Politico…Reprinting Lies Since 2007!

From a story at the Raw Story…

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow tore into Politico Wednesday for reprinting Republican “spin” without reporting the actual truth.

Politico reported that Republicans had delayed a meeting with President Barack Obama because he had “ambushed” them at a previous meeting back in January. But Maddow pointed out that there is little truth to that version of events.

According to Glenn Thrush at Politico, Republicans rescheduled a meeting with Obama because they are distrustful after he “crashed” their January retreat and humiliated them on national television.

“The roots of the partisan standoff that led to the postponement of the bipartisan White House summit scheduled for Thursday date back to January, when President Barack Obama crashed a GOP meeting in Baltimore to deliver a humiliating rebuke of House Republicans,” Thrush reported.

That is a blatant lie, and isn’t Politico supposedly the most in touch publication, getting all the inside info from both sides….cough, spit. Whoever wrote that crap had to have known it was completely false and Republican propaganda. So much of the media just doesn’t care about the truth anymore, it is sickening, really. Rachel tells it like it is…

“Today cable news all day was driven by a story from that same website, Politico, that was purportedly about that same real event but was completely made up,” Maddow said. “I don’t mean to say it was completely made up by Politico. Quite transparently it was made up by unnamed Republican staffers who were trying to inject a new anti-Obama story into the news today that didn’t have any basis in fact whatsoever. Those were the folks who made it up. It was Politico who printed it.”

Josh Marshall weighs in on this with a reminder to everyone about the reality that didn’t seem to make it into the Politico story…

“So was it an ambush? Well, My God, not even close. Here’s the press release from Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, thanking the president on January 13th for ‘accept[ing] our invitation to meet with the Republican Conference later this month,'” Marshall continued.

“In other words, that’s more than two weeks before these House Republicans who must have spent the month in a sensory deprivation chamber were stunned to see the president’s motorcade driving up unannounced to crash their party.”

So what in the fuck is Politico doing? Why would they print completely false information, manufactured propaganda from Republican operatives? Is there journalistic integrity anywhere these days? Once again, Rachel Maddow tells it like it is…

Maddow was particularly offended by the way Politico printed this quote from a Republican staffer: “There were [House Republicans] who only knew Obama was coming when they saw Secret Service guys scouting out the place.”

“I am sure some unnamed Republican operative said exactly those words and that’s why there are quotes in the article to justify those words being written,” Maddow said. “But just printing something somebody said is not itself — what do you call it? News, right. It’s publicity. And in this case, it’s publicizing somebody’s totally fake, untrue story about a knowable, reported on, real thing.”

Later in the day, Politico edited their story to remove that quote.

Repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell NOW!

Now I’ve been against the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy since President Clinton signed the damn bill, I thought it was a stupid compromise that wasn’t going to work since it gave too much discretion to the military, which is overrun with macho, homophobic men who are probably overcompensating for their inability to deal with their own sexuality. In the early 90’s, it may have been the only thing that could pass both houses and be signed by the president, but that certainly doesn’t make it a good thing. I bet some are wondering if not passing anything would have been better, in hindsight.

Since President Obama made his intentions clear to repeal the policy in the campaign, it’s been kind of surreal how he has been attacked by the LGBT community. One of the primary reasons I started this blog was because I was banned from Americablog for basically calling many of the commenters that horrible word “impatient”. This was about a year into President Obama’s term, he was dealing with huge issues…anyone remember being on the verge of the second great depression, anyone remember the battle to try to bring health care to more Americans, anyone remember how Republicans were saying no to everything the President attempted, just for political gain? The way some of the leaders in the LGBT community responded and continue to – has been way over the top. They don’t even seem to know who their friends are. It’s like a fucking twilight zone, really. A policy that was passed by the husband of Hillary Clinton, who most of these sore losers supported, and has been in place for what…18 years, all of a sudden becomes President Obama’s fault. All the anger at this misguided policy has been placed at the feet of the one person who is actually trying to repeal it. How fucking stupid is that?

I’ve heard many of these folks scream and cry that he could issue an executive order immediately and stop it….and then when Sarah Palin is elected president, she can reverse that and we’re back to where we were. Great plan, guys and girls. They usually counter with, he can put a stop to it and then repeal the law after that. Well that may make sense on the surface, but just like with many other issues, these people don’t consider the dysfunctionality of our political process. The way President Obama has been approaching the issue is exactly how it should be done. Getting the buy-in of the military leaders, getting real opinions from servicemen and women and their families and following the procedures for passing an actual law that is much more permanent than some executive order. It has allowed for the time to measure public opinion, which is strongly against the DADT policy. The executive order route during the primary season in the Republican party would have been just lovely, don’t you think? Because it wasn’t in the forefront, it didn’t become a campaign issue and thus avoided some polarization. Once you throw an issue into a partisan battle, lines are drawn and political identification begins to trump well-reasoned positions. Now I don’t expect the whiners to get this nuance, because they can’t even seem to deal with the word “patience”, but regardless of whether they get it, the President is doing what is best for all people in the LGBT community, not just the vocal, so-called leaders of the community. Some of these folks, Aravosis, Greenwald and Savage have shown how much they really care about progressive issues as they undermine the best friend they’ve ever had in the Whitehouse. How much sense does it make to weaken the one person who is trying to change things for the better, who has appointed more LGBT folks than any president by far in just 2 years as president and who may be the last chance for any kind of change for a long time to come when you consider the pendulum swing to the right that weakening this president has caused.

Hooray for the Democrats and Harry Reid for going for it, I’ve been waiting for this article since the election and here it is. From the New York Times…

In a direct challenge to Republicans who support the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said he would push ahead with a military policy bill that includes language authorizing the Pentagon to repeal the ban.

[…]

But the White House on Wednesday repeated President Obama’s commitment to repealing the ban. In a statement later in the day, Mr. Reid said he would bring the bill to the floor, with the repeal language in place. “We need to repeal this discriminatory policy so that any American who wants to defend our country can do so,” Mr. Reid said.

Let’s get that bitch done. And EVERYONE needs to help to get it done, which includes the whiners and the impatient fucks (Aravosis, Greenwald and Savage). All hands on deck, people…put away your pettiness and help the people you claim to speak for. There will be other things for you to whine about, I’m sure.