Keith Koffler @ White House Dossier:
The White House is doing something with its local TV interviews that it could not easily get away with in encounters with the White House press corps, which President Obama has been studiously ignoring: choosing the topic about which President Obama and the reporter will talk.
In interviews with three local TV stations Monday, two from states critical to Obama’s reelection effort, Obama held forth on the possibility of “sequestration” if he and Congress fail to reach a budget deal, allowing him to make his favorite political point that Republicans are willing to cause grievous harm to the economy and jobs in order to protect the rich from tax increases.
Obama Monday threw the White House press corps a bone by suddenly appearing in the briefing room for 22 minutes and taking questions from a total of four reporters. It was his first press conference at the White House – albeit in miniature – since March, and only his second of the year. Obama before Monday had taken exactly one substantive question from White House reporters since June.
But the three other interviews Obama also held Monday pointed to the advantage he gets by focusing on local press, with whom he has been speaking more regularly.
Under sequestration, if a budget deal is not reached by the end of the year, harsh automatic spending cuts will occur. Each of the network reporters were from cities with major military facilities that could be unduly impacted if sequestration occurs.
Two of the reporters were from Norfolk, Virginia and Jacksonville, Florida, both presidential battleground states. The third was from San Diego.
The reporters mostly made no effort to hide the arrangement. “The president invited me to talk about sequestration,” NBC 7 San Diego’s reporter told her audience. In the interview, she set Obama up with a perfectly pitched softball the president couldn’t have been more eager to take a swing at:
Always this article indicates is the press was called to report of one issue—not all. This is not unusual.
Compare what Obama said in your article:
With what the new e-book said Obama told Nancy Pelosi back in mid-2012:
Pelosi, Reid and several other congressional leaders were willing to avoid sequestration.
It was OBAMA who was not.
Now he blames Republicans????
So lib2 is ok with the press being given orders by obama and co. We all know had it been a Republican president the left would be hyperventilating over it.
@Hard Right:
Liberal/progressives lack the ability to reflect inwardly on the actions and words of their leadership. Either by choice or by lack of a conscience. This is the only explanation possible to logical minds as to why they don’t give Biden’s comments the time of day, yet will cry foul at everything their political enemies utter, or do.
Lib1 is no different. Obama lies and Lib1 questions the motives of the messenger. Obama acts extra-Constitutionally and Lib1 denounces those who don’t like it.
In this way, Lib1 is like every other liberal/progressive whitewashing what Obama, and any other liberal/progressive, says or does, disregarding any pretense of intellectual honesty regarding reality.
And the only reason why a liberal/progressive would do this is that “win by any means necessary” has become their mantra. Lies and falsehoods, unConstitutional actions, vicious personal attacks. All are “necessary”, and even encouraged, in their quest for victory. It’s no wonder that honest people are turning away from them in droves, even those who helped vote Obama in last election.
@johngalt: Obviously they are getting very nervous and realize there is a chance they may lose this. Expect their worse behavior and character traits to come out tenfold. To show how their fortunes have changed, according to a recent poll, he is ‘only’ up by 12 points, 49-37, in Cook County. He carried Cook by 53 points in 2008. He carried the rest of the state by around 4 or 5. Overall, he won the state by 25 points. If he lost as much support in the rest of the state as he has in Cook, there is an outside chance he could lose this bluer than blue state. It is highly likely he will win this state, but if he doesn’t do so by around 10 points or so, look for him to lose the election because it will show a big shift in voter sentiment.
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/states/president/illinois.html
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/obama-illinois-losing-poll/2012/08/20/id/449177
@johngalt:
I too have noticed their almost genetic inability to analyze themselves. That lib from the Chic-Fil-A vid is a prime example. He was so conviced of his own purity, his own self-righteousness and goodness, that it didn’t even begin to occur to him that he was being a hateful bully.
He really thought that not only was it ok to do what he did, he thought people would approve of his actions! After all, it was only those greedy, evangelical, hate filled bigots he was doing it to. For people who consider themselves deep thinkers or intellectuals, they sure have a shallow ideology.
@Hard Right: One of them tried his get in your face bullshit with me a few days back. You know, calling Bush, Romney, Ryan etc. “jerk offs” in order to make you be intimidated into not wanting to question them and their superior intellect. Among his more than a few gems in supporting his argument were the Republicans controlled Congress in 2009 and 2010 and you need 70 seats in the Senate in order to have a filibuster proof majority. It’s amazing how they back down when they realize you aren’t going to be bullied into putting up with their antics. Hence the reason some of these lefty trolls come here. They can get away with their antics a lot easier from behind the safety net of a computer than they could in person.
One of Obama’s many assaults on the Constitution in general and specifically on the First Amendment. I’ve been examining Obama’s quest to “fundamentally transform” America by undermining the principles and documents on which our nation is built. I tackle the First Amendment in of the series.
My previous comment was marked as spam, I think because I had 2 links in there and messed up the HTML.
Here’s the non-linky non-HTML version:
One of Obama’s many assaults on the Constitution in general and specifically on the First Amendment. I’ve been examining Obama’s quest to “fundamentally transform” America by undermining the principles and documents on which our nation is built over at my site.
@another vet:
Face to face, they normally won’t do what you describe unless there are other leftists in attendance. In other words, only when they feel safe due to numbers. See the occupy folks as an example. Cowards do run in packs.