Press Secretary

Perino credits Bush for Copenhagen climate talks

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According to President Bush's former press secretary, the former president's refusal to sign the Kyoto climate change deal in 2005 set the stage for current climate change negotiations in Copenhagen.

"Because [Bush] declined to go forward with Kyoto, which is ultimately the right thing to do because the major economies like China and India weren't at the table, he worked to get them at the table and now this meeting is the next logical step in that process," Perino told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday.



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Yep, I did a double take too.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has tapped a former top aide of his predecessor George W. Bush to a key post on a board overseeing government-sponsored international broadcasting.

Dana Perino, the first Republican woman to serve as White House press secretary, was appointed late Wednesday to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

Created in 1994, the BBG oversees all of the US government's non-military international broadcasting outlets, including Voice of America, Alhurra television, Radio Sawa, TV Marti, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe. Read on...

Where to begin? I understand that President Obama campaigned on the idea of bipartisanship, but this is truly an insult. Forget that he is appointing an intellectual lightweight who ran cover for, and spread propaganda for the worst president in American history. Dana Perino stood before reporters and routinely lied to them and the world -- even defending the use of torture, calling it "effective, safe and legal."

And now President Obama believes that she has the integrity to hold a key position in an agency that oversees government-sponsored, international broadcasting?

Perino's appointment must be confirmed by the Senate, so it's not a done deal, but we have to make our voices heard. Contact your Senators and let them know your thoughts on the matter.

As Digby sez -- Perino is just a member of the club, playing the game.


Sen. Levin: Cheney attack on Obama 'out of bounds'

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney has gone too far with his latest attack against President Barack Obama, according to Sen. Carl Levin. "The comments of the former vice president were totally out of bounds. I don't think he has any credibility left with the American people," Levin told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

Cheney accused Obama of "dithering" on making a decision to send more troops to Afghanistan during a speech in D.C. Wednesday. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs rejected that criticism Thursday.

"What Vice President Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform and to the American public," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously."


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White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told CNN's John King that President Barack Obama doesn't believe people are protesting him because he is a black man. "I don't think the president believes that people are upset because of the color of his skin," said Gibbs.

In her Sunday column, Maureen Dowd said that race is playing a part in the vocal opposition to Obama.

But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

John Amato:

While Dowd writes some of the most insane stuff I've seen, she does mix in some truths as well and I'm surprised she makes this observation. It's apparent to anybody that has eyes in their skulls what's been going on. There is a large amount of people in this country that do not like President Obama because he's black. Just watch the news once in a while or do some reading. Don't ever expect Gibbs or anyone in the White House to say this publicly because the media would go crazy over this, but we know it's true. And the conservative movement has been hijacked by the crazies even before Clinton took office. It's not a new phenomenon. What is shocking is to see the hatred on display so out in the open and being encouraged by the media. Glenn Greenwald takes up the case in his post: Is the Right's attack on Obama's legitimacy new or unprecedented?

This is why I have very mixed feelings about the protests of conservatives such as David Frum or Andrew Sullivan that the conservative movement has been supposedly "hijacked" by extremists and crazies. On the one hand, this is true. But when was it different? Rush Limbaugh didn't just magically appear in the last twelve months. He -- along with people like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Bill Kristol and Jesse Helms -- have been leaders of that party for decades. Republicans spent the 1990s wallowing in Ken Starr's sex report, "Angry White Male" militias, black U.N. helicopters, Vince Foster's murder, Clinton's Mena drug runway, Monica's semen-stained dress, Hillary's lesbianism, "wag the dog" theories, and all sorts of efforts to personally humiliate Clinton and destroy the legitimacy of his presidency using the most paranoid, reality-detached, and scurrilous attacks. And the crazed conspiracy-mongers in that movement became even more prominent during the Bush years. Frum himself -- now parading around as the Serious Adult conservative -- wrote, along with uber-extremist Richard Perle, one of the most deranged and reality-detached books of the last two decades, and before that, celebrated George W. Bush, his former boss, as "The Right Man."

Bob Somerby continues on and writes:

By the summer of Clinton’s second year in office, two active attempts were made on his life. One guy even flew a small plane into the White House, apparently trying to kill him. Colbert King doesn’t seem to remember. Might we suggest why that is?

You see, King is part of a media “elite” which enabled—or encouraged—the lunatic claims against Clinton, then Gore. Perhaps for that reason, people like King have airbrushed that decade—and they express their vast surprise when the same thing is done to Obama. Meanwhile, King name-calls two minor crackpot pastors—and forgets to name the powerful players who are vastly more responsible for the lunatic claims against Obama.

King is brave when it comes to naming no-names. Where are the names of the powerful players who have really been driving this lunacy?

Somehow, when it comes to such names, people like King seem to get light-headed. They may feel their knees start to buckle.

There have always been local lunatics like Anderson and Drake in our politics. But the movement went national in the 1980s, when Rush Limbaugh moved to New York. King has criticized Limbaugh a few times—in the last year, that is. But Limbaugh drove the lunatic hatred against the last Democratic president (Hillary Clinton helped kill Vince Foster!)—and King never mentioned his name, not once, during that whole brainless era. (Nexis archives.)

King openly criticized Jerry Falwell—after the 9/11 attacks, that is. But Falwell’s name never appeared in his column during the 1990s, when he pimped those murder claims all around. Somehow, King failed to notice that ugliness. Or perhaps he was too scared to speak.

Like the bulk of his weak, weak-minded cohort, King failed to act in the 1990s. This morning, he seems to have forgotten that the decade happened at all.

Might we make a long story short? King and his cohort bought all the crap against the last Democratic president. Some of them actively encouraged the hatred; some of them simply enabled it. But by October 2000, King could barely bring himself to say a word in favor of Candidate Gore. To recall the pained column in which King made himself say that Gore would probably be somewhat better than Bush, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 1/26/09. In that column, you see how thoroughly these weak-minded people failed you in the last decade.

King and there rest of his cohort drank the Kool-Aid during that decade—gulped it lovingly down. Now, they pretend that the era never occurred—and they express their vast surprise when the same lunacy is aimed at Obama. They are amazed to see what’s being said about this new Democratic president. And they diddle their cowardly brains: It must be his race, they proclaim.

In this way, people like King refuse to tell the real story. Here it is:

Your discourse has been this way for decades. A powerful movement generates ludicrous claims against all major Democrats. They did it to Clinton, then to Gore—with King’s blessing. Now, it’s being done to Obama.

So far, no one has flown a small plane into the White House. But in the past, it was tried.

King ran off and hid in the woods while this was being done the last time. (He was still bad-mouthing Hillary Clinton in the familiar old ways as late as summer 2008.) Now he pretends it just didn’t happen. And he makes it hard for liberals to argue the truth—to help the public see the big picture about our devolving culture.

This isn’t about unfortunate nuts like Pastor Anderson. It isn’t about an unfortunate nut like Drake, who at least is an equal opportunity kook. (He also wished divine retribution on Pastor Rick Warren this year.)

This is really about the names—and the movement—which don’t appear in King’s column. It’s about multimillionaire stooges like Limbaugh and Hannity—and so many others like them. It’s about Charles Grassley—and Sarah Palin. It’s about the astonishing Betsy McCaughey, the “misleader-in-chief” from 1994 who still can’t seem to get herself profiled in Colbert King’s weak-kneed newspaper.

When it comes to the establishment Washington Post, the fake McCoys can’t get arrested.

Uh-oh! Charles Grassley is an accepted figure in Establishment Washington. Voters deserve to hear what he’s done. But Colbert King won’t say his name. To this day, he never has.

It's been going on for years and the media elites are terrified to ever say a word about it and this blatant deep seeded hatred will continue for many more decades unless the media doesn't act the cowards they have been for all these years and expose the nuts and stop promoting their insanity for ratings. Someone is going to get hurt and very soon.
I think Dr. Tiller and his family have already paid the ultimate price, don't you?


NBC calls the public option a "fetish"

The Villagers always find a way to attack progressives. Here's NBC's 'First Read,' that Chuck Todd is all about says this:

*** Fixing the public option fetish: But the speech also will be a failure if progressives -- Obama’s second audience tonight -- are still obsessing over the public option a week from now. We've said this before and we'll say it again: Obama never made the public option the focus of his health-care ideas, in the primaries or in general election. In fact, he never uttered the words "public option" or "public plan" in his big campaign speeches on health care. But there is no doubt that the public option has fired up the left, and how he sells them near-universal coverage and lower costs -- even if it means no public plan -- could very well be the trickiest part of tonight's speech. Indeed, that the White House allowed this to become the be-all, end-all on the left ("Public option or die!") remains a mystery. On TODAY this morning, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that “there can be no reform without adequate choice and competition,” but didn’t say that choice and competition had to come from a public option.

You will never hear anything like this said about conservatives. Passionately supporting a piece of legislation that we consider vital to real health care reform is now considered a fetish by NBC. WTF is that?
Craig Crawford:

NBC News calls the public option a "fetish." Providing insurance to Americans who cannot afford or obtain coverage is a fetish? A fetish? Have things gone so awry that health care for all is considered a deviant concept. Seems to me that big media's knee-jerk defense of the status quo is the real fetish.

Craig nails it...in a good way that is and without a spanking reference that would be considered un-serious by the beltway elite.


Gibbs: Obama will make case for public option

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White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told ABC's George Stephanopolous that President Barack Obama will make the case for some form of a public health insurance option when he makes a speech to Congress Wednesday. But Gibbs indicated that Obama wouldn't issue a veto threat for a bill that doesn't include a public option.

"I doubt that we'll get into heavy veto threats on Wednesday. We're going to talk about what we can do, because we're so close to getting it done. He'll talk about the public option. He'll talk about why it's a valuable component in providing choice in competition," said Gibbs.


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There have been a number of right wing protesters showing up at Democratic town hall meetings with guns over the past couple of weeks, even at events held by President Obama. Many have made note that countless people were shoved into cages called "free speech zones," or arrested at events held by former president George Bush for merely wearing anti-Bush t-shirts, yet people have been allowed to openly carry loaded weapons while protesting against Obama, for the most part without incident. How many of you have either posted or said aloud something along the lines of the following statement:

Can you imagine what would would have happened if a protester had brought a loaded gun to a Bush event?

Of course, that protester would have been tased, beaten, arrested and labeled a terrorist -- but times have changed:

Armed men seen mixing with protesters outside recent events held by President Obama acted within the law, the White House said Tuesday, attempting to allay fears of a security threat.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said people are entitled to carry weapons outside such events if local laws allow it. "There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally," he said. "Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality."

Not everyone agrees:

"What Gibbs said is wrong," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Individuals carrying loaded weapons at these events require constant attention from police and Secret Service officers. It's crazy to bring a gun to these events. It endangers everybody." Read on...

Personally, I believe it's just a matter of time before one of these gun-toting, Fox News-inspired whackjobs take a shot at the president or a Democratic member of Congress.


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August 07, 2009 FOX & Friends

Heather:

Fox and Friends edits down Robert Gibbs statement on whether the White House is "collecting names" into a sound byte where he says it's "to get misinformation". Geez these people take their audience for idiots since he was very obviously cut off mid-sentence.

Steve Benen's got more on this nonsense.

It's a shame yet another conspiracy theory reached the White House briefing room. ABC News' Jake Tapper reports this afternoon:

Asked about Cornyn's letter on Thursday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, "nobody is collecting names."

The blog and tips email was because, Gibbs said, "we have seen, and as I've discussed from this podium, a lot of misinformation around health care reform. Some of it I think spread purposely. We have used on many occasions the Web site to debunk things that are simply not true. We ask people if they have questions about health care reform and about what they're hearing about its affects on them, to let us know and we'd provide them information to show that that wasn't true."

Continued Gibbs: "but nobody is collecting names."

Well, no, of course not. The very idea that the White House would be "collecting names" is about as legitimate as the idea that the president is a not a natural-born citizen. As nutty Republican conspiracy theories go, this was even more headache-inducing than most.

Continue reading....

I want to know why these right wingers and Fox News were never whipped into a frenzy when the Congress passed the Patriot Act, or when we found out the telecom companies were data mining everyone in the United States. It's somehow completely lost on Steve Doocy and his guests that George Bush already did this, but no one ever accused Doocy of being very bright.


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Even after admitting the involvement of groups like Right Principles and other lobbyists groups, Dobbs and Crowley attempt to paint the movement as grass roots, rather than being funded by the insurance and health care industries. Dobbs and Crowley also ignore that groups like CPR are now taking credit for ginning up the outbursts at the town hall rallies.

DOBBS: Joining me now for more our senior political analyst Candy Crowley -- Candy, what do you make of these protests and we just heard Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, obviously mocking these people and saying fairly straightforwardly that this is organized protests. Is that true?

CROWLEY: Well, listen, there is no doubt there are a lot of conservative groups out there who are using their Web sites to encourage people to go to their town hall meetings. But this is not some subterranean movement that they don't want people to know about. And there are groups that you heard of before, some of them well heeled, Conservatives for Patient's Rights.

They've had a number of ads against a sort of Obama style health care reform. They are now on their Web site trying to reach out to some of these groups -- the tea party people that we saw on tax day. Others are saying, you know, here's where the town hall meetings are and schedules like that. There's another group, Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, I'm sure you're familiar with that...

DOBBS: Sure.

CROWLEY: ... is a conservative social group. If you go on that Web site, you can see indeed where there are town hall meetings. Now, there's also an interesting place called Right Principles and I just talked to the head of that group. Now -- and his name is Robert McDuffie and he wrote a memo that has gone all over the Web about how to rock the town hall meeting. And it's very lengthy and it says, you know, go in there and stand up, you know...

DOBBS: Does it suggest whether that be a Democratic or Republican town hall meeting?

CROWLEY: It does not, but this is a group that's definitely protesting the current form of health care reform, as they see it. And he said -- and I said, so, you're starting this movement. He said you know anybody that thinks that a guy sitting in Connecticut with a Web site can influence someone in Texas to go to a town hall meeting, you know, is crazy.

I wrote this for -- he says he wrote it for grassroots activists in Connecticut. He is indeed connected to those -- was a volunteer for those who put together the tea party on tax day. And he said, but you know -- he sort of tapped into -- he said you know people come to him and say I write my congressman and then I get back a letter that doesn't even respond or I get back a letter like I'm on the other side.

And he said he just feels his frustration, so they all sort of say this is not some big master plan, but it is a loosely knit group of various conservatives who are -- the insurance industry also sending a representative to 30 states trying to urge people sympathetic to them to go to these town hall meetings, so yes there is this -- there are lots of groups out there doing this.

But it doesn't seem to be some master plan of sending people who don't understand what they're talking about. They're trying to urge like-minded people to go to these town hall meetings, which they say is what town hall meetings are about.

Continue reading »


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(h/t Heather)

I love navel-gazing on the part of the media, where they decide collectively that they were right to create a meme which takes over the media. On this weekend's The Chris Matthews Show, pundits Howard Fineman, Michael Duffy and Ceci Connolly agree that it was appropriate for them to ask President Obama about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., because "it's an important issue."

MATTHEWS: It’s all about identity politics again, and at the same time these people on the far, far right are talking about whether he’s a citizen or not, this comes up.

DUFFY: And when the White House Press Secretary calls it a ‘distraction’, you know it was a mistake. And his mistake was pretty simple, which was that he didn’t really have all the facts, and was not in a position to talk about it. He was right to take it up, because it is an issue that is important, and it’s one in which he is completely versed, and you can see from the rest of his statement, that he knows exactly what to say. But I also think it came at the end of that press conference, which was about a completely different subject, and I think he was a little punchy by then. He was talking about you know what would happen to him in the White House, and it was a joke and he kind of lost the seriousness of the moment and I think got off track…

MATTHEWS: Yeah, I agree with that, the moment was important. I think he was a little angry, a little fatigued. These guys get up at five in the morning and this was eight at night. Is this going to be around a while?

Get the meme? Obama the angry black man being asked to speak on behalf of the entire African American community--and you know he is versed in this. Howard Fineman sort of treads along the edges of why even asking Obama his opinion of Gates' arrest was racist (because, honestly, can you imagine the media doing this to President McCain, had he won? I don't think so), without fully realizing it:

FINEMAN: ...(T)he progress that he made—the Sotomayor nomination—she did convince people, by her bearing, by her knowledge, by her experience, that she was eminently qualified and in that sense, was beyond this. Both of her race, but beyond it. This is not what Barack Obama’s political advisors wanted him to be doing up there. Because it turns it into a racial conversation, per se, at a time when he’s being president of all the country. And trying to be president of all the country and this feeds into the narrative of what I call the RNC—the Rush Newt Cheney RNC—which is all about fear, accusation and division. Barack Obama as president has to be about national unity.

Apparently to Howard, Barack Obama has been doing a good job up until this point of not making white Americans realize that he's African American and making them feel comfortable with other people of color. But now, Howard's worried that Obama has lost his white constituency:

FINEMAN: He went to great lengths as a candidate, to say that he could be president of all America. He understood all the different cultures and wanted to learn about all the different cultures of America. This kind of thing sets him back with working class whites.

Sigh. Can I remind you bobbleheads that it was YOU collectively that raised this subject? This was a local issue, albeit with a semi-famous person involved. This is not a federal issue, nor did it need to be addressed by the President of the United States, especially since the only justification for it is that Obama and Gates outwardly share a skin color (although both are of mixed-race heritage). Isn't it reasonable to assume that the President of the United States has enough on his plate without being thrust the mantle of spokesman for the entire African American community and trying to make white people more comfortable with the age-old issue of racial profiling?

As far as Gates is concerned, there was no clear cut right or wrong on his arrest; both sides escalated the situation beyond where it should have gone. But in terms of pulling Barack Obama into the debate and letting it take over the news cycles for days and days when very real issues (um Afghanistan, any one? Health care reform? The economy? Any of those ring a bell?) are left undiscussed is simply giving red meat to the right wingers eager to derail any actual progress in this country. And the responsibility for that falls on bobbleheads like these clowns, not Obama.

Transcripts below the fold

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Administration Assures Abortion Rights Backers on Sotomayor

And of course, now the Republicans will accuse Obama of imposing a litmus test, since anything he does is evil:

The White House scrambled yesterday to assuage worries from liberal groups about Judge Sonia Sotomayor's scant record on abortion rights, delivering strong but vague assurances that the Supreme Court nominee agrees with President Obama's belief in constitutional protections for a woman's right to the procedure.

Facing concerns about the issue from supporters rather than detractors, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama did not ask Sotomayor specifically about abortion rights during their interview. But Gibbs indicated that the White House is nonetheless sure she agrees with the constitutional underpinnings of Roe v. Wade, which 36 years ago provided abortion rights nationwide.

"In their discussions, they talked about the theory of constitutional interpretation, generally, including her views on unenumerated rights in the Constitution and the theory of settled law," Gibbs said. "He left very comfortable with her interpretation of the Constitution being similar to that of his."


A new book by former White House Chief Propagandist Press Secretary Scott McClellan pulls no punches and goes directly after President Bush with some juicy behind-the-scenes revelations. Expect the White House smear campaign to being in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1......

WATCH: Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow discuss some of the blockbuster claims:

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Politico:

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence.

McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

Marcy Wheeler, who shamed the corporate media with her coverage of the Plame scandal, has more...