We all knew something like this was coming.

Via Hot Air.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Outrageous:

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit.

“My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting US President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits,” Lehrich wrote.

But then after saying that, Lehrich denied actually banning them?

But Lehrich said the Herald wasn’t purposefully barred from the press pool, saying local pool duty by the Boston Globe was arranged earlier with the White House Correspondents Association. And Lehrich insisted the Herald may yet be allowed into Obama events.

As they say read the whole thing.  I do recall that when they tried to openly exclude Fox News from the White House Press Room the media did step up.  Let’s hope the same happens here.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

I have to admit I have become more than a little jaded about marriage proposal videos, but this one won me over.

Boy would he have looked stupid if she said no… It’s probably a good sign for them that he knew she would say yes.

(Well, either that or its all staged, but let’s not spoil it with thoughts like that.)

Hat tip: Hot Air headlines.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Big Update: Angry Black Lady tweeted back and…  apologized.  Yes, really.

Which meant that I owed her an apology for thinking she would never say that, and I did tweet back an apology while accepting hers.  I guess you get so used to dealing with unreachable partisans you forget that there are people who can be persuaded.  Which is doubly stupid on my part because, well, haven’t I been telling people never to give up on convincing at least some of the people?

As she wrote back, “see? civility isn’t dead! it’s just mostly dead. :)”  Is it wrong that I thought of that scene in Monty Python?  Well, I guess not, because she was thinking The Princess Bride.

Joking aside that makes some of what I say below inappropriately harsh.  But I generally don’t “memory hole” my mistakes, big or small, so it will stay as is.

Anyway, here’s the original post…

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Sometimes interesting topics seem come in on a common theme.  Today’s theme is, well… stupidity.

For starters, we come to Newt Gingrich.  As some of you know, Gingrich had an interview on Meet the Press last weekend that most people consider to have been a complete disaster for the Republicans and the ex-Speaker’s candidacy.  If you didn’t know this, Greta Van Susteren actually sums up the controversy and how it might have struck a mortal blow to Gingrich’s fledgling presidential run quite well, in the video at this link.  (Indeed this might be why he was heckled hilariously in Iowa.)  And in the process of trying to walk his comments back on Greta’s show, he actually says this whopper:

Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood, because I have said publicly those words were inaccurate and unfortunate[.]

Update: And here’s video of Gingrich’s idiotic comment:

That is right, he is trying to say it is unfair of people to take a recording from that day and play it, because you see he didn’t really mean it.  Of course Joe Biden was quoted as saying, “you can do that?”

Seriously imagine what a great rule that would be for politicians.  Obama can pretend he never said he wanted to redistribute wealth to Joe the Plumber; or that he visited 57 states; or that he doesn’t mind high gas prices as long as the rise is gradual; or that he is not allowed to use military force unless 1) we are attacked, or congress authorizes it (by the way, we are past the 60 day mark and no one seems to care).  Kerry could pretend he never said that bit about voting for it before he voted against it, or about needing to pass the “global test” before going to war.  Indeed, come to think of it, I think the majority of the people in the remaining items will change their minds eventually and want to pretend they never said what I am about to make fun of them for saying…

(more…)

[Guest post by Lee Stranahan]

[Shirley Sherrod] is democratic nobility and black royalty. She’s an American hero. She’s a Christian soldier for justice.

– Cornell West, Face The Nation

I’ve been thinking about this – it’s not “proof” of anything but it is something I wonder about.

All of Shirley Sherrod’s fans talk about her “redemptive arc” that was supposedly left out of the video excerpt that was originally posted by Andrew Breitbart. They – and Sherrod herself –  say that the point of the story is that Sherrod  has revelation that white people have problems due to poverty, as well.

In the full video, she says…

God will show you things and he’ll put things in your path so that — that you realize that the struggle is really about poor people.

And in the excerpt that Breitbart posted she says…

That’s when it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have, and not so much about white – it is about white and black, but it’s not, you know, it opened my eyes because I took him to one of his own

(emphasis added)

The summarize – her ‘redemption’ is realizing that what she calls ‘the struggle’ (for justice, I think) isn’t just about race but also about poverty.

So, here’s my question – shouldn’t she have known this already?

It seems like a pretty basic point. Scratch that – seriously basic Poor white people have problems, too. Poor white people sometimes have the same problems for the same reason as poor black people. I mean, who doesn’t understand that point?

The ‘white farmer’ incident happened in 1986. When Shirley Sherrod had this revelation, she was (by my estimate) 37 years old. She’d been an activist and helped manage a farm. She was working on her Master’s degree. She’d been given a job where she was supposed to help farmers of all races.

So, this middle-aged woman was just then figuring out that she should help white people? Really? And I’m supposed to be impressed by this, why? I think it’s insulting to have such a low bar set.

I’m really confused by this. Can anyone explain to me what’s so impressive about a nearly 40 year old, politically active person figuring out that white poor people suffer, too?

– Lee Stranahan