal aliens. Driver’s licenses in turn make it easier under the Motor Voter law to register to vote.

* OH... BTW...

Maryland also offers copious taxpayer-funded social programs to non-citizens in the state.

* CONNECT THE DOTS, FOLKS... FOLLOW THE CIRCULAR TRAIL...

October 30, 2014 at 3:20 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/report-71-percent-new-jobs-go-foreign-born-legal-illegal-immigrants-nh

A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) shows that the state with senators who both voted for the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, which cleared the Senate in June, has 71% of its job growth going to foreign-born workers, including legal and illegal immigrants.

Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) both voted for Senate Bill 744, which CIS calculated would have roughly doubled the number of new foreign workers allowed into the country and would have given legal status to millions of illegal aliens already in the country had the legislation been passed by the House and become law.

A CIS analysis using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey showed that since 2000, 71% of the net increase in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job in New Hampshire has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal), even though the native-born accounted for 65% of population growth among the working-age.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

“Job growth in New Hampshire has not been very strong,” Steven Camarota, CIS director of research and co-author of the report, said in a statement issued with the report. “The situation for natives without a college education has been particular bad.

“Thus it is surprising that many of New Hampshire’s politicians supported the Gang of Eight bill, which would give work authorization to illegal immigrants and dramatically increase the number of foreign workers allowed into the country in the future,” Camarota said.

* I'M NOT SURPRISED. BOTH OF NEW HAMPSHIRE'S SENATORS ARE MEMBERS OF THE OLIGARCH (THOUGH VIA DIFFERENT PARTIES) IN GOOD STANDING. SURELY NO ONE BELIEVES THEY GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE COUNTRY OR THEIR FELLOW CITIZENS OR EVEN THEIR CONSTITUENTS!

All of the decline in the employment rate (share working) among working-age natives in New Hampshire has been among the less educated. The employment rate for natives in the state without a college degree declined from 77% in 2000 to 70% in the first half of 2014.

(In contrast, it increased from 8%5 to 87% for natives with at least a bachelor’s degree over the same time period.)

The CSI concluded from its analysis of the government data the employment picture in the state of New Hampshire as follows:

The long-term decline in employment for natives in New Hampshire and the large number of working-age natives not working clearly indicates that there is no general labor shortage in the state — especially among the less educated. Thus it is very difficult to justify the large increases in foreign workers (skilled and unskilled) allowed into the country in a bill like S.744, which many of the state’s politicians support.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

New Hampshire’s working-age immigrant population grew 70% from 2000 to 2014. (Yet the number of working-age natives working in 2014 was only slightly above the number in 2000 and the share with a job actually fell.) This undermines the argument that immigration on balance increases job opportunities for natives.

October 30, 2014 at 7:13 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/us/mexican-held-in-shootings-was-deported-after-arrests.html?_r=0

An illegal immigrant — one who had been deported twice, yet returned to the country each time — is accused of killing two Northern California sheriff’s officers in a six-hour shooting rampage Friday.

The suspect led the authorities on a manhunt through two counties.

After he was booked into the Sacramento County jail, federal immigration authorities used his fingerprints to identify the man, who gave his name as Marcelo Marquez: They said he was Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamonte, a Mexican who lived without papers in this country for more than a decade after he was deported in 1997 - and again in 2001 - because of drug- and weapon-related arrests.

“This case shows that our laws are not being enforced, and there are tragic consequences to not enforcing them,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR.

Emerging details of the suspect’s history — he gave his second last name in court in Sacramento on Tuesday as Bracamontes, not Bracamonte — show that he crossed the southwest border at least twice in a wave of illegal immigration more than a decade ago, then used several aliases and stayed out of trouble just enough to elude detection...

* WAIT! WAIT FOR IT..

...as the Obama administration ramped up deportations in recent years and expanded systems to identify foreigners who committed crimes.

* CLASSIC NYT. THROW IN A BLATANT LIE ALONG WITH THE FACTS AND HOPE FOLKS SWALLOW THE PARAGRAPH WHOLE.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

Under the name Marcelo Marquez, Mr. Monroy Bracamontes was arraigned Tuesday on 14 felony counts, including the murders of the two sheriff’s officers, theft of a sheriff’s vehicle and a shotgun, four car-jackings and the attempted murders of three deputies and a civilian.

The 13-page complaint, which the Sacramento judge read in its entirety, also lists special circumstances in the case against him, including killing an officer engaged in his duties and killing the officers to avoid arrest, which could allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

His wife, Janelle Marquez Monroy, who was with him throughout the shooting rampage but was captured first, was charged with murder in the killing of one deputy, with prosecutors saying she was an accomplice, and she faces other charges. She is a United States citizen, immigration officials confirmed.

During a brief news conference after the arraignment, the Sacramento County district attorney, Jan Scully, said she would not discuss whether prosecutors intended to seek the death penalty. She said that investigators had not determined whether Mr. Monroy Bracamontes was affiliated with a gang or a drug cartel, but that they were holding him in maximum security as a precaution.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Mr. Monroy Bracamontes was deported for the first time in 1997 after he was convicted in Arizona of narcotics dealing.

He was arrested again in Arizona in May 2001 on drug and weapons charges, but those were dismissed, and that month he was deported for a second time.

* BUT THEY WERE DISMISSED...

* HERE'S WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED: SECOND TIME CAUGHT HERE ILLEGALLY... EXECUTED.

* TOO HARSH? WELL... THE ALTERNATIVE WAS TO DISMISS THE CHARGES. HOW'D THAT WORK OUT? (AND EVEN IF THEY'D JAILED HIM... HE'D PROBABLY HAVE BEEN OUT BY NOW AND IF SO...)

(*SHRUG*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 30, 2014 at 11:28 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

He was hardly an isolated example of a foreigner coming back to the United State illegally after deportation.

* OF COURSE NOT! AND WHY SHOULD HE BE! THE PENALTIES FOR "INVADING" OUR COUNTRY TIME AND TIME AGAIN WERE HARDLY A DETERENT! (MORE LIKE A JOKE!)

From 2003 to 2013, about one-third of all deportations, 1.1 million, were based on reinstatements of court orders from previous deportations of the same immigrants, according to Marc R. Rosenblum, a researcher at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan group in Washington.

In 2013, 60% of all removals carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement were of foreigners who had previously been deported, said Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that favors reduced immigration.

Sometime after his second deportation, Mr. Monroy Bracamontes returned to the United States and moved with his wife from Arizona to Utah, where officials said he lived at least until last year. To judge from Utah court records for Marcelo Marquez, he was an exceptionally bad driver, with 10 misdemeanor violations from 2003 to 2009.

* FOLKS... WE CAN CONTROL OUR BORDERS; THE OLIGARCHS OF BOTH PARTIES SIMPLY WON'T PERMIT IT.

Two Sacramento County deputies approached Mr. Monroy Bracamontes and his wife on Friday as they sat in the car in front of a Motel 6 in a Sacramento neighborhood where business owners had complained about a series of thefts, drug dealing and other crimes, Sergeant Bowman said.

“They were just sitting in the car — not looking to go in or out anywhere — and that obviously raised a red flag in this area,” Sergeant Bowman said. “The officers simply just tried to approach them, and they just didn’t get that far. The shots came from within the car very quickly, and that’s what started everything.”

After killing the Sacramento deputy, Daniel Oliver, with a handgun, Mr. Monroy Bracamontes shot a motorist, Anthony Holmes, while trying to take his car, Sergeant Bowman said. Mr. Holmes is recovering from multiple gunshot wounds.

The couple then fled to Placer County, northeast of Sacramento. There, Mr. Monroy Bracamontes shot and killed a sheriff’s detective, Michael Davis, and wounded a third officer using an AR-15 assault rifle, according to the charges against him.

* BULLSHIT. (REFERRING TO THE AR-15 AS AN ASSAULT RIFLE.) (WHY LIE? SERIOUSLY... HAVE THEY NO INTEGRITY?)

Immigration officials said the rapid identification of the suspect showed that federal programs now in place were effective.

* "IMMIGRATION OFFICIALS" SAY THIS, DO THEY...???

(*GUFFAW*)

* OBAMA OFFICIALS? MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBLE TO OBAMA OFFICIALS?

(*SNORT*)

* HOW'BOUT THE WIDOWS... WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE "EFFECTIVENESS" OF OBAMA'S IMMIGRATION POLICIES?

“This is underscores why technology like Secure Communities is so important,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “It relies on fingerprints, and it gives us a virtual presence in jails and prisons across the country.”

* FOLKS... OBAMA/HOLDER WENT TO COURT SPECIFICALLY TO DENY ARIZONA (AND OTHER STATES) THE RIGHT TO DO EXACTLY THIS SORT OF DUE DILIGANCE!

Last fall, California passed a law known as the Trust Act under which traffic violations that do not result in an arrest would not activate any alert to federal immigration authorities, said Kevin R. Johnson, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Davis.

* CALIFORNIA. BLUE STATE. DEMOCRAT GOVERNOR. FANS OF OBAMA - AND VISA-VERSE!

October 30, 2014 at 11:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/10/30/attkisson-exposes-c-span-white-house-dispute/

* IS THE FOLLOWING STORY THE MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF THE DAY? NOPE. NOT EVEN CLOSE. BUT IT'S... TYPICAL OBAMA. IT DEMONSTRATE WHAT A "REAL LIFE" SCUMBAG THE GUY REALLY IS.

Among the juicier tidbits in the new book “Stonewalled” by former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson relates to a tiff between C-SPAN and the White House. As Attkisson tells the story, C-SPAN eminence Brian Lamb interviewed President Obama on Aug. 12, 2010, for a documentary on the White House. In the session, Lamb asks Obama about the Oval Office: “What have you changed in this room?”

The president responds, “We have not yet redecorated this room . . . Given that we are in the midst of some very difficult economic times, we decided to hold off last year in terms of making some changes.”

Two weeks later, reports Attkisson in the book, a White House official (then-TV liaison Dag Vega) contacts C-SPAN to say, “the Washington Post will be breaking the story of the President’s reported multi-million dollar renovation of the Oval Office.”

* WHAT... AN... ASSHOLE...!!!

The White House, via Vega, wanted C-SPAN to drop the footage later, to coincide with the release of its full documentary about the White House. Not when it was most relevant, and when it would raise questions about why the president had spoken of austerity.

* REPEAT...

Not when it was most relevant... and [not] when it would raise questions about why the president had spoken of austerity.

(*SMIRK*)

* AGAIN... WHAT A DOUCHE!

In any case, on Aug. 31, 2010 The Post drops its story on the Oval Office makeover, much of which took place while the Obama family had been on vacation (between the time of the Lamb interview and the story in The Post).

C-SPAN blows off the White House fussiness and publishes its interview.

That very night, Josh Earnest, then the White House deputy press secretary, sends a tough e-mail to C-SPAN accusing the outlet of “being egregiously unethical and of violating terms of the interview."

* S*C*U*M*B*A*G*S...

Though there’s no evidence of the existence of any prior agreement, he continues to insist the White House would not and did not agree to an interview with the president without specifying the terms under which it would air,” writes Attkisson, adding that the White House official threatened to “withhold future access.”

* AND THIS IS HOW THEY DEALT WITH C-SPAN!

Of the contretemps, Attkisson concludes, “I hate to say it, but I think many news organizations would have agreed to the White House demand to hold the president’s interview, no questions asked.”

* ABSOLUTELY. (INDEED, WE KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE FROM PAST NEWSBITES!)

C-SPAN tells the Erik Wemple Blog that it has reviewed Attkisson’s treatment of this incident and deems it accurate.

(*SMIRK*)

October 30, 2014 at 11:42 PM

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