Ace has some questions for Obama
They’re excellent questions, and in a way somewhat obvious. So why doesn’t the media ask them?
Krauthammer notes that Obama’s actions [in exceeding his constitutional authority] serve as precedents for future presidents, which raises a question I wish our corrupt media would ask him:
Do you, President Obama, endorse and support a Republican President’s assertion of the same powers you assert? Do you suggest that other presidents follow[ing] you follow your model of presidential power?
Would you support a Tea Party president writing the immigration law himself as well?
Now, you might say that the reason why the MSM doesn’t ask Obama all of this is obvious: the media is on the left. But not everyone in media is on the left. There are a few people either on the right or somewhat in the middle (or who at least seem relatively fair, whatever their politics) who attend presidential press conferences and have asked a couple of hard-hitting queries in the past. Jake Tapper comes to mind, although looking at the one-on-one interview he did with President Obama in January of 2014, he seems to me to be softballing it lately.
What happened? Why doesn’t he ask these fairly obvious questions? Is he afraid he’ll lose access, is that the threat? Or is he intimidated by things like the James Rosen incident? In other words, is it that 95% of the press remains firmly placed in Obama’s pocket, and the other 5% is frightened, and 100% of them are worried about being shunned on the cocktail party circuit?
At any rate, my guess as to what Obama’s answers would be if by some miracle he were to be asked Ace’s questions is some version of the following:
“What overreach? I’m a constitutional law professor, you know, and there is no problem whatsoever with what I’m doing.”
Alternatively, “I’m not doing anything any other president hasn’t done.”
Or maybe, “No other president ever has or ever will face such personal animosity from a Congress determined to block what’s good for America as it faces these terrible crises. It’s okay for me to do this because of these special and completely unique circumstances. I owe it to the American people.”
Or how about this one?: “Don’t worry, there won’t be any future presidents.”
And then the reporter who asked the questions would get a letter from the IRS…
Neo, thank you for that link about the “co-conspirator” charge against a reporter. This is actually the first I am hearing about it.
While I hold most journalists in contempt – this kind of government “trying to silence” the media is exactly the kind of thing that made this country’s founders establish “freedom of the press.”
No society can be made better if everyone is looking over their shoulder afraid of saying the wrong thing.
I remember the press sticking together when Bush decided to not bother with Helen Thomas anymore – and they all got outraged over the “disrespect” shown to her. I do wish they would “stick together” and go after Obama for this kind of stuff that he is doing.
Why did the Inquisition only burn heretics and never the Pope?
Same answer as your question, Neo at top.
I should add that maybe the press doesn’t stick together because they see better than we do that one option you mention:
“Don’t worry, there won’t be any future presidents.”
Yep, since Obama was the one we were waiting for we don’t need to wait for or want anyone else.
This country hasn’t had freedom of the press since people elevated the press to a Class, with privileges and special protections. People are part of the problem there. They ain’t the solution.
What is government?
1. The Party, the State, the Fourth Estate.
2. The Party, the State, the Fourth Estate.
3. The Party, the State, the Fourth Estate.
4. All of the above
On the subject of whether or not there will BE any future presidents (perish the thought!)…
I used to worry that Obama had designs on being “president for life,” but now think that in spite of his narcissism and ideology he’s basically too lazy and fond of leisure pursuits like golf to do that. I’m sure the prospect of building his library (wonder if those old college textbooks on Marxism etc. will finally come out of mothballs?) and traveling the world giving high priced speeches is much more appealing than “governing,” not that that that’s an accurate word for what he’s been doing.
And of course, sadly the damage has already been done.
My memory of how the press has evolved over the last 81 years (my lifetime) is this. Prior to WWII the media was partisan, but they announced their partisanship up front. Examples: the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arizona Republic. Most major cities had two papers with opposing political views. WWII changed a lot of that. Papers became less partisan in order to support the war effort.
After war’s end many came up with the idea that they should be non-partisan. That their job was to be objective and present the citizenry with facts so they could make up their minds.
Vietnam changed all that. Many journalists leaned left – Walter Cronkite was an example. They began injecting their opinions into the news. Example: Cronkite declaring the war in Vietnam lost after TET. Demonstrably untrue, but it had a huge effect on public support for the war.
The civil rights struggle also drove the media to become more partisan and to manipulate the news. They believed they had to school the citizenry on right and wrong. They selected news for how it might influence people’s opinions.
They realized they could make a huge difference when Woodward and Bernstein brought down a President. Since those days the journalism schools have been producing mostly young leftists who want to “make a difference.” Many conservative leaning newspapers went out of business. We’re now left with a MSM that is not quite Pravda, but pretty close. Unfortunately, these progressive propaganda machines still pose as “objective purveyors of the news.” And most LIVs buy it.
Conservative billionaires should be spending their money on establishing counter force media. There is a market for it. Rupert Murdoch has shown that. Taking over one of the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) and shifting it to a center -right position, (slightly less conservative than Fox) could have an enormous influence on political affairs in this country, IMHO.
With all due respect, you don’t get it Neo.
Obama is going to do what he wants to do until someone stops him.
Obama will *always* have 40% and he doesn’t care what the other 60% thinks.
As Andy McCarthy has pointed out, the Speaker’s lawsuit is like bringing a whistle to a gunfight.
Once the Republicans capture the Senate, it needs to start defunding the Executive branch. Start with Val Jarrett’s job.
Cornhead:
I have no idea what you’re referring to. I completely get that, and have said as much so many times I am worn out with the repetition.
This piece is about the press, not about Obama. And the imaginary answers I gave for him show that I think he would blow off the questions anyway.
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t ask them.
I repeat, I have no idea what you’re talking about when you say I don’t get it. Have you actually read the post to the end?
We know the press is in the bag. Obama just rules. The Judiciary doesn’t have any guns. The only solution is Congress via impeachment or cutting off the money.
Cornhead:
So, you haven’t answered my question. What is it I don’t get?
By the way, I seem to recall that when some money was cut off for something Obama wanted to do, he just took money from some related function and transferred it over. And Congress, via impeachment, has no more guns than SCOTUS does. They are both courts of law. They both depend on the cooperation of the person they render judgment against.
Have you ever stopped to wonder what would happen if Obama were to be impeached and convicted, and he said “You and what army?” A lawless president would require even more (and by the way, I think that is why Obama took Zelaya’s side long ago, back in Honduras, something I wrote about at the time with great alarm).
We have a lawless and unaccountable President due to a combination of race, a failed media and pure partisanship.
The best we can hope for is to marginalize him and hope he doesn’t screw things up worse than they already are.
Andy McCarthy had correctly noted that there has to be a popular will for impeachment. I would like to see a big March for Impeachment in DC. But those participating would be labeled racists and extremists.
There would also have to be a big dramatic catalyst event. Maybe it is $5 gas or the fall of Baghdad. The drip drip events like the VA or border invasion aren’t enough. It just causes scandal fatigue.
ideology he’s basically too lazy and fond of leisure pursuits like golf to do that.
Has being President stopped him from doing that? Instead, he’s doing more of it than ever, since free funding for Michelle’s European trips.
But those participating would be labeled racists and extremists.
Those participating will have a drone accidentally drop 2 JDAMs on them. Accidentally.
IMO bho would love to become dear leader for life but he would need a catastrophic event to declare a national state of emergency and make his bid to suspend the Constitution in order to keep the keys to AF1 past 1/17. Of course he would need the support of the military, and Joint Chiefs might just decide they would make better supreme leaders than this empty chair.
Draft an online letter with all the questions to answer
Get people to sign it.
Send a copy to all major new organizations.
Registered mail.
Post response or lack of response
I don’t think Obama would like the answer if he ever asked “You and what army?”
If they need one, they’ll make one.
Ymarsakar:
Yes of course as president he has spent plenty of time golfing and taking expensive vacations (including Michelle’s own pricey getaways) but we keep hearing about how “trapped” Obama feels living in the White House, how “the bear” feels he needs to escape, etc. He’s already done as much as possible to remake (i.e. tear apart) America (such as remaking one sixth of the economy with Obamacare) and he’ll continue to enforce his will (i.e. wreak havoc) for the next two years. Then I think he will kick back and leave willingly to rest on his “laurels.” And the Left believes the steamroller will keep moving along with or without him because they have demographics on their side.
That’s Kant’s Categorical Imperative, in other words.
Which shows that one of the major symptoms of our current underlying problem is that basic education has been banished from the land.
Objectively speaking, Obama is an ignoramus – if we count classic, basic knowledge as the standard. But he is only as dumb as everyone else “educated” since the 60’s – when classic education was officially banned from culture.
We are truly a moronic people, all around. But that is the symptom.
The cause is a spiritual one: WE DO NOT WANT TOP KNOW.
Yes, that’s the truth. What we do not want to know is that we are sinners and that there is a moral law above us.
The Starry Skies above, and the moral law within. Kant.
Plato: The 2 most important things about any society are who gets to teach the children and what they teach them.
We know the answers to both. It is now a generation and a half later. Translation – We are toast.
The teacher unions were taken over by communists in the 1930s. So it has been more than a generation.
The change of reporters to journalists was profound. Oddly enough, there is a movie about it, one that says a lot more than you’d think, especially because it seems just one of those light romantic comedies that flourished during the 50s and 60s. I’ve seen it several times and always enjoyed it (yes, I know what that says about my taste in films, although I also dearly love all the battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, so go figure). I’ve always thought it was saying something important, though I couldn’t quite identify its message until the past ten years or so.
It’s called “Teacher’s Pet” and it stars Doris Day (a night school journalist professor), Clark Gable (a street-wise old-fashioned reporter who has grown through the ranks to be a legendary editor in a major newspaper), and Gig Young (the brilliant guy who loses the girl to Gable). It’s about the transition from the reporters who grew up in the hard-knocks school and who prided themselves on seeing through the faé§ade of the rich and powerful, and on tracking down the facts, to the journalists who learned their trade–excuse me, profession–in the Phi Beta Kappa world of the textbook and poli-sci (political science) classes. Of course, it’s a romantic comedy, so the hard-bitten Clark Gable learns to value Doris Day’s teachings, and she learns to look at the “real world” of the working newspaper. Gig Young is around to be the witty polymath who has done everything clever and been everywhere important and always at the head table, but who at last can’t measure up to Gable, who has been to the same places, but always in a more gritty role. (The scene where Gable is telling Doris about a battle in the Pacific when he was a sailor in WWII, with Gig Young unconsciously cutting in to describe the same battle as he saw it from his position as a senior naval officer, is a skillful moment of screenwriting, setting everyone in their background.)
The movie basically shows the gritty newspaper run as a hard driving business giving way to the newspaper run as a “message” vehicle. It doesn’t say this specifically, because it is a Doris Day romance, and I think the screenwriter was tracing the change as an interesting background against which to portray a comedic love triangle; but, you can see glimmerings of the transformation from the Rudyard Kipling reportorial factual sextet–
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
–to the journalistic/journolistic concentration on the narrative, the PC spin, and considerations of, if it is determined to be a story that simply must be mentioned, what page will it appear on, how little has to be said, and how will you say even that little in a way that minimizes the impact of the issue.
Another interesting newspaper movie moment is in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”. Jimmy Stewart’s Senator Smith filibusters against a corrupt issue that will hurt his state, while the major state newspaper, owned by someone who wants the corruption about the issue to pass in the US Senate vote, publishes story after story of lies about what Smith is doing, and physically restrains a small newspaper run by those on Smith’s side, even to the extent of injuring a child who is delivering it. Naturally, the citizens of the state, hearing about the issue from the big newspaper, bombard the Senate with letters against Smith, who collapses on the floor of Senate. The corrupt Senator backing the bill–Claude Rains–finds he has a conscience after all, and tries to commit suicide in the Senate Chamber as he denounces the issue he had tried to push through.
It’s an iconic moment in an iconic American movie, loved by everyone, and yet it actually mirrors what is happening now, with our MSM backing corruption against the truth. The vile enemy in the movie is doing the same thing the MSM does all the time, and yet they don’t see themselves in the movie they often mention with approval. An interesting–and revealing–blindness. The journalistic ego claims the identity of the citizen upholding the truth against lies, while it most plays the role of the denier of truth. If the Left actually someday realizes their true part in the film, the movie would be dropped into oblivion, no longer a prized piece of Americana lore.
Minta Marie Morze:
What an interesting take on the movie “Teacher’s Pet.” I never saw it myself, and never even thought of seeing it, but I am aware that at some point in the past those hard-bitten reporters, who came up through the school of hard knocks, became those young academic journalists who just came up through school and learned very little there except how to spin a story to get the reader to think the way the journalists wanted them to think.
MMM…
Plus the prior troops were wildly against group think.
They had never been selected for conformity — always a BIG factor when grades are handed out.
{ I’ve personally had A’s turn into D’s and C’s based upon non-conforming to the zany politics of a Leftist ‘educator’ — from high school on up into college.}
It’s the way the world (doesn’t) work. (so well)
“Correct Thinking” goes back to Clergy’ist — the cultural shamans of every era — spit up by a slice of humanity’s DNA.
They will always be with us — just like the poor and the dull.
The error is in making them our masters.
Winston Smith = The Ultimate Conformist
At first just professionally — ultimately: the Hard Way.
An interesting–and revealing–blindness. The journalistic ego claims the identity of the citizen upholding the truth against lies, while it most plays the role of the denier of truth.
Keeps them alive. They might suicide if they accepted the Truth.
In answer to your question, your essay was about the press. It was a plea or request to do its First Amendment duty.
My response (not well articulated) was that most of the press is in the bag and the rest (e.g. Fox, talk radio, bloggers) can be marginalized by the MSM. Jay Carney didn’t consider Fox to be a “legitimate news organization.”
The only solution is impeachment and that is unlikely because of Obama’s race and no single disastrous event.
So we just limp along and work to win the Senate and defeat Hillary.
If the VA, Bengazhi, IRS, southern border invasion and losing Iraq is not enough, I don’t know what is.
100 WACOs is required to wake Americans up. Not nearly enough suffering has been felt by the self righteous cultists, to do that.
I should add that I think there is one clear path to impeachment.
The House has the inherent constitutional authority to jail Lerner for contempt. The Capitol Police has a jail at 13th and D St.
The House doesn’t have to rely on the AG or the Judiciary to jail Lerner.
If jailed, she may talk. Or she might stay silent until January.
But if she does talk, she might reveal that she got her marching orders straight from the Boss, King Obama.
I also suspect the emails are dynamite. We know she used her government email account to consider auditing Sen. Grassley. Unlike O’Leary at the EPA, she apparently used her official account all the time.
Even if Lerner rots in jail for five months, this incentive might pry loose other IRS people to talk.
Obama used the IRS to win the 2012 election. High crime indeed.
99% of Democrat Presidents in the 20th century has used the IRS or some other ABC fed group to win elections.
Hussein ain’t no different. Americans have Allowed this for 100 years now.
Waking up now, isn’t really going to erase the guilt and sins of the past. Those can only be paid in blood.
Cornhead:
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
My essay was indeed about the press. But it was neither a plea nor a request that it do its first amendment duty.
I gave that up many many years ago. I think most people who read this blog are well aware of my attitude toward the MSM at this point. In fact, my realization of the co-opting of the press by the left, and how very long ago it happened, is one of the reasons for my political change.
If you read this essay I wrote just a mere two days ago I think it’s crystal clear how little I think the press will change. And even in this post about Ace’s comments, I say it would be a “miracle” Obama were to be asked these questions. The only exception I make is that there are a few people, like Jake Tapper, who for one reason or another sometimes will ask Obama challenging questions. But even Tapper seems to have given it up more recently.