Dana Milbank, Washington Post:
World leaders arriving in Washington for President Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit must have felt for a moment that they had instead been transported to Soviet-era Moscow.
They entered a capital that had become a military encampment, with camo-wearing military police in Humvees and enough Army vehicles to make it look like a May Day parade on New York Avenue, where a bicyclist was killed Monday by a National Guard truck.
In the middle of it all was Obama — occupant of an office once informally known as “leader of the free world” — putting on a clinic for some of the world’s greatest dictators in how to circumvent a free press.
The only part of the summit, other than a post-meeting news conference, that was visible to the public was Obama’s eight-minute opening statement, which ended with the words: “I’m going to ask that we take a few moments to allow the press to exit before our first session.”
Reporters for foreign outlets, admitted for the first time to the White House press pool, got the impression that the vaunted American freedoms are not all they’re cracked up to be.
[…]
Reporters, even those on the White House beat for two decades, said these were the most restricted such meetings they had ever seen. They complained to both the administration and White House Correspondents’ Association, which will discuss the matter Thursday with White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
The restrictions have become a common practice for the Obama White House. When Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu came to the White House a couple of weeks ago, reporters were kept away. Soon after that, Obama signed an executive order on abortion, again without any coverage.
Over the weekend, Obama broke with years of protocol and slipped off to a soccer game without the “protective” pool that is always in the vicinity of the president in case the unthinkable occurs. Obama joked about it later to Pakistan’s prime minister, saying reporters “were very upset.”
Most transparent administration ever!
My guess is, the White House press corp is starting to feel like any other rock star groupie: used up and discarded, without so much as a signed guitar or even a concert tee to show for it.
Let’s hope they at least asked for cab fare.
(thanks to Darleen)
Couldn’t happen to a more worthless group of incompetents.
I guess Dana won’t be going on Keefy Olbermann’s show to talk about this story anytime too soon…
Not good for the meta-narrative; or the press’ self-respect and sense of self-importance.
Bob – They may act miffed, but they are faithful Lewinskys.
Your source is the ever mewling whore Dana Milbank. Enough said.
oh my the dnc propagandists are feeling sad
You know, it serves these propagandizing pinheads right, for the way they carried his water during the campaign, and essentially dragged him across the finish line in spite of himself. And also for all of the haigiography that went on just following the election.
Hell, they were still covering for his regime as recently as the Obamacare debacle; and have had the nerve since then to wonder aloud about the “unintended consequences and unforseen complications” that arise from a several thousand page bill that nobody, NOBODY, actually read before they followed orders and committed what I hope will be electoral sepuku by voting for it.
Rock star groupie is a good analogy Jeff, but I prefer Judas Iscariot to a person. Becuase although they willingly betrayed us, ostensibly for “our own good” as is S.O.P. with elitists, they themselves were discarded when finished; both by Obama, who has nothing but contempt for them-unless they become useful again, and by the public at large, who no longer have confidence in their reportage or lack of bias, and will no longer consume their products.
Can’t say I’ll be shedding any tears for Dana or his colleagues…
Milbank was one of the biggest cheerleaders, and there is no doubt that it will fall back in line when called upon to do so.
I’m not pimping Obama. I simply question Dana Milbank’s control of the facts. Get a grip. You guys are going into bunker mode.
You guys are going into bunker mode.
No. That would be Obama.
American journalism. It’s so so important… to ask the questions you know the answers to:
I think Kellogg’s is missing a fucktart.
Turns out “change” can encompass quite a bit…
So far, I don’t see any defensible points. Why is Dana Milbak’s account plausible?
OOps, Dana Milbanks.
Or Milbank even. Sorry.
So far, I don’t see any defensible points.
Hint: that would be because you’re stupid.
The absence of the press of these events is a matter of public record. Milbank is simply the first one to put them all together in one article.
When WAS Obama’s last unscripted press event, cynn?
cynn – Are you disputing that the press was not given access to the summit? I suppose that you could link to the stories from all of the reporters that was allowed to cover the event, question the participants, etc … Hint. They aren’t out there.
Didn’t Milbank give a spirited defense of Emanuel not too long ago? He’s a tool.
“Even the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, was more talkative with the press than Obama.”
Wow…Just…Wow.
“Obama’s official schedule for Tuesday would have pleased China’s Central Committee.[…]
Reporters, even those on the White House beat for two decades, said these were the most restricted such meetings they had ever seen.[…]
The restrictions have become a common practice for the Obama White House.”
That’s the change that the press encouraged Americans to vote for, much like the socialism Reverend Al contends they voted for as well.
They’ve made their bed, and ours too; we’ll all be laying in them. But there’s is worse, because they are untrusted by a majority of Americans now.
Across America, folks are reading this and laughing the snarky laugh that the bully on “the Simpsons”, Nelson, and it’s directed at Dana and the rest of the press.
Translation of #17: “I will now attempt to change the subject.”
In 1984, Nelba Cecilia Blandon, the Nicaraguan Chief of the Public and International Department of the Ministry of the Interior, attempted to justify censorship of the independent newspaper La Prensa, arguing that “They accused us of suppressing freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not let them publish it.”
Obamco has found that censorship is even easier if there’s nothing to censor.
cynn – WTF are you arguing?
JD: I think it’s a three-way debate between her, the box of wine, and the crack pipe.
triggerhippie must be one of yours. Take action.
JD: I am saying that Jeff’s premise is faulty because he’s relying on a shithead duplicitous “journalist.”
Related…
Zip it, liar.
cynn – So you are disputing that journalists were not allowed to cover the summit, question the participants, etc … ? Here is a hint, cynn. It is not a premise, it is a fact.
shithead duplicitous “journalist.”
triple redundancy foul
Well, I anxiously await other accounts of the summit!
Don’t hold your breath. Or do.
Well then vacate this country at once, serrated. Get out. We can handle it from here, your bitterness begone.
Yeah cynn, as JD says, don’t hold your breath waiting. because the only “account” you’ll get are what the White House chooses to release, obviously portraying the event in the best possible light, or if a foreign leader unloads about what went on.
Might be some Omerta-like agreement though, a pact of secrecy based on nothing actually happening…
Robert Gibbs will tell all tomorrow, for sure.
I seem to recall Woodrow Wilson saying that secret alliances and treaties weren’t a particularly good idea. So Obama is now reverting to a pre-World War I approach to foreign affairs. Wonderful.
Seriously, the guys whole past is a top secret puzzle. Why wouldn’t his presidency be?
How come we know Bush had better grades than Kerry, but know one even remembers Obama in any classes, much less his grads.
cynn said “I am saying that Jeff’s premise is faulty because he’s relying on a shithead duplicitous “journalist.””
You mean they make another sort?
Robert Gibbs could be a BeeGee as far as I care. I only hold my breath for the lottery, and only long enough to know I lost. If JD ever wants to play golf in Denver, I’ll host him, but only a place to crash.
Okay, that was weird.
cynn: With all due respect, you’ve been following this fucking blog for–what?–years now; you should be much farther along intellectually than you are.
Cynn and JD, sitt’in in a tree…
Not at all funny, lee … keep it up and I will post those photos of you and nishit and Roseanne Barr.
ahem: I wasn’t aware there was vocational training. And that was a sick joke, JD. You’re welcome.
I would love to play Cherry Hills, site of the miraculous Arnold Palmer come-from-behind victory, if memory serves. However, I just wrote a check to pay for my taxes, and will not be traveling in the near future.
We haven’t exactly heard a deafening roar from White House correspondents declaiming Milbank as a liar and cretin though, have we? No, we haven’t, largely because Milbank wasn’t lying and got the story right.
I don’t want to hear any more about your come from behind shit. Offer off the table, as it were.
If you could get me on Cherry Hills, I might even be nice to you, cynn ;-) I think it was the 1960 US Open, which may have been Palmer’s only US Open. I think he was 7 strokes back to start Sunday, and wound up in a tussle with Hogan, Nicklaus, and someone else, Fleck? I read a great book about that round a few years ago, and will have to go find that again, now. Can you help a brother out, cynn?
Just because there hasn’t been a robust response means nothing. Believe what you want.
I just realized that I pay way too much attention to golf.
Wasn’t there a near miraculous three-wood shot from behind some trees involved in that round JD? My recollect is fairly vague on the subject though.
Crickets has been the response. As there is nothing to refute.
I think he drove the green on #1, or drove through the green, chipped in on #2, and made the turn in 30. Apparently, he told someone before the round that he needed to drive #1 in order to have a chance to win the tournament.
The whole story, as reported June 27, 1960, in SI.
Yep, cynn, Milbank is making up Obama’s “talk to the hand” treatment of the press outta WHOLE cloth! WHOLE CLOTH!!1!1!
OT:
via insty
Indeed, there is much to refute from you effute asstutes who we should not confute with the Root-toot-a-toots.
Well, that wasn’t supposed to post.
A piece on the Rape.
Thanks, sdferr. I cannot believe I remembered that, since it happened years before I graced this world.
Palmer hit is 346 yards with a wood wood. Granted, it was at elevation, but damn. How would you have liked to follow a 20 year old Jack playing with Hogan on Sunday at the Open?
Goodnight, all. Don’t drive, cynn.
Useful idiots now only useless, and homeless to boot – an outpouring of even more strongly expressed adoration for Dear Leader soon to follow.
Because of teh juggernaut, eh, cynn?
bh
Oh my … the feministing hateyness cuz Sus dared mock TEH TRIGGER…
:::snort::::
From sdferr’s link:
Maybe happy can pass that on to nishi the next time they’re texting about cupcakes or something.
Definitely some funny stuff, Darleen. Breslin just destroys their silliness.
I am saying that Jeff’s premise is faulty because he’s relying on a shithead duplicitous “journalist.”
This is Jeff’s premise:
<sarc>Most transparent administration ever!</sarc>
Given that the MSM luuuuvs them some Obama, and given that they haven’t gotten to the point where they’d say they were present at an event that Obama shooed them away from,* and given that it is very much against their interest to admit that Obama is not treating the MSM very well, I’d call it pretty credible.
Admission against interest, they call it.
* They are NOT, however, beyond reporting imaginary n-words by Tea Partiers. Give them time; they’ll be writing fanciful accounts of Obama’s secret exploits any time now.
Cue the idiot’s loop on this. “How come it wasn’t one before with the old dollar bill guys if it is one now with the brownz? Lawl. SBH. Quantum. PopSci Book Titles. Sufi.”
On dur intertubes we call that fan-fiction. It can get very turgid.
cynn shouts through the firing slits:
I’m not pimping Obama. I simply question Dana Milbank’s control of the facts. Get a grip. You guys are going into bunker mode.
Breslin sums it up nicely from the link @52:
Jeff’s got a new friend?
you’re kind of being a dick I think Jeff… I don’t attack you… why are you attacking me?
Oh hey, I found a photo of nishi.
Texting and cupcakes aren’t really attacking. They are the good things what make life in our little dirty socialist country bearable when all the hicktards are trying to kill off the brown ones and shove Jesuses down out throats.
it’s dirty socialist little country actually
but I didn’t really get an answer… what’s your problem with me exactly?
But if you really want to know, I told you already. When I and others here are getting pissed on daily, your response, typically, has been to swoon over the person squatting over us with an open urethra.
I guess I just don’t find that very friendly.
the tyranny of the majority
Jeez, I read that as “the tranny of the majority”, and it worked.
I think you guys can hold your own, and it makes for good bloggings when you do I think. But also I don’t dislike people just cause they don’t agree with me or if they say frightfully mean things. My god the hypocrisy would have an event horizon.
I don’t endorse everything nishi says. But one of the things I like most about PW is that she gets to say it.
Opaque is the new transparency.
Obama is the new Mao.
P. Mirengoff picks up some epistemic closure fuzz and brushes it off his suit sleeve.
Epistemic closure? Conservatives?
As they always do, they accuse their political enemies of what they themselves wish to be, wish to do, are and are doing. It would be ever wearying but for the fact that they then so thoroughly reveal themselves by the accusations they hurl.
It’s as I said, sdferr. The premise is a big question beg. The rest is just the left fluffing itself over how cleverly they can pretend it isn’t.
I’d easily own up to being more or less closed, epistemical wise, to teh crazy, s’far as that goes. So little time, so much
baseballStanley Cup prelims.An odd topic any way that I approach it, sdferr. Both in your link and in the other thread with the nutty griefer.
If any particular progressive was of a reflective inclination, a question they might ask themselves could be, “Why do we spend so much time making arguments about our political opponents’ psychological workings or group dynamics rather than their arguments?”
“Further, why do we find it so hard to focus on our own principles and policy positions rather than constantly patting ourselves on the back over cultural markers and eternally self-flattering and fadish memes?” they might ponder to themselves during an idle moment.
Surely this question must occur to some of them. Surely some should then be tempted to put wax in their ears and strap themselves to the mast.
Some might even have studied something resembling epistemology and noticed that there genuinely wasn’t much matter there dealing with humans as members of political parties, if any at all.
Oh, typo. One should either put wax in their ears OR strap themselves to the mast.
Siren-wise that is.
And one should just say open-minded or close-minded unless one is intellectually insecure and felt the need to overcompensate.
Affectation-wise that is.
Later.
Say after November we enter an election cycle in which invocations of Reagan – real or imagined or implied or inferred – are de rigueur and unceasing.
Say Team Dirty Socialist’s salted the earth with the Team R is closed minded and has no new ideas meme.
There’s worse strategery I think.
Yeah, like defending your principles! Bad idea when the other side can yell “RACIST!”, and get away with it, nary a peep from the LSM.
Happyfeet said:
Isn’t no new ideas kind of a pillar of conservatism? The whole standing athwart history yelling stop thing an acceptable conservative once wrote about?
Pointing out that conservatives want to return to ideas that worked in the past might just bear the risk of playing into stupid Team R’s hands. Especially when it is obvious that Team Dirty Socialist’s “new” ideas are working out so very very well for the country.
Just sayin’ is all.
Oh, shit!
Quick! Somebody come up with some new ways to cut spending that doesn’t involve cutting spending! Or else they beat us again. With their beautiful minds.
Meh. “Epistemic closure,” it seems to me, is more closely aligned to those who discount ideas simply because they aren’t new. Me, I like to look both ways when I cross the street.
#83 bh:
Towards the end of the Buckley post:
Comment by Mikey NTH on 4/14 @ 9:49 am #
Of course Buckley was correct with the list of responses being denial, dismissal, or delegitimatize. And the use of those three responses indicates that progressiveism is functionally intellectually dishonest and afraid. If progressiveism was confident in the inherent soundness of its own beliefs it would honestly address conservative viewpoints and destroy them. That progressiveism does not do so is the tell that progressiveism is afraid it may be wrong.
There! On Topic!
And who, remarkably, think the shit they’re pushing is new despite it having been done, literally and repeatedly, to death. It’s almost as if they know nothing about history.
Reading Ecclesiastes just makes me depressed anymore. Gotta stop that.
Not arguing based on their “psychological workings or group dynamics” means taking them at their word. One of their words is “new.” Another of their words is “history.” They got that shit. They say so. So “They know what they’re doing” and “They don’t know what they’re doing” — or any admixture thereof — are out.
This can’t be talked about.
OW MY EPISTEME
It seems that the media is not the only one taht Obama is openly showing his disrespect for:
http://powip.com/2010/04/its-official-now-israel-is-goin-under-the-bus/
Just one of our oldest allies in the Middle east, that’s all. But, like with Britain-meh, who needs you, I’ve got new friends now…
Does dana milbank not understand that politicos act different in front of cameras than in other places?
No, she understands it.
She’s just pretending that she doesn’t.
It’s doublethink.
Dirty, dirty whores? No, that’s too positive.
Pathetic little dumpster sluts? More like it.
Andrew – Dana’s a he.
I know – hard to believe…
Dana would have been happy with a guitar pick. Is that too much to ask? Really? For how much he put out?
Mikey #91, couldn’t agree more.
As I’ve said, new ideas are no good if those espousing them also fail epically in the implementation, as they failed with the old ones.
If any particular progressive was of a reflective inclination, a question they might ask themselves could be, “Why do we spend so much time making arguments about our political opponents’ psychological workings or group dynamics rather than their arguments?”
I think we can safely assume that those who engage in such tactics long ago lost the desire to argue about ideas.
Because they don’t care about ideas; they care about power. The ideas are useful only insofar as they advance the quest for power.
Saul Alinsky didn’t give a rip about ideology. He found it to be so much hystrionics and clutter. He was all about the gamesmanship involved in inverting a power structure. End of story.
For example, the fact that the “have-nots,” once ascended to power, behaved exactly as badly as the former “haves” gave him no pause at all. Didn’t care. The point was to upset the order, not to achieve any kind of “justice.”
Only when it was useful to invoke “justice” to further the goal did he invoke it; actually achieving it was so much idealistic clap-trap.
Meh. “Epistemic closure,” it seems to me, is more closely aligned to those who discount ideas simply because they aren’t new. Me, I like to look both ways when I cross the street.
Boy, do I miss you when you’re gone. Clever as the rest of us are, we don’t achieve these metaphoric heights even on a good day.
those who discount ideas simply because they aren’t new.
If ever there was yet another bit of evidence of the basic juvenile “thought” patterns of the Left.
All teens figure their parents are hopelessly unhip and have nothing of value to teach them … sometime around age 23 (if parent is lucky), said child suddenly realizes their parent(s) have gotten a lot smarter in the intervening years.
Apropo of nothing in this thread the PJM site has an article on David Axelrod and this administrations true agenda. Scary stuff.
Dude, feets is good people.
I forgot to hit send this morning.