The Increasingly Toxic Relationship Between Media and Government” Obama WH threatens non-sympathetic journalists

The Increasingly Toxic Relationship Between Media and Government”  Obama WH threatens non-sympathetic journalists

 

Way back when CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson split from the sycophantic MSM and began frankly reporting the Fast & Furious scandal in unflinching honesty, Obama’s White House and Dept. of Justice began harassing her for refusing to ‘do what the other reporters are doing,’ and putting Obama and Holder in a bad light.

MSM Cover-Up Confirmed by "Bordergate" Reporter! Whitehouse Furious for Not Complying![/url]

 Now, reporters once considered “friends” or “safe” are being singled out, threatened with loss of access and credentials, and verbally abused for their similar refusal to toe the Obama White House line.

 

Last week, BobWoodward took the Obama spin on the sequester head-on and revealed how he had led the way with it during budget negotiations.

"Misunderstanding, misstatements and all the classic contortions of partisan message management surround the sequester, the term for the $85 billion in ugly and largely irrational federal spending cuts set by law to begin Friday.

What is the non-budget wonk to make of this? Who is responsible? What really happened? …

Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.

Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, “We didn’t actually think it would be that hard to convince them” — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. “It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table.”

He immediately drew the wrath of not just the White House insiders, but of those in the MSM seeking to re-affirm their allegiance and commitment to all things Obama.

"Appearing on CNN Wednesday, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward said a “very senior person” at the White House warned him that he would “regret doing this,” referring to his outspoken criticism of President Barack Obama’s handling of the impending forced cuts known as the sequester.

“I think they’re confused,” Woodward told CNN host Wolf Blitzer. Woodward apparently went on to criticize Obama further over the sequester the same day he received the warning from the White House.

“It makes me very uncomfortable for the White House to be telling reporters, you are going to ‘regret’ doing something that you believe in,” he added. “It’s Mickey Mouse.”[/exnews]

[url]http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/27/bob-woodward-very-senior-white-house-official-warned-me-id-regret-attacking-obama-over-the-sequester/[/url]

[url]http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/27/bob-woodward-on-white-house-threat-it-makes-me-very-uncomfortable-to-have-the-white-house-telling-reporters-youre-going-to-regret-doing-something-that-you-believe-in/[/url]

 

Of course, those members of the MSM pro-Obama clique immediately attacked Woodward, instead of the underlying story!

[exnews] Progressives are throwing a series of virtual flowerpots at veteran journalist Bob Woodward, following his stepped-up criticism of President Barack Obama’s attempt to raise taxes by hyping the sequester budget trims. …

The pile-on by the president’s allies follows Woodward’s recent statements that Obama is walking away from the 2011 budget-deal by calling for more tax increases, that he is hyping the impact of the sequester cuts, and that he was allegedly threatened by Obama’s top economic adviser, Gene Sperling.

The supposed threat came Feb. 22 when Sperling tried to get Woodward to back down from his conclusion that Obama is “moving the goalposts” from the 2011 budget deal.[/exnews]

[url]http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/28/woodward-under-fire-as-white-house-allies-seek-to-discredit-sequester-reporting/[/url]

Even so,Woodward stood steadfast, going so far as to describe the Obama administration’s behavior as “madness.”

[exnews] "Under the Constitution, the President is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the President going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement. 'I can’t do what I need to do to protect the country,'" Woodward said.

"That’s a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time," he said.

Woodward's harsh criticism came after he stirred controversy last weekend by calling out Obama for what he said was "moving the goal posts" on the sequester by requesting that revenue be part of a deal to avert it.[/exnews]

[url]http://www.businessinsider.com/bob-woodward-obama-sequester-republicans-2013-2[/url]

 

Now, we learn that the Obama White House was not limited in its anger and vitriol to just one reporter; but, that it has spread to include others who’ve considered themselves “friends” and supporters of the Obama administration.

 

Lanny Davis, President Clinton’s former aide, has gone ‘on the record’ to recount a similar scenario of vicious attacks and not-so-veiled threats to their livelihoods and those of their employers.

[exnews]Lanny Davis, a longtime close advisor to President Bill Clinton, told WMAL's Mornings on the Mall Thursday he had received similar threats for newspaper columns he had written about Obama in the Washington Times.

Davis told WMAL that his editor, John Solomon, "received a phone call from a senior Obama White House official who didn't like some of my columns, even though I'm a supporter of Obama. I couldn't imagine why this call was made." Davis says the Obama aide told Solomon, "that if he continued to run my columns, he would lose, or his reporters would lose their White House credentials."[/exnews]

[url]http://www.wmal.com/common/page.php?pt=WMAL+EXCLUSIVE%3A+Woodward%27s+Not+Alone+-+Fmr.+Clinton+Aide+Davis+Says+He+Received+White+House+Threat&id=8924&is_corp=0[/url]

[url=http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2013/02/28/longtime-dem-lanny-davis-also-reports-white-house-threat] Longtime Dem Lanny Davis Also Reports White House Threat[/url]

 

As if these were not enough, former Obama ally Ron Fournier, of the same [i]Washington Times[/i], reports that he too has been subjected to such viciousness that he has terminated his relationship with a formerly valuable White House insider due to his contact’s defense of the Obama agenda and verbal abuse and threats.

[exnews] Woodward-gate is a distraction the White House welcomed, even encouraged, as part of a public-relations strategy to emasculate the GOP and anybody else who challenges Obama. It is a distraction that briefly enveloped my reporting last weekend, when I essentially broke ties with a senior White House official.

Yes, I iced a source– and my only regret is I didn’t do it sooner. I decided to share this encounter because it might shed light on the increasingly toxic relationship between media and government, which is why the Woodward flap matters outside the Beltway.

 …

I had angered the White House, particularly a senior White House official who I am unable to identify because I promised the person anonymity. … The official angered by my Woodward tweet sent me an indignant e-mail. “What’s next, a Nazi analogy?” the official wrote, chastising me for spreading “bull**** like that” I was not offended by the note, mild in comparison to past exchanges with this official. But it was the last straw in a relationship that had deteriorated.

As editor-in-chief of National Journal, I received several e-mails and telephone calls from this White House official filled with vulgarity, abusive language, and virtually the same phrase that Politico characterized as a veiled threat. “You will regret staking out that claim,” The Washington Post reporter was told.

Once I moved back to daily reporting this year, the badgering intensified. I wrote Saturday night, asking the official to stop e-mailing me. The official wrote, challenging Woodward and my tweet. “Get off your high horse and assess the facts, Ron,” the official wrote.[/exnews]

[url]http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/why-bob-woodward-s-fight-with-the-white-house-matters-to-you-20130228[/url]

 

The MSM has not only abandoned its obligations to “speak truth to power,” but is fighting over who can remain closest to the White House; which has created its own media apparatus, “Organizing For Action” (OFA). To curry favor and ensure acceptance from Obama and his closest advisers, they are ever more resolute in their determination to join the team of presidential advisers, spin-meisters and spokespeople.

[url= http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-press-officially-abdicates-its-role/] The Press Officially Abdicates Its Role[/url]

Now, those who’ve abandoned the chase, and returned to their journalistic roots are paying the price in loss of opportunity, access and the support of their colleagues.

 

So, who says “there’s no such thing as media bias,” now; when even the White House believes it can safely threaten those who no longer toe the line?

 

 

Jw

"Global Warming" Advocates' Own Data PROVES No Warming!

I often look at news and information sites and sources for views that are NOT the same as my own.

I often find things that aren't available elsewhere, and which can be truly enlightening. I especially enjoy foreign sources who have no agenda on U. S. political or social issues.

Reviewing the latest information from pro-AGW advocates, I came across a "tool" that gave trends and statistical analysis of climate data. What a surprise!

Actually, the "no warming" is proven by several independent studies AND supported by the pro-AGW site "skeptical science."

Here's what their own data reveal (recently acknowledged and cited by such AGW "luminaries" as Hansen, Pachauri, Trenberth and the MET Office) for land sea and satellite observations:

Satellite
For RSS, NO significant warming for 23 years.
Trend 0.130 ± 0.136 °C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990

For UAH, NO significant warming for 19 years.
Trend 0.143 ± 0.173 °C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994

Land/ocean
For Hacrut3, NO significant warming for 19 years.
Trend 0.098 ±- 0.113 °C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994

For Hacrut4, NO significant warming for 18 years.
Trend 0.098 ± 0.111 °C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995

For GISS, NO significant warming for 17 years.
Trend: 0.113 ± 0.122 °C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996

For NOAA, NO significant warming for 18 years.
Trend 0.090 ± 0.106 °C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995

Land
For NOAA, NO significant warming for 16 years.
Trend: 0.139 ± 0.203 °C/decade at the two sigma level from 1997

For BEST, NO significant warming for 16 years.
Trend: 0.182 ± 0.243 °C/decade at the two sigma level from 1997
...

These guys are often cited as authority for "debunking" AGW skeptics, but their own figures support the lack of significant warming.

What alarmists ignore is that the IPCC and many other warmists have "projected" an exponential increase in temperature correlative with the rise of CO2 (e.g., the "Hockey Stick" illusion).

This is clearly and undeniably NOT happening; the the alomst oracle-like "models" and "projections" are wrong.

What the AGW dogma ignores is that the temperature plateaued when it would have skyrocketed if their "climate science" was even a close approximation of reality.

You either deliberately ignore this, or you choose to misdirect with an incomplete comparison of trends.

CO2 levels are growing across the globe in "developing" countries and economies (while the US and some parts of the EU have seen declines). The CO2 levels in the atmosphere are far above what alarmists have contended would pass a "tipping point" beyond which average land and ocean temperatures would rise faster than ever before.

That is NOT happening.

Of course, one of the principal determinants of true science is "falsifiability;" and this incongruence of reality and predition renders the entire AGW alarmism FALSE. The hypothesis has been disporven,, as even Jim Hansen this week acknowledged.

The ever-liberal Economist has for years toed the official UK political line that AGW is real. But, even now they acknowledge that the science is not settled.

 

Over the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”
. . .
The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now. . . The IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity are based partly on GCMs [Global Circulation Models]. Because these reflect scientists’ understanding of how the climate works, and that understanding has not changed much, the models have not changed either and do not reflect the recent hiatus in rising temperatures.

www.economist.com...

Here's the illustration the Economist uses to illustrate part of its recognition of the failure of AGW alarmisism:

Here it is annotated:

And, what are some of the results of this ignorant denialism, according to the article?

Bad climate policies, such as backing renewable energy with no thought for the cost, or insisting on biofuels despite the damage they do, are bad whatever the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases.

www.economist.com...

It's so ironic and laughable to see the AGW faithful now assuming the role of "DENIERS" as their models fall apart before their eyes; and, as the predictions, assumptions and projections of 30, 20, and 10 years ago are time after time proven FALSE!

Climate is alway changing.
AGW acolytes seem to ignore the cycles:
the “Great Medieval Warm Period” (800 to 1300), the “Little Ice Age” (1500 to 1850), and smaller trends like a cooling period between 1880 and 1915… a warming period from 1915 to 1945… a cooling period in the first half of the 20th Century!!

But they also ignore the fact that their models are absolutely unable to account for the plateau while CO2 SOARS.

They have used the epithet of "Denier" as if it proved that their views of science and climate are invariable and incapable of challenge.

 

deny ignorance
indeed

jw