Brokeback Press Conference

So long, Baghdad Jay!
Cross posted at Proof Positive

Their Master’s Voice

I had to chuckle when I read the piece by National Review’s media editor Eliana Johnson.

She opens with this sentence: 

“MSNBC, the left-leaning [emphasis mine] cable-news network, has settled on one solution to its recent problems. It now has an executive reviewing scripts before they go on the air. The role, which has fallen to Rich Stockwell, a former executive producer of The Ed Show and Countdown with Keith Olbermann who now oversees special projects at the network, was created as several of the network’s hosts have, to the embarrassment of network brass, conducted a master class in political incorrectness. In recent months, Alec Baldwin, Martin Bashir, and, most recently, Melissa Harris-Perry have awkwardly crashed into the trinity of sexual orientation, gender, and race, leading many to wonder if there are any adults in charge at MSNBC.”

“The place for progressives” is in a catastrophic ratings death spiral. The new step of having Rich Stockwell review scripts before they air is an irrefutably pathetic attempt to impose order on the chaos reigning at the network.

Nielsen data shows the network last year posting its lowest prime-time ratings since 2007 both in the coveted 25–54 demographic and in total viewers.  Their ratings are down 29 percent from 2012.

Stockwell, the script reviewer has called Rachel Maddow the crippled cable show’s “quarterback”.  Johnson notes that “from all appearances, the inmates are running the asylum.”  Well, duh.

Johnson continues, “Sources say it is Maddow rather than Phil Griffin who provides MSNBC’s editorial direction, and that she also holds considerable sway over personnel decisions. ‘I know I’m never going to get freakin’ talking points from Phil,’ Maddow told The New Yorker last year. ‘Can you imagine? Like, what would they be?’”

Jordon Charlton over at TV Newser reports that MSNBC is disputing Johnson’s claim that Madcow holds significant power in both network editorial vision and personnel decisions.

“This is categorically false.  I have never had any role in any management decision at MSNBC.  Any source who says otherwise is wrong.”

The “queen” of Rockefeller Plaza is paid millions to spread the progressive gospel, what you and I call the socialist agenda, and repeat the talking points issued to them by the West Wing through the likes of Valerie Jarrett, Denis McDonough, Dan Pfeiffer, David Plouffe, Josh Earnest and Jay Carney.

See also:  Rachel Maddow Is Crazy, Too

Linked, and we thank you, by Cardigan at iOwnTheWorld

The Art Of Deceit And The Paid Liar

There was an interesting exchange between House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and CNN’s R2DoubleD2 today on the cable new channel’s “State of the Union” program.

Issa’s bluntness was uplifting.  The scandal surrounding the IRS’s decision to target Tea Party groups was, he believes, “mostly likely the employees in the Cincinnati IRS offices were acting on orders from Washington, DC.

Issa said, “The administration is still—their paid liar, their spokesperson, picture behind, he’s still making up things about what happen[ed] and calling this local rogue.” [Emphasis mine.]

“The reason that Lois Lerner tried to take the Fifth [Amendment] is not because there’s a rogue in Cincinnati,” he added. “It’s because this is a problem that was coordinated. in all likelihood, right out of Washington headquarters.”

On May 21, Carney said: “I think that the tenor of the president’s public comments about it, both in his statement Tuesday night and his public comments the next day reflect his feelings upon learning about the apparent conduct by our IRS officials in Cincinnati.” A day earlier, Carney discussed “matters involving the office in Cincinnati” in an exchange about when the White House learned of the episode.

IRS officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. So, the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati, where IRS official Lois Lerner initially said actions were undertaken by “front-line people.”

An IRS employee was asked if the scandal could be the work of a few local rogue agents. "It's impossible," the employee said. "As an agent we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen."

The interrogator then asked: "With respect to the particular scrutiny that was given to Tea Party applications, those directions emanated from Washington, is that right?"

"I believe so," the IRS employee said.

See also:  A smoking gun on IRS scandal? An IRS takeover of health care?

And The Voices That Annoy Him Are Those Of The Founders

Presented for your dining and dancing pleasure—“In IRS Scandal, Echoes of Watergate” by George Will:

The burglary occurred in 1972, the climax came in 1974, but 40 years ago this week—May 17, 1973—the Senate Watergate hearings began exploring the nature of Richard Nixon’s administration. Now the nature of Barack Obama’s administration is being clarified as revelations about IRS targeting of conservative groups merge with myriad Benghazi mendacities.

This administration aggressively hawked the fiction that the Benghazi attack was just an excessively boisterous movie review. Now we are told that a few wayward souls in Cincinnati, with nary a trace of political purpose, targeted for harassment political groups with “tea party” and “patriot” in their titles. The Post reported Monday that the IRS also targeted groups that “criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution.” Credit the IRS’s operatives with understanding who and what threatens the current regime.

Jay Carney, whose unenviable job is not to explain but to explain away what his employers say, calls the IRS’s behavior “inappropriate.” No, using the salad fork for the entree is inappropriate. Using the Internal Revenue Service for political purposes is a criminal offense.

It remains to be discovered whether the chief executive is guilty of more than an amazingly convenient failure to superintend the excesses of some executive-branch employees beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Meanwhile, file this under “What a tangled web we weave”:

The IRS official in charge of the division that makes politically sensitive allocations of tax-exempt status said Friday that she learned from news reports of the targeting of conservatives. But a draft report by the IRS inspector general says this official was briefed on the matter two years ago.

An emerging liberal narrative is that this tempest is all the Supreme Court’s fault: The Citizens United decision—that corporations, particularly nonprofit advocacy groups, have First Amendment rights—so burdened the IRS with making determinations about who deserves tax-exempt status that some political innocents in Cincinnati inexplicably decided to begin by rummaging through the affairs of conservatives. Ere long, presumably, they would have gotten around to groups with “progressive” in their titles.

Remember, all campaign “reform” proposals regulate political speech. And all involve the IRS in allocating speech rights.

Liberals, whose unvarying agenda is enlargement of government, suggest, with no sense of cognitive dissonance, that this IRS scandal is nothing more sinister than typical government incompetence. Five days before the IRS story broke, Obama, sermonizing 109 miles northeast of Cincinnati, warned Ohio State graduates about “creeping cynicism” and “voices” that “warn that tyranny is . . . around the corner.” Well.

He stigmatizes as the vice of cynicism what actually is the virtue of skepticism about the myth that the tentacles of the regulatory state are administered by disinterested operatives. And the voices that annoy him are those of the Founders.

Time was, progressives like the president 100 years ago, Woodrow Wilson, had the virtue of candor: He explicitly rejected the Founders’ fears of government. Modern enlightenment, he said, made it safe to concentrate power in Washington, and especially in disinterested executive-branch agencies run by autonomous, high-minded experts. Today, however, progressivism’s insinuation is that Americans must be minutely regulated because they are so dimwitted they will swallow nonsense. Such as: There was no political motive in the IRS targeting political conservatives.

Episodes like this separate the meritorious liberals from the meretricious. The day after the IRS story broke; The Post led the paper with it, and, with an institutional memory of Watergate, published a blistering editorial demanding an Obama apology. The New York Times consigned the story to page 10 (its front-page lead was the umpteenth story about the end of the world being nigh because of global warming). Through Monday, the Times had expressed no editorial thoughts about the IRS. The Times’ Monday headline on the matter was: “IRS Focus on Conservatives Gives GOP an Issue to Seize On.” So that is the danger.

If Republicans had controlled both houses of Congress in 1973, Nixon would have completed his term. If Democrats controlled both today, the Obama administration’s lawlessness would go uninvestigated. Not even divided government is safe government, but it beats the alternative.

For your ironic reading pleasure: the Nixon Articles of Impeachment watergate.info/impeachment/ar…

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 14, 2013

No Leadership, No Responsibility, No White House Tours

From the Committee On Oversight & Government Reform