Patterico's Pontifications

3/29/2013

Obama Kids Living It Up While Regular Kids Can’t See the White House — and News Outlets Are Scrubbing the Information

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:10 pm



Alex Marlow at Breitbart.com reports:

A local news affiliate in Idaho reported that the First Daughters, Sasha and Malia Obama, are on a Spring Break ski trip in Sun Valley, Idaho. The story quickly spread across the Internet when picked up by the highly trafficked Drudge Report website.

But hours later, the story disappeared from the KMVT website without an update or correction. Breitbart News confirmed that the White House requested that the post be removed.

Obama’s kids were just in the Bahamas. Must be nice.

And the White House’s justification for asking that this news be scrubbed? Alex publishes this statement from a White House spokeshole:

From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest.

Awww. It’s not newsworthy, eh? I beg to differ, and I applaud Alex for breaking the story of how the cowardly Idaho news outlet caved. Elizabeth Price Foley expresses my feelings well:

While I certainly understand the concerns about security, presumably the Secret Service is accompanying these girls wherever they go. If these media reports are true and the girls have been to both luxurious and expensive locations during their spring break, this would be legitimately newsworthy at a time when the President has halted White House tours and other basic government functions, supposedly due to sequestration-based budget cuts. The public deserves to know whether the Obamas are being hypocritical and/or squandering tax dollars during a time of economic austerity.

HOW DARE YOU REPORT ON THEIR LUXURIOUS AND EXPENSIVE VACATIONS!!!!!!1!!!!111!!!!!

UPDATE: That’s Elizabeth Price Foley and not Glenn Reynolds. Fixed. Thanks to Ipso Fatso.

Ben Carson Apologizes — For WHAT?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:39 pm



David Zurawik at the Baltimore Sun:

Dr. Benjamin Carson, the famed Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, apologized Friday for his “choice of words” and use of examples in discussing gay marriage on Fox News earlier in the week.

During Sean Hannity’s show on Tuesday, when asked about the matter before the Supreme Court, Carson said, “Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are. They don’t get to change the definition.”

The comparison of gays to members of the North American Boy/Man Love Association and those who engage in bestiality set off a backlash of criticism in the media, online and on campus.

That’s a comparison?

I don’t think that’s a comparison, and I don’t care who says it is — be they David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun, or Snooki, or Hitler.

(Did I just say that a journalist and an annoying reality show star are homicidal dictators who killed millions?)

It’s sad that Ben Carson is apologizing for nothing. I’d rather have him quote the classic Breitbart line: “Apologize? For WHAT?”

If someone wants to apologize for their choice of words, the Alaskan Congressman who called migrant workers “wetbacks” is a decent candidate. Ben Carson? Not so much.

Planned Parenthood Representative Fights Bill to Save Babies Born Alive During a Botched Abortion

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:02 pm



The slippery slope at work, ladies and gentlemen. The position of this woman appears to be: We love abortions so much, if the baby is born alive, the decision whether the baby should be saved should be a private decision for the mom and the doctor that was trying to kill the kid seconds before. In other words, she’s approving murder:

Watch all the way to the end to see her objecting to a provision that would require a doctor to drive the born-alive baby to a hospital — because, after all, what if it’s a long drive?

You think I’m making that up? Watch the video.

John Podhoretz: Obama Is So Very Serious

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:31 am



John Podhoretz has a column that says Barack Obama is a Serious Man doing Serious Work and also he is Serious:

Barack Obama is a serious man. . . . The truth is that Barack Obama and his liberal followers have been doing very serious work over the past four years, and the same cannot be said, alas, of far too many people who oppose them.

. . . .

The notion that Obama is a dangerous extremist helps him, because it makes him seem reasonable and his critics foolish. It also helps those who peddle it, because it makes them notorious and helps them sell their wares. But it has done perhaps irreparable harm to the central conservative cause of the present moment—making the case that Obama’s social-democratic statism is setting the United States on a course for disaster and that his anti-exceptionalist foreign policy is setting the world on a course for nihilistic chaos. Those are serious arguments, befitting a serious antagonist. They may not sell gold coins as quickly and as well as excessive alarmism, but they have the inestimable advantage of being true.

Barack Obama is a serious man. The professional and political right needs to be as serious as he is to make sure the Age of Obama ends with him.

I’m not sure what JPod’s real point here is, other than to repeatedly label Obama “serious.” What are we supposed to do, put on our Grim Serious faces? Not point out how frivolous he is, with his endless golfing and spending?

The closest Podhoretz comes to a prescription is to tell conservatives to stop pushing a view “that Obama is a not-so-secret Marxist Kenyan with dictatorial ambitions and a nearly limitless appetite for power.” Take the word “Kenyan” out of that phrase and I have no problem with it, as long as the argument is backed up by examples and facts. If Obama takes an action that shows his commitment to Marxist redistributionist principles (which happens all the time) or seems to want to reserve the option to, say, kill Americans on American soil even if they pose no imminent threat (remember the drone debate?), are we supposed to stand by and whistle nonchalantly?

That doesn’t sound like a very “serious” response.


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