Anothereyewitness:Womancomesforwardwithfootagetaken

Another eyewitness: Woman comes forward with footage taken immediately after the Michael Brown shooting

posted at 6:41 pm on August 18, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Via Mediaite, maybe there’s more out there but this is just the second clip I’ve seen of the crime scene and the first that (allegedly) includes footage of Darren Wilson, the cop who fired the shots that killed Brown. That’s him on the right in the clip below according to the eyewitness, Piaget Crenshaw.

Crenshaw’s account of what happened starts at around 3:00. She’s right in line with the other three eyewitnesses on Brown’s general movements: He ran from Wilson initially, Wilson fired at him, then Brown turned back to face him. Crenshaw thinks the shots fired at Brown while he was running away either missed him entirely or grazed him, which corroborates the autopsy report showing no entry wounds from the back. The truly interesting part here is what she says she saw when Wilson first pulled up alongside Brown and Dorian Johnson. Johnson has claimed that Wilson grabbed Brown from inside the vehicle — specifically, he says, he grabbed Brown’s neck, which would seem hard to do to a man who’s 6’4″ from a sitting position. Crenshaw says she too saw Wilson grab Brown, although she doesn’t say where specifically. Wilson then seemed to get “upset,” says Crenshaw, Brown took off, and Wilson took off after him.

Turns out this isn’t the first interview Crenshaw gave about the shooting, though. The first one happened right after Brown was killed; it’s the second clip below. She seems vaguer in the earlier video about what happened in the first few moments between Brown and Wilson. At around 0:30, she says they had some kind of “interaction” but says she didn’t see any sort of chokehold, as another witness had claimed, because she was getting ready for work. On the other hand, she’s quite clear that she saw Brown with his hands up while he was facing Wilson, after the bullets started flying. She thinks Brown raised his hands before the final two shots, which would mean per the autopsy report that he’d already been hit four times by then. Hmmm.

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Tags: CNN, crenshaw, darren wilson, ferguson, michael brown, Missouri, piaget, shooting

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CNNwonders:IsObamaforeignpolicy“inarticulateor

CNN wonders: Is Obama foreign policy “inarticulate or disengaged”?

posted at 4:01 pm on August 13, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Our long brief national nightmare is over, I suppose, now that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama plan on “hugging it out” over the recent contretemps over the Obama administration’s foreign policy. How much of that short-lived rift was reality?  “I don’t think anyone doubted,” Molly Ball says in this CNN segment with John King earlier today, “that they had authentic, honest disagreements on many aspects of foreign policy.”

Well, perhaps; there were rumors of that during Obama’s first term, so Ball’s correct that those differences had been presumed in the past. But if that was the case, why did her latest book Hard Choices not reveal them? As President Obama himself might say, the sudden appearance of those differences at the same time that Obama’s approval rating are cratering might mean they’re, um, horse manure:

One explanation: Hard Choices was likely written for the most part before Obama began cratering in the polls, or at least when that may have seemed temporary. If the book had come out during an Obama rebound, the inclusion of harsh criticisms (or any at all) would have unnecessarily made her vulnerable rather than riding on Obama’s residual approval to the nomination. Claiming to have differences now, while Obama’s approval numbers sink to record lows, makes her memoir look even more calculated, disloyal, and dishonest.

CNN also asks a rather intriguing question in framing this rapprochement on foreign policy. Is the Obama Doctrine inarticulate or disengaged? To which many might answer — both:

It sounds like advice offered by parents to teenagers on prom night: Don’t do stupid stuff. But it also is an important guiding foreign policy principle of the President of the United States.

Ever since the President uttered the phrase during an off-the-record discussion with reporters earlier this year — the actual words were a bit saltier and later confirmed privately by administration officials — foreign policy critics have seized on “DDSS” as a crystallization of the Obama Doctrine.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is only the latest critic of the “DDSS” comment, describing the remark in an interview with The Atlantic magazine as too simplistic. …

The apparent struggle to neatly encapsulate the President’s strategy is not lost on his critics.

“I do think the administration is showing some signs of a little bit of fatigue,” Brookings Institution analyst Michael O’Hanlon said in a recent interview with CNN.

“It’s time for a little more ambition frankly because the world senses that this President is too disengaged,” O’Hanlon added.

The Obama foreign policy is both inarticulate and disengaged. Disengagement is explicitly part of the approach, which became very clear in Iraq in the rise of ISIS, but also in Syria and Ukraine. In all three hot spots, the Obama administration had to get dragged into responses, although in Ukraine and now against ISIS Obama has ended up ahead of the curve in relation to America’s Western allies. Obama tosses out red lines without preparing for the consequences when they get violated, and shrugs off threats like ISIS with sophomoric sports analogies. His policy is to react only when forced by circumstances to do so.

Again, this doesn’t seem very different from what Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy approach has been. She ran Obama’s foreign policy apparatus for most of his presidency, so that shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. The anodyne recitation of those years Hard Choices makes it very difficult for Hillary to suddenly change course and claim a different doctrine for herself, especially without articulating it other than to say it exceeds the “don’t do stupid stuff” of the White House.

And when Hillary hit the retreat button after getting a rebuke from David Axelrod, she lost what little credibility and authenticity she had, Ron Fournier argued in an update to a column praising her independence:

Maybe I jumped the gun. After weathering some pushback from the White House, including a snarky tweet by Obama consultant David Axelrod, Clinton released this statement through a spokesman:

“Earlier today, the Secretary called President Obama to make sure he knows that nothing she said was an attempt to attack him, his policies or his leadership. Secretary Clinton has at every step of the way touted the significant achievements of his presidency, which she is honored to have been part of as his secretary of state. While they’ve had honest differences on some issues, including aspects of the wicked challenge Syria presents, she has explained those differences in her book and at many points since then. Some are now choosing to hype those differences but they do not eclipse their broad agreement on most issues. Like any two friends who have to deal with the public eye, she looks forward to hugging it out when she they see each other tomorrow night.”

There are several problems with this statement. First, it’s inaccurate. She certainly did criticize his policies, if not his leadership, most directly with the “stupid stuff” formulation. Second, it’s borderline demeaning, like a subordinate trying to get back in the boss’s good graces. Clinton is an accomplished person who has challenged glass ceilings. She shouldn’t have to come even close to apologizing for her opinions. Third, her interview wasn’t “hyped,” it was covered fairly, and now she’s trying to blame the messenger. Finally, it’s too cute by half, too Clintonian. It doesn’t seem, well, authentic. She’s trying to distinguish her policies from Obama’s without upsetting all the president’s men. She can’t have it all.

All she’s doing is proving that her doctrine is as inarticulate and disengaged as Obama’s — and even less authentic.

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SlimmajoritybelieveWatergatewasaseriousmatter,

Slim majority believe Watergate was a serious matter, according to CNN poll

posted at 12:01 pm on August 8, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Well, this explains a few things about our current politics – or maybe politics in general. Tomorrow will mark the fortieth anniversary of the only presidential resignation in American history, when Richard Nixon stepped down rather than face impeachment and removal over the abuses of power uncovered in the Watergate scandal. Back then, those abuses shocked the nation, especially after the White House tapes showed Nixon himself deeply involved in them. These days, nearly half of all Americans think of it as business as usual:

Forty-six percent of people believe the events leading up to the resignation of President Nixon were “just politics,” according to a new poll that coincides with the 40th anniversary of his stepping down.

The CNN poll found a narrow majority, 51 percent, believe the Watergate scandal was a serious matter, while slightly less describe it as the kind of thing in which both parties engage.

Or maybe that’s business as usual:

Those numbers have been relatively constant over the last three decades. When the question was asked in 1982 — eight years after Nixon resigned — 52 percent said it was a very serious matter, while 45 percent described it as just politics.

That’s been a remarkably stable outcome, actually, over the last 32 years of polling on the question. The results have ranged from 52/44 to 49/46, within the margins of error. The most recent result was in 2002 on the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, and it was 51/42.

One common thought about the legacy of Watergate was the erosion of trust in the institutions of self-governance, but the trend lines in polling show that erosion started well before Watergate. It seems almost quaint now, but in 1958, 73% of people trusted government in Washington all (16%) or most (57%) of the time. Even as late as 1966, 65% said the same thing (17/48), but by 1968 (61%, 7/54) that began to shift, thanks most likely to the Vietnam War. By 1972, when the break-in took place but before it became a national scandal, trust had dropped to 53% (5/48), and then dropped sharply again in 1974 (36%, 2/34), with sustained majorities in the “some” category ever since. The only exception to that came four weeks after 9/11, when trust in government surged ever so briefly (60%, 13/47).

Today? It’s 13% (1/12) with 76% saying “some” and 10% “never,” the first time in the series that “never” has reached double digits. Just before Barack Obama took office, the trust figure was 25% (3/22). Big business gets slightly more trust than Washington at 17% (1/16), but it’s within the MOE of the government figure.

The demographics on the Watergate question are remarkable for their consistency. Republicans (51%) and Democrats (58%) both tend to think of it as a serious matter, but a slim majority of independents (51%) say it was politics as usual. Younger voters also tend to dismiss it (44/52), while all other age demos fall in line with the overall results.

Count me in with those who consider it a serious matter — and an unlearned lesson, as I wrote yesterday:

The familiarity of these events, coupled with the increasing impulse of Obama to abandon constitutional limits, shows that America largely ignored the lessons of Watergate. It’s not enough to be wary of executive power when the opposition party controls the White House, as Republicans belatedly learned in 1974; to defend and protect constitutional government and the rule of law, that vigilance has to exist at all times.

Some of the same voices that shrieked with horror at the threat of the “unitary executive” under George W. Bush seem perfectly comfortable now with Obama ruling by executive fiat rather than governing under the rule of law, as long as it’s only their bêtes noires that get targeted.

Maybe it is business as usual after all.

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Why is it “news” that Hamas’s spokesman is pushing blood libels against Jews?

Whyisit“news”thatHamas’sspokesmanis

CNN poll: Hillary doing better with white voters than any Democrat since Jimmy Carter

CNNpoll:Hillarydoingbetterwithwhitevoters

CNN:Obamaapprovalholdingsteady…at42%

CNN: Obama approval holding steady … at 42%

posted at 5:21 pm on July 23, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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From the Lipstick on the Pig Department, CNN reports that its latest polling shows “no Katrina moment” for Barack Obama. That, however, is rather cold comfort, as even CNN allows, because the steady level of the President’s job approval rating puts him underwater by double digits. The only good news is that the approval-disapproval levels haven’t shifted southward in the wake of the VA scandal, ISIS’ expansion, and the escalations in Gaza and Ukraine:

President Barack Obama’s poll numbers are nothing to brag about, but there’s little evidence he has suffered so far this year a “Katrina moment” that caused his predecessor’s numbers to plummet.

A new CNN/ORC International survey indicates that public opinion of the President has barely budged in the wake of new challenges that Obama has faced this year.

According to the poll, which was released Wednesday, the President’s approval rating among Americans stands at 42%. That’s not great, but it’s basically unchanged since March.

Only 42% believe that Obama can manage the government effectively. Again, nothing to celebrate, but it’s virtually unchanged from the 43% who felt that way in March.

That may not mean that Obama hasn’t suffered a “Katrina moment,” though. It just changes when it may have occurred. From  late 2011 to mid-2013, the CNN series on Obama’s job approval mostly put it at either a majority or plurality, with only a rare plurality for disapproval and never outside of the margin of error. As late as May 2013, Obama’s approval rating was 53/45 — in a survey taken right before the exposure of both the IRS and NSA scandals. One month later, it flipped to 45/54 and has been underwater outside of the MOE since, with majority disapproval every poll. The trend on leadership has much fewer data points, but exhibits a similar trend. Independents have his job approval at 34/62, and he’s even estranged women at 45/52 and young voters (18-34) narrowly at 45/49.

Interestingly, Obama’s other personal qualities seem to be holding up a little better, but still should have Democrats worried — especially on how voters relate to their party’s leader. On the question of whether Obama “generally agrees with you on issues you care about,” Obama dropped to 43/56, narrowly the worst rating ever (was 44/56 in the wake of the ObamaCare rollout debacle). In May of last year, it was 51/47. The relentless focus on issue non-sequiturs over the last several months seems to have taken its toll on Obama, and other Democrats still talking about a “war on women” and income inequality should take notice of that trend in particular. For women, that’s now 45/53, and among independents it’s an abysmal 35/63.

He’s also dropped to 46/53 on “shares your values,” the lowest rating ever and the first time Obama’s been underwater on this question when the entire sample was surveyed on it. Among women, it’s 46/52, and independents it’s 39/60, slightly better than the questions above but still horrid. He’s still carrying the youth vote at 52/46 but losing every other age demo decisively, and every income demo as well.

CNN suggests that ObamaCare may be gaining more support, but that’s a narrow reading of the data, too:

More than half the public says Obamacare has helped either their families or others across the country, although less than one in five Americans say they have personally benefited from the health care law, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/ORC International survey also indicates that a majority of Americans oppose the Affordable Care Act, but that some of that opposition is from people who don’t think the measure goes far enough.

Yes, and … that’s always been the case. As far as the trend goes, there isn’t one. Eighteen percent think their family is better off with the law, which is exactly what it was in September 2010 and one point off from September 2013 (17%). Thirty-five percent think their family is worse off, slightly down from 40% last September but almost within the MOE, and just two points off from September 2010′s 37%. That’s not improvement — it’s stasis. In fact, the only real trend seen in this series is a decline in perception of improvement for others — from 43% in March 2010 to 35% today, while “not help anyone” has gone from 29% when the ACA passed Congress to 44% today.

ObamaCare fares similarly when asked as approval/disapproval, too. It gets a 40/59, about mid-range for the series and almost identical to March’s 39/57. Women oppose it 42/57, as do 18-34 year olds, and independents rate it at 34/63. Those earning under $50,000 a year, who should be the target demo for the bill, oppose it by 20 points, 39/59.

If this poll result from ObamaCare is the Great Democratic Hope for the midterms, they’d better start investing in crying towels now while they’re cheap.

Update: Guy Benson offers his own take on the poll, especially on the idea that this is in any way positive about ObamaCare.

Update: Fixed careless subject-verb error in final sentence.

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Onmediaself-censorshipinGaza postedat

On media self-censorship in Gaza

posted at 10:01 am on July 19, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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One of those stories behind the story has been building in recent days as relates to the media coverage of the current engagements in Gaza. Are some of the reporters on the scene going a bit further than usual in cheerleading for one side or the other during their on air segments – as well as their social media interactions – and how are their bosses handling it? One of the more blatant examples comes in the form of reporter Diana Magnay and her rather unrestrained views on Israel.

CNN has removed international correspondent Diana Magnay from Israel after she referred to a group of Israelis as “scum.”

Magnay, who was covering the Israeli missile attack on Gaza, tweeted Thursday, “Israelis on hill above Sderot cheer as bombs land on #gaza; threaten to ‘destroy our car if I say a word wrong’. Scum.”

In a statement, a CNN spokesperson said Magnay had been “threatened and harassed” but “deeply regrets the language used.”

So CNN pulled her off the coverage almost immediately and issued an apology – of sorts – but also delivered some CYA discussion. The story goes that Magnay and her crew had been threatened in some fashion by Israeli forces and her comments were specifically directed towards them. Clouding the issue further is the fact that her removal didn’t seem terribly punitive in nature, since she was immediately reassigned… to Russia.

A second, though a bit more confusing example centers on Ayman Mohyeldin, a reporter for NBC News who was removed from the Gaza Strip.

Although Israel’s preparation of a ground invasion was given as the reason for his departure, Glenn Greenwald — who broke the story of his removal at The Intercept — insinuated the move was due to Mohyeldin’s witnessing of four Palestinian boys being killed on a Gaza beach by Israeli artillery fire, and his “powerful” coverage of the conflict had angered the pro-Israeli side.,,

Before he was removed from Gaza, Mohyeldin posted a now-deleted comment to social media sites, relating that a U.S. State Department spokesperson said Hamas was ultimately responsible for the Israeli shells that killed the four boys because it did not accept the cease fire. “Discuss among yourselves,” he wrote on Facebook.

On this one I wasn’t even sure if Mohyeldin was criticizing Israel or Hamas, but that may not matter. The question about NBC’s actions gets quickly diluted by two things. First, at the time he was pulled out, the network was simultaneously moving one of their senior foreign correspondents, Richard Engle, into the same assignment, so this may have been a normal rotation of staff. And second, as of today, Mohyeldin is being sent back into the Gaza Strip for more assignments.

But the bottom line question I’d have for both networks is where should they draw the line in terms of supposed hard news journalists venturing off into the business of giving opinions while covering a breaking story? While working on this story I was watching CNN’s morning crew, featuring Victor Blackwell and Christi Paul, doing an interview with a woman speaking on behalf of the Palestinians. (No video available at this time.) She was sitting there and flatly stating that Israel was purposely targeting women and children, as well as saying that there was no point in a cease-fire unless the US and other western nations were prepared to “hold Israel accountable.”

The hosts, for their part, had no comment other than to say that an Israeli representative would be coming up in the next segment to offer a different point of view. Should they have pressed her on these claims, or would that have crossed the line into opinion territory? A lot of the coverage of this episode of the ongoing conflict has been, as usual, terrible. On the cable news evening shows you can find no end of commentary on both sides, but what about the allegedly unbiased reporting of just the facts, ma’am? It seems to me that the wrong people are getting put on a shorter leash at times while the rest of the supposedly hard news gets lost in the mire.

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MurdochgoingafterTimeWarner? postedat

Murdoch going after Time Warner?

posted at 10:01 am on July 16, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Could Fox end up making CNN an orphan? A move by Rupert Murdoch on Time Warner may leave the cable news channel on the auction block as part of a media acquisition that would vastly increase Murdoch’s reach — or potentially weaken it, depending on the terms of the deal:

The media giant 21st Century Fox, the empire run by Rupert Murdoch, made an $80 billion takeover bid in recent weeks forTime Warner Inc. but was rebuffed, people briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.

The bold approach could put Time Warner in play and might again ignite a reshaping of the media industry, prompting a new spate of mega-mergers among the nation’s largest entertainment companies.

The news of the offer, the NYT’s Andrew Ross Sorkin and Michael de la Merced explain, might prompt more interest among shareholders of Time Warner than its board. So far, Murdoch hasn’t launched a hostile takeover attempt, but his track record suggests he’s not shy about doing so. The deal for shareholders looked pretty good on paper, with a 25% premium over current trading price, and that’s definitely going to interest at least some of their shareholders.

The problem with the deal, though, is in the structure of the offer and the different structures of the two corporations. Time Warner’s voting stock is widely held, while Fox’s voting stock is closely held within the Murdoch family. The bid would have been 60% stock based, but non-voting stock, which the Time Warner board rejected. That would mean that current large stockholders in Time Warner would lose a significant amount of leverage in the acquisition, and with it the power to protect their investment, other than the power of voting with one’s feet by selling their shares.

If Murdoch wants to sweeten the deal for either a hostile takeover or a friendly acquisition, he’ll probably have to bump up the cash ratio significantly or loosen up some of the voting stock. He may not be able to do the latter without leveraging the deal, which will mean relinquishing some control, and the former means the same outcome, only to different people and more permanently. On the plus side, Sorkin and de la Merced point out that 70% of shareholders in Time Warner are also shareholders in Fox, which means that they may be more amenable to the current stock structure remaining in place, but they’ll likely want more than 40% of the sale in cash anyway.

If the sale goes through, what happens to CNN? After all, there’s no way that regulators will allow one corporation to own the top two cable news networks. Fox planned for that contingency, and there isn’t a lack of potential buyers:

As part of the proposal to buy Time Warner, people briefed on the proposal said, 21st Century Fox indicated that it would sell CNN to head off potential antitrust concerns since Fox News competes directly with CNN. Putting CNN on the auction block would likely stir up a bidding war for the news channel; both CBS and ABC, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, have long been viewed as interested suitors.

CBS’ parent is Viacom, which like Disney has plenty of resources for such an acquisition. Rumors of a CBS purchase have been around for more than a decade. Media Bistro reported in 2008 that CBS was in talks to buy CNN, and in February of this year the site FTV Live claimed to have heard rumors that a sale might be imminent. Nothing has come of these reports, and it may not this time either unless Murdoch works his magic on Time Warner.

By the way, that magic just got more expensive:

Time Warner shares rose 13% to US$80.40 in early New York trading. As part of the proposal, Fox indicated that it would sell CNN to ward off potential antitrust concerns since Fox News competes directly with CNN, New York Times said. Putting CNN on sale would probably lead to a bidding war for the news channel as CBS and ABC, a unit of the Walt Disney Co., have long been seen as interested suitors, the newspaper said.

That’s still below the premium of the original offer, but it raises the stakes for Murdoch if he wants to protect the voting stock in Fox.

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JoshEarnest:We’rethemosttransparentadministrationever,

Josh Earnest: We’re the most transparent administration ever, no matter what journalists say

posted at 9:21 am on July 14, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it — or at least Josh Earnest is. CNN interviewed the new White House press secretary yesterday and challenged him over a written complaint from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Poynter Institute. The two organizations accused the Obama administration of conducting “politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies,” and demanded more transparency across a wide expanse of the federal government. Earnest dismissed this as pro forma for political-beat journalists:

How does Earnest defend the administration? He brags about the White House visitor logs being released to the Internet on a quarterly basis, and the inclusion of the press on private fundraisers. The latter, though, usually consists of locking reporters up in a bedroom during the entire event and force-feeding them anodyne copy. Similar treatment was given the pool reporter who accompanied Barack Obama on a golf trip in May, only he didn’t get a cushy bedroom — he got stuck in a maintenance shed, and never once laid eyes on Obama.

Small wonder that journalists aren’t exactly leaping with joy over Obama administration “transparency”:

The letter, signed by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Poynter Institute, among others, accuses the White House of “politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies.”

It asks the president to create an ombudsman charged with enforcing his goal of government transparency, and asks Obama “issue a clear directive telling federal employees they’re not only free to answer questions from reporters and the public, but actually encouraged to do so.”

“We believe that is one of the most important things you can do for the nation now, before the policies become even more entrenched,” the letter says.

Katie Pavlich gives us the thumbnail history that prompted the letter:

When President Obama ran for office way back in 2008, he infamously promised to have the “most transparent administration in history.” Fast forward to 2014 and the opposite has happened. Not only does the administration heavily control the narrative of information going out to the press, the White House does everything possible to keep reporters from getting their hands on important information. Not to mention, the Department of Justice has heavily monitored reporters through phone and email monitoring.

It’s not for nothing that CNN’s reporter asks incredulously after Earnest’s bragging about transparency: “You all still stick by that line?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX4DJUr5oYg

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ICE has the chance to catch Jose Antonio Vargas RIGHT NOW

ICEhasthechancetocatchJoseAntonio

ThisisCNN:Whitegaymanandblack

This is CNN: White gay man and black woman argue over who is ‘stealing’ the other’s culture

posted at 6:01 pm on July 11, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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Israel is preparing to invade Gaza. The president has admitted that there is a “humanitarian crisis” on the southern border. The Internal Revenue Service’s Lois Lerner may have sought to hide documents from congressional investigators. VA whistleblowers testified that they were intimidated and targeted for retaliation by their superiors. And if all of that substantive news isn’t really your thing, LeBron James did something or other today, too.

It is with that backdrop that this painfully silly segment on CNN becomes even more obscenely ridiculous.

On Friday, CNN anchor Don Lemon hosted a heated debate over whether white gay men are “stealing” black female culture. This critically important topic of paramount relevance was brought to you by Time , which did the world a favor by republishing an op-ed in a University of Mississippi newspaper penned by a student.

Here is an excerpt from University of Mississippi senior Sierra Mannie’s piece:

What I do know is that I don’t care how well you can quote Madea, who told you that your booty was getting bigger than hers, how cute you think it is to call yourself a strong black woman, who taught you to twerk, how funny you think it is to call yourself Quita or Keisha or for which black male you’ve been bottoming — you are not a black woman, and you do not get to claim either blackness or womanhood. It is not yours. It is not for you.

And to think that it was just last week when we were all one nation watching soccer together. Seems like a lifetime ago.

Fortunately, CNN made everything worse on Friday when the network erected an altar to the church of the self where the religion of identity was celebrated in a manner fundamentally incongruous with comity or mutual understanding (h/t @MeredithDake.

You don’t have to watch the segment if you don’t want to. Believe me, I understand. The bottom line is that both of these two guests resent each other because they believe the other is encroaching on and adopting aspects of the other’s sacred identity.

These people appear to be young, and it is possible that no one has yet told them to get over themselves. It is coming. Try to be patient with them in the meantime.

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Video:CarlyFiorinaendstheWaronWomen

Video: Carly Fiorina ends the War on Women

posted at 5:01 pm on July 6, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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When it comes to the Sunday morning talking heads festivals, I tend to jump around a bit these days. And even with the slim pickings available, one of the ones I rarely seem to wind up watching is State of the Union on CNN with Candy Crowley. Generally it’s only on my television if I’m watching CNN for the overnight highlights and am too busy or lazy to change the channel at 9 o’clock. But that’s what happened today and I’m rather glad I did. The subject at hand was the never ending War on Wimminz being perpetrated by the evil Republican Party, but the guest was Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP.

Most of this should be common sense for the majority of you, but I’ve rarely seen anyone deconstruct nonsense so quickly and efficiently. Transcript follows the video, courtesy of Tim Cavanaugh at The Corner.

“A lot of women, me included, are sick of the ‘war on women,’” the former Hewlett-Packard CEO and California Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. “And we saw it in spades on Monday after the Hobby Lobby case. The women of Hobby Lobby had access to contraception through their company insurance plan before Obamacare; they have access to contraception — 16 forms of it — after the ruling. But somehow, you know, this is the long arm of business and the Republican Party reaching into the body of women. It’s ridiculous.”

Fiorina then pulled out a fortune she said she’d received recently in a fortune cookie.

“‘Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause,’” Fiorina read. “And that’s exactly right. The War On Women is shameless, baseless propaganda. There’s no fact to it. But it’s worked because it’s scared women to death. Enough.”

I particularly liked the fortune cookie schtick. It fit in well with the signal to noise ratio of the discussion and certainly made for at least as reliable a source as Fiorina’s liberal debate partners. Enjoy.

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WhistleblowerclaimsVAcontinuedtocoverupvets’

Whistleblower claims VA continued to cover up vets’ deaths despite media attention

posted at 9:36 am on June 24, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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Pauline DeWenter, a scheduling clerk at the Phoenix VA hospital where secret waiting lists were first uncovered, recently told CNN’s Drew Griffin that the number of deaths that could be attributed to malpractice at the VA may be larger than what has already been reported. In a report broadcast on Monday, DeWenter alleged a cover-up at the VA which included unidentified administrators changing “deceased” notes on patient files in order to reduce the number of deaths attributed to her hospital.

DeWenter alleged that at least seven times since October, she has noticed that the details of veterans’ deaths “were physically altered, or written over, by someone else” and those vets were relisted as living.

“The alterations had even occurred in recent weeks, she said, in a deliberate attempt to try to hide just how many veterans died while waiting for care, by trying to pretend dead veterans remain alive,” CNN reported.

DeWenter says that the changes were made in order to hide the fact that some veterans died while waiting for care:

“I would say (it was done to) hide the fact. Because it is marked a death. And that death needs to be reported. So if you change that to, ‘entered in error’ or, my personal favorite, ‘no longer necessary,’ that makes the death go away. So the death would never be reported then.”

“Beginning early last year, DeWenter said she was also instructed to hide the crisis at the Phoenix VA medical center by concealing new requests for treatment,” CNN’s reporters revealed. “This was at a time when the VA was paying bonuses to senior staff whose facilities met the goals of providing care in a timely manner for veterans, typically within 14 days.”

But crippling bureaucracy and a lack of available medical professionals prevented that goal from being met. The solution was to create two lists; one that was accurate and another designed to show that the state-imposed goals were being met. “DeWenter, a scheduling clerk, was suddenly making life and death decisions,” CNN reported.

DeWenter said that VA Dr. Sam Foote told everything he knew about the VA scandal to the Office of the Inspector General in November, 2013. “We were waiting, and waiting, and waiting,” DeWenter said. “Nothing happened.”

Foote then decided to go to the media with his revelations. Even the media’s scrutiny of the VA, however, has allegedly not stopped administrators from covering up VA failures.

On Monday, Griffin said that his investigations have convinced him that the VA needs to be entirely gutted and every senior manager let go.

“Based on everything I know, to date, I don’t think that the VA can fix itself,” the CNN reporter declared. “I don’t know how you fix this. I really don’t know, if I was going to give advice, where you would give it, other than I would blanketly throw out every senior manager in the VA.”

“There is an entire bureaucracy here that has been allowing this to happen for years, and years, and years,” Griffin concluded. “I don’t know how you get one administrator at the top who is going to somehow change the culture without throwing out all these people.”

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Tags: CNN, drew griffin, Pauline DeWenter, VA scandal

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Video:CNNhostslaughatHillaryforsaying

Video: CNN hosts laugh at Hillary for saying she’s not “truly well off”

posted at 11:21 am on June 23, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Good thing I squeezed in that post last week about how none of these gaffes really matter because, er, today it feels like they’re starting to matter. You could excuse the “dead broke” soundbite on grounds that everyone makes mistakes; I don’t know how you excuse her doubling down by claiming that she’s not “truly well off.” Maybe Dan Drezner’s right that this is a near-terminal case of Status-Income Disequilibrium, in which Hillary simply can’t grasp how people as influential as her and Bill nonetheless earn far less than many of the people they hang around with these days. Or maybe she’s so confident in Bill’s blue-collar appeal that she thinks she can afford to be not terribly guarded in talking about her wealth. These are weird errors to be making, though, knowing that Elizabeth Warren, Thomas Piketty, and income inequality are the rage on the left. It’d be like Romney talking up the virtues of ObamaCare on the trail circa 2010. Even a bad campaigner should have some primitive sense of how to stay in his/her base’s good graces. Could Hillary actually be … a worse retail politician than Mitt?

I still don’t think she’s going to get a serious primary challenger — Martin “Who?” O’Malley isn’t going to beat the Clinton machine by out-pandering them on amnesty — but I’m less confident now than I was four days ago. At a minimum, she’s going to ramp the blather on income inequality way, way up to try to atone for this. Brian Beutler thinks Hillary’s been planning all along to run on soaking the rich. If she wasn’t before, she will be now:

“[T]hey don’t see me as part of the problem,” she said, “because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names; and we’ve done it through dint of hard work.”…

Nearly all viable presidential candidates are extremely rich. Obama is himself quite rich, though not exactly Kennedy/Bush/Kerry/Romney rich. The next GOP nominee might not be quite as cartoonish a plutocrat as Romney, but he will almost certainly be wealthy, and, crucially, will almost certainly promote an agenda that would exacerbate economic inequality. When Clinton said “we pay ordinary income tax” she wasn’t just taking a gratuitous jab backwards at Romney for paying taxes at a sub-15 percent rate. She was presaging an agenda that will almost certainly call for eliminating or reducing tax preferences that allow an entire class of people of great wealth to reduce their effective tax rates. I don’t know if she’ll propose jacking up the capital gains tax, or closing the carried-interest loophole. I don’t know if she’ll target individual tax loopholes, or advocate for capping tax expenditure benefits or anything about what her economic agenda will look like. But I am 100 percent confident it will include some measures along these lines, and nearly as confident that the Republican candidate will oppose it in every particular.

The question is whether her recent screw-ups will encourage her to embrace populism more firmly than she wanted to, to appease the left. Her billionaire friends will let her get away with it on the stump: If the only alternative is Warren, they might as well back Hillary to the hilt and then trust her to forget about her promises once in office. But that doesn’t solve her immediate problem, which is that the more she talks like this, the more it’s going to entice some would-be blue-collar champion into the race — Warren, crank-ish but fun Brian Schweitzer, maybe even … Joe Biden. Meanwhile, on the GOP side, this is good news for everyone but Jeb Bush, I think. If Hillary bumbles her way into the general election reeking of ruling-class privilege, Republicans would want to counter with someone who’s not obviously a member of that same class. That points to someone young, from outside Washington, who’s not terribly wealthy, and, uh, doesn’t share a gene pool with two former presidents, namely, Walker, Jindal, or Christie. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz will also run along those lines, as outsiders who’ve infiltrated the Beltway. Barring a Jeb coronation, the Republican nominee will almost certainly be less “ruling class” than the Democratic one in 2016, a good thing to be at a moment when Americans despise Washington like virtually never before. The mystery is whether Beutler’s right that eliminating tax advantages to investment is the sort of populist flourish that can neutralize that disadvantage for Democrats.

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Tags: "truly well off", CNN, drezner, Hillary Clinton, wealth

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