Obama v Fox

[Happy Face 29]

Obama's on a roll...

 

The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday.

 

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws.

 

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

 

 

Story Continues....

[Andrew 4856]

sensible president in getting into office shocker

[ewerk 31195]

It won't last.

[Happy Face 29]

This is lush.

 

Seems to be a trend in the whitehouse to come out fighting.

 

The president bitch-slapped the insurers in his address this weekend too.

 

 

This is the unsustainable path we’re on, and it’s the path the insurers want to keep us on. In fact, the insurance industry is rolling out the big guns and breaking open their massive war chest – to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo. They’re filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads. They’re flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign contributions. And they’re funding studies designed to mislead the American people.

 

…

 

It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bogus. And it’s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, “Take one of these, and call us in a decade.” Well, not this time. The fact is, the insurance industry is making this last-ditch effort to stop reform even as costs continue to rise and our health care dollars continue to be poured into their profits, bonuses, and administrative costs that do nothing to make us healthy – that often actually go toward figuring out how to avoid covering people. And they’re earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exception from our anti-trust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office...the-Status-Quo/

 

Though I give him credit while fully aware that the insurance companies are still going to profit from whatever gets enacted and are going over the top with their demands and negative campaigning.

[ewerk 31195]

Sarah Palin signs on as a commentator with Fox News

 

Former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin has signed to be a contributor on the Fox News Channel, her lawyer has said.

 

Mrs Palin, who ran for the post of vice-president during the 2008 election on a Republican ticket, stepped down as Alaska governor in July 2009.

 

Fox News said that while Mrs Palin would not have her own programme, she would appear on the channel regularly as part of a multi-year deal.

 

Financial details of the deal have not been released.

 

"I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News," Mrs Palin said in a statement on the network's website.

 

"It's wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news."

 

Fox's executive vice-president for programming, Bill Shine, said Mrs Palin had "captivated everyone on both sides of the political spectrum".

 

"We are excited to add her dynamic voice to the Fox News line-up," he added.

 

Mrs Palin was catapulted to fame when Republican presidential candidate John McCain surprisingly chose her as his running mate for the 2008 election.

 

News of her resignation as governor 17 months before her term in office was up had prompted speculation that she was planning to pursue a career in television.

 

The Washington Post reports that as well as appearing as a commentator on a variety of shows on the channel, she would occasionally host a programme featuring "inspirational tales involving ordinary Americans".

 

Correspondents say hiring Sarah Palin is likely to further increase the network's ratings with conservative viewers.

 

Facebook page

 

A number of Republican commentators already work for the network, among them George W Bush's former aide Karl Rove, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, and John McCain's rival for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Mike Huckabee.

 

Until now, Mrs Palin has mainly used her page on the social networking site Facebook to update her more than one million followers.

 

Regular appearances on a major network could further increase her support among conservatives.

 

Her appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show in November 2009, during which she said a run for the White House in 2012 was "not on my radar screen right now", boosted the programme's ailing ratings.

 

It is not the first time Mrs Palin will be signing on with a TV station. In the 1980s she worked part-time as a sports presenter for the KTUU station in Anchorage, Alaska.

[Happy Face 29]

Last month, MSNBC's Al Sharpton conducted a spirited debate about whether Obama belongs on Mount Rushmore or instead deserves a separate monument to his greatness (just weeks before replacing frequent Obama critic Cenk Uygur as MSNBC host, Sharpton publicly vowed never to criticize Barack Obama under any circumstances: a vow he has faithfully maintained). Earlier that day on the same network, a solemn discussion was held, in response to complaints from MSNBC viewers, about whether it is permissible to ever allow Barack Obama's name to pass through one's lips without prefacing it with an honorific such as "President" or "the Honorable" or perhaps "His Excellency" (that really did happen).

 

Yesterday, Chris Matthews - who infamously confessed that listening to Obama (sorry: President Obama) gives him a "thrill going up his leg" - hosted another discussion, this one involving former Obama campaign aide and MSNBC contributor Joy Reid, about whether the Honorable President should be mounted on Mount Rushmore (Matthews restrained himself by explaining that "I'm not talking about Mt. Rushmore but perhaps the level right below it", but then shared this fantasy: "If [Obama] were hearing us talking about him maybe mounting Mount Rushmore, getting up there with the great presidents...what would he be thinking? 'That's exactly what I'm doing?'"). A Pew poll found that in the week leading up to the 2012 election, MSNBC did not air a single story critical of the President or a single positive story about Romney - not a single one - even as Fox aired a few negative ones about Romney and a few positive ones about Obama. Meanwhile, Obama campaign aides who appeared on MSNBC were typically treated with greater deference than that shown to the British Queen when one of her most adoring subjects is in her presence for the first time.

 

Surveying this assembled data, one does not need to be a veteran cable news executive to see what MSNBC has been so sorely lacking: people who loyally defend President Obama. Thankfully, MSNBC is now boldly fixing that glaring problem; they began two weeks ago with this:

 

"Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has become a contributor for MSNBC. Rachel Maddow introduced Gibbs as a new member of her network's stable in the final minutes before President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday night. . . . Gibbs was White House press secretary from 2009 to early 2011, when he left to become a senior campaign adviser for Obama's re-election."

 

I wonder: does someone who goes from being an Obama White House spokesman and Obama campaign official to being an MSNBC contributor even notice that they changed jobs?

 

But MSNBC wasn't content merely to hire Obama's former Press Secretary; today they did this:

"David Axelrod, the former White House senior advisor and senior strategist for President Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns, has joined NBC News and MSNBC as a senior political analyst, the networks announced today. . . . Like Gibbs, Axelrod will appear across the networks' programming."

 

 

Impressively, David Axelrod left the White House and actually managed to find the only place on earth arguably more devoted to Barack Obama.

 

Finally, American citizens will now be able to hear what journalism has for too long so vindictively denied them: a vibrant debate between Gibbs and Axelrod on how great Obama really is.

 

All the usual and substantial caveats apply when discussing the generalized attributes of MSNBC or comparing it to Fox News (just today, my former Salon colleague Joan Walsh, an MSNBC contributor, wrote about a study that "finds 'liberals' [are] more likely to favor targeted killings once they know it's Obama's policy", and on the weekends, Chris Hayes regularly criticizes Obama from the left while, post-election, Rachel Maddow sometimes does the same). Still, there's still something disturbing, even dangerous, about media outlets, even those overtly ideological ones, that are generally designed for the mission of defending those in power: a critique that Media Matters once compellingly voiced about Fox News, in part by quoting me expressing that same concern about Fox.

 

MSNBC is far from aberrational. The overriding attribute defining the relationship of the US media to those in power is servitude (recall how even George Bush's own Press Secretary wrote a book mocking the media for extreme deference to the Bush White House). Politico today has a long article voicing the complaints of the White House press corps about a lack of access to the president. Revealingly, these complaints exploded into public view this weekend when Obama played golf with Tiger Woods and didn't let the angry journalists even see the match or take pictures of Tiger!

 

The golf grievances were led by White House Correspondents Association President Ed Henry of Fox, who a couple of years ago demonstrated exactly what kind of "access" he craves when he publicly celebrated in the most giddy way imaginable how he got to play water sports with Rahm Emanuel at Joe Biden's official Vice President house (yes, that also really happened). In response to the ensuing criticism over how strangely happy he obviously became at being squirted in the face by Obama's then-Chief of Staff, Henry appeared on NPR where the following irony-free exchange, one of my favorite ever, actually occurred:

"NPR's BROOKE GLADSTONE: 'If these events don't influence coverage, why do you think the White House throws them? Do they just want to shoot you with a super-soaker?'

"ED HENRY: 'Maybe they wanna actually get to know us as people sometimes.'"

 

 

"Maybe they wanna actually get to know us as people sometimes": that's why Obama officials throw parties for White House journalists, said Ed Henry. That is easily one the funniest sentences ever. Did I mention that Ed Henry is the head of the White House Correspondents Association?

Notably, these "frustrated" White House journalists now complaining about a lack of "transparency" aren't objecting to Obama's concealment of multiple legal documents which purport to authorize radical powers he claims or to his war on whistleblowers. Instead, they're objecting that the White House doesn't "cooperate" with them enough (Obama officials release official photos and quotes through social media rather than to reporters) and they don't get to see the president enough or sit with him for interviews.

 

 

That you can cover what political officials do more effectively when you act adversarially and without their "cooperation" doesn't seem to occur to them. Moreover, getting to sit for personal interviews with the president usually produces anything but adversarial questioning. As even Politico admits: "some reporters inevitably worry access or the chance of a presidential interview will decrease if they get in the face of this White House." And indeed, see what happened in 2008 when Politico's own Mike Allen interviewed George Bush with questions so vapid and reverent that it would have shamed his profession if it were capable of that. Or just review the questions asked of Obama the last time he sat for an "interview", this one with the founder of My.BarackObama.com Chris Hughes, who just purchased the New Republic.

 

Still, MSNBC is going a few steps further. Most shows there are suffused with former DNC spokespeople, Obama aides and other types whose overarching political mission is a defense of the president. I suppose there's some commendable candor in hiring Obama's two most recognizably loyal aides in less than two weeks: any lingering doubt about its primary purpose as a network is dispelled, so that, I suppose, is good on some level (just as Fox's heavy reliance on long-time GOP operative Karl Rove had the same clarifying effect). As the Atlantic's Connor Simpson asked today about what he called "the most White House-friendly network": "How Much Is Obama Controlling the Message on MSNBC?" His answer: the administration knows there is a "fading need for a White House press corps when it has guys like Axe and Gibbs to unofficially lean the right way on a left-leaning network."

 

But whatever one wants to call this, "journalism" is the wrong label. Even ideologically-friendly media outlets which claim that mantle should be devoted to accountability and treating those who wield power adversarially, not flattering the preexisting beliefs of their audience and relentlessly glorifying political leaders. Presidents have actual press secretaries and Party spokespeople for that.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/19/msnbc-axelrod-gibbs-obama

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3957]

David Cross makes a good joke about the only way of finding out what is really happening in America he has to read The Independent online.

[tooner 243]

[The Fish 10963]

See that Parky, you agree with Fox News... what does that tell you?

[sweetleftpeg 0]

When I woke up to find out that Obama had been re-elected I went straight to Fox News to see how they were mourning such news. Where they showing the Obama party and speeches? Nope they had huge signs around everywhere saying 'FISCAL CLIFF' and a bunch of republican commentators basically saying the country was now fucked. Pathetic.

[Happy Face 29]

When I woke up to find out that Obama had been re-elected I went straight to Fox News to see how they were mourning such news. Where they showing the Obama party and speeches? Nope they had huge signs around everywhere saying 'FISCAL CLIFF' and a bunch of republican commentators basically saying the country was now fucked. Pathetic.

 

They could hardly slate his actual bad policies like killing 16 year old American children, prosecuting whistleblowers and having wars, since they so heartily agree with it.

[Happy Face 29]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/fmr-fox-booker-harassed-by-ailes-for-20-years.html

 

Awful stuff going on at Fox.

[Rayvin 5294]

So he paid her $250,000 a year to have sex with him..?

 

Did I miss something? Why couldn't she just walk away at any time she wasn't happy with that arrangement?

 

I mean, it's not great but I think the shit that seemed to go down at the BBC far outstrips it tbh...

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

I hope I got the jist of this off the first few paragraphs before I got bored but sounds like she opted to prostitute herself out for personal gain and is now blaming him to ease her conscience

Edited August 2, 2016 by TheGingerQuiff

[Happy Face 29]

The sympathetic ear of the Toontastic commentariat

 

Obviously not as bad as the bbc, but still awful. Most major female presenters seem to be corroborating with harrassment stories of their own following on from Gretchen Carlosn claiming to have been fired for rebuffing advances.

 

The varying degrees to which victims were willing participants and capable (or not) of extracting themselves from the blackmail isn't really relevant.

 

More important than these uppity little women dressing scantily and flashing their eyelids, doing favours to get favours and then biting the hand that feeds them is this. Straight from the horses mouth..

 

"As she was promoted through the ranks at Fox, Luhn worked harder and harder to please Ailes. She zealously promoted the network’s right-wing agenda. “I was very proud of the product. I was very proud of how we handled 9/11. Very proud of how we handled the run-up to the Iraq War,” she said. “My job was to sell the war. I needed to get people on the air that were attractive and articulate and could convey the importance of this campaign. It was a drumbeat."

Fair and balanced.

[ewerk 31195]

The varying degrees to which victims were willing participants and capable (or not) of extracting themselves from the blackmail isn't really relevant.

 

It's entirely relevant. This was clearly an intelligent woman who knew exactly what she was getting into from the very outset. It's hard to feel sympathetic towards her. And revealing that Fox have an agenda is hardly groundbreaking.

[Happy Face 29]

It's entirely relevant. This was clearly an intelligent woman who knew exactly what she was getting into from the very outset. It's hard to feel sympathetic towards her. And revealing that Fox have an agenda is hardly groundbreaking.

 

Makes you wonder why she got $3m hush money, why the Murdoch's have made him resign.

 

Women are responsible for their own sexual harassment by 1)not allowing it or 2)not moving jobs

 

Quid pro quo sex for work is perfectly reasonable from the man running the biggest cable news network in America.

[Rayvin 5294]

I do see your point HF, certainly with respect of the 'fair and balanced' bit, but I'm not going to feel hugely sympathetic for someone who earned so much money out of this relationship. It looks as though she knew what she was doing. To say otherwise robs her of any agency for her own decision making.

 

I would imagine stage 2 of this reveal is to sue him. Which will only reinforce my sentiments from stage 1, sadly.

[Happy Face 29]

I do see your point HF, certainly with respect of the 'fair and balanced' bit, but I'm not going to feel hugely sympathetic for someone who earned so much money out of this relationship. It looks as though she knew what she was doing. To say otherwise robs her of any agency for her own decision making.

 

I would imagine stage 2 of this reveal is to sue him. Which will only reinforce my sentiments from stage 1, sadly.

 

I imagine if anyone was going to get sued it'll be her for breaching the terms of her non-disclosure payoff.

 

The agency of the women and what they choose to do when Ailes made his advances isn't irrelevant. Some women that want the job, the money, the attention enough will submit to him, some will walk away. He's used his position of power to sexually harrass a string of women in his charge to varying degrees for decades.

 

Now that it's all come out, the victims aren't the ones that should be judged in terms of what they were willing to submit to and how they were rewarded. The perpetrator is an awful scumbag.

 

Rupert Murdoch wanted to keep him in his job until after the conventions by the way. His son said that wouldn't sit well.

[NJS 4411]

Harassing young lasses who'd just joined is one thing and despicable but this lass "procured" other women and put them in that position - whether that would be up to the standard for being an accessory legally I don't know but still dodgy.

 

Of course it also does the cause of equality no good when arguing for women to be promoted on merit if some of them revert to the cliche of using their wiles even if there's a degree of coercion.

 

Staying with an abusive partner if you love them is one thing but putting up with it for career /money is another and to this degree of complicity I think deserves the sympathy you'd have for an intern to be reduced.

[The Fish 10963]

I predict the coverage this is given by Fox, CNN and NBC will be fair and balanced.

[Rayvin 5294]

 

I imagine if anyone was going to get sued it'll be her for breaching the terms of her non-disclosure payoff.

 

The agency of the women and what they choose to do when Ailes made his advances isn't irrelevant. Some women that want the job, the money, the attention enough will submit to him, some will walk away. He's used his position of power to sexually harrass a string of women in his charge to varying degrees for decades.

 

Now that it's all come out, the victims aren't the ones that should be judged in terms of what they were willing to submit to and how they were rewarded. The perpetrator is an awful scumbag.

 

Rupert Murdoch wanted to keep him in his job until after the conventions by the way. His son said that wouldn't sit well.

 

I think the thing I'm struggling with in her case - and its different for the other women, I fully accept that - is that he isn't really a perpetrator in that scenario. They're both willing participants. It's not sexual harassment if you're agreeing to it for money, surely? The alternative, I guess, was that she walked away and lived a lower standard of life. She decided she didn't want to do that. She wanted the money.

 

The other women, presumably, were doing their jobs and were actually victims, fearful of being let go if they spoke out. She was told in fairly clear terms that she would have a well paid position if she went along with all of this. I mean, that doesn't sound like harassment. It sounds like two people who made an arrangement, one of whom felt it demeaned her, granted, but who walked into it with her eyes open and got out of it what she expected.

 

This is not to say that the guy isn't an awful scumbag, even in this case. I just don't think he wronged her. I'm not sure anyone wronged her, except possibly herself.

 

That said - have I missed something? My reading of this scenario is that she asked him for a job, he said they didn't have anything but intimated that he could sort something out if she performed sexual favours and acted as his 'spy' or 'lackey', and she agreed to this. With the exception of that first moment when he kissed her in the car and gave her money, effectively setting out the terms of the relationship - that would be harassment, since she presumably didn't know it was coming and hadn't agreed to it. From there on though, she knew what she was doing - as far as I can tell at least.

[Happy Face 29]

Of course he's a perpetrator in all these cases. He told her the cost of getting the job was sucking his cock and making a blackmail video he could hold over her. The fact she paid that cost willingly makes his abuse of power no less egregious. She didn't walk in and offer to suck his cock for a job. The harrassment comes in floating the idea of this sort of arrangement and preying on women weak enough to submit to it and discarding any who aren't.

[Rayvin 5294]

Dunno, can see the bit about suggesting it being highly questionable (intimated as much in my last post) but her consent to it effectively condones it. She isn't/wasn't weak, she's a grown adult. She had both agency and responsibility IMO.

 

Either way though, the guy clearly preyed on many other women and sounds like a nasty piece of work. His victims do have my sympathy.

[Gemmill 46002]

Lads man. If you tell a lass that works for you that she has to suck you off to get a good appraisal, and she goes ahead and does it, she's still a fucking victim and you're still a deplorable piece of shit. You don't get to point the finger at her for climbing your greasy pole to the top.