Posted on 09/06/2009 9:09:25 PM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free
Here is what the MSM is saying about Van Jones Resignation:
NEW YORK TIMES:
The times is spinning this as poor vetting by a White House totally ignorant of Van Jones's "controversial past". Excerpt below:
"Mr. Jones’s hiring and departure again raised questions about the quality of the White House personnel vetting process and the proliferation of so-called policy czars who are not subject to Senate confirmation or legislative oversight.
"The Obama administration entered office promising the most thorough scrutiny ever of candidates for senior jobs, including an extensive questionnaire and time-consuming background checks that have left many senior posts vacant for months. But the process seems to have missed Mr. Jones’s most inflammatory comments and associations, as well as the tax problems that scuttled the nominations of former Senator Tom Daschle to two top health policy posts and Nancy Killefer as chief performance officer.
"A White House official suggested that Mr. Jones’s post was not seen as senior enough to warrant the full vetting given other officials. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the authorized White House account was delivered by administration officials in televised interviews on Sunday."
New York Times Article is linked below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/us/politics/07vanjones.html
WASHINGTON POST:
The spin again, poor vetting of Van Jones's unknown background. Excerpt below:
"A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter, said Jones's past was not studied as intensively as other advisers because of his relatively low rank.
"Jones's position did not require Senate confirmation, so he avoided the kind of vetting Cabinet officials were subjected to. In addition, as an adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality, rather than to Obama directly, his past was not reviewed to the same degree as the more senior "assistants to the president" and other top advisers inside the West Wing.
" The result was the revelation of a controversial past that, administration officials acknowledge, caught the White House off guard.
" 'He was not as thoroughly vetted as other administration officials,' the official said. 'It's fair to say there were unknowns.' "
Washington Post Article is linked below:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/09/06/van_jones_resigns.html
CHICAGO TRIBUNE:
No mention of vetting or that Obama did or did not know about Van Jones's background. Question dodged.
Blames a "smear campaign against him" and brief mention of bad words and petitions.
Exerpt below:
"Recent news reports cited a derogatory comment Jones made in the past about Republicans, and separately, of Jones' name appearing on a petition connected to the events surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks. That 2004 petition had asked for congressional hearings and other investigations into whether high-level government officials had allowed the attacks to occur."
Chicago Tribune Article is linked below:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-us-obama-adviser-resigns,0,7496882.story
LOS ANGELES TIMES:
No mention of vetting or what Obama knew about Van Jones's background. Question dodged.
LA Times link below:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/09/obama-adviser-van-jones.html
USA TODAY
Nothing at all mentioned about Van Jones under news or nation. Clicking the link "Washington" leads to an article at "Politico.com".
Hit piece on Conservatives sounding like a contrived smear campaign against Obama's Advisors. Nothing on the resignation or what Obama knew.
Title is: More czars on conservative hit list
Excerpts below:
Now, right-wing politicians and pundits are looking for other White House czars with controversial pasts. "Van Jones is the tip of the Iceburg. As VJ has said: "personnel is policy"" conservative pundit Glenn Beck twittered on Friday. Attacking Obama’s advisers, conservatives believe, will raise questions about the judgment of their popular boss.
USA Today links to "Politico" article:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26809.html
WALL STREET JOURNAL:
No mention of vetting or if Obama knew of Van Jones's background. Only mentions the bad name calling and the petition. Excerpt below:
"White House green jobs adviser Van Jones resigned Saturday night, after inflammatory comments he’d previously made about Republicans and questions about his attitude toward the Sept. 11 attacks drew a barrage of criticism."
--- snip ---
"He came under withering fire in recent days because of comments he’d made before he joined the administration. Those included attacks on Republicans for their environmental positions. The heat only increased after “his name also appeared on a 2004 petition calling for the government to investigate its own culpability in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,” according to the WSJ."
Wall Street Journal link here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/09/06/van-jones-obamas-embattled-green-jobs-adviser-resigns/
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER:
More of the same. No mention what Obama knew, just vague details of a bad word and 9/11 amid more defense of Van Jones as an all around good guy... No link.
ABC NEWS:
Absolutely no mention of vetting or what Obama knew. Shockingly, they included Van Jones quoted admission to, "By August, I was a communist." Excerpts below:
"The tipping point for the White House appeared to be Jones' admission earlier this week that he had signed a petition in 2004 calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into 'evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.'
"In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of 'the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.'
"An administration source said Jones says he did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name."
--- snip ---
"A former civil rights activist in the San Francisco area, Jones told the East Bay Express in 2005 that the acquittal of Rodney King's assailants in 1992 in that infamous police brutality case changed him significantly.
" 'I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,/ he said. 'By August, I was a communist.'
"Jones and other young activists in 1994 formed a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, rooted in Marxism and Leninsm. Two years later, Jones launched the Ella Baker Center, an Oakland, Calif., based 'strategy and action center' which states that it tries to 'promote positive alternatives to violence and incarceration.' "
Link to ABC News website:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/under-fire-presidential-adviser-van-jones-resigns.html
NBC NEWS (and MSNBC - they seem indistinguishable)
No mention of vetting or what Obama knew, just the standard "smear campaign" due to some vague statements he made before joining Obama. You know the drill.
Link to NBC News:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32712017/ns/politics-white_house/
CBS News:
No mention of vetting or what Obama knew about Van Jones. Like several, this is the standard AP version that goes: Van Jones is the object of a right wing smear campaign over vague comments he made before joining the administration, related to naughty words and a 9/11 petition, while the evil right wing drove out a valuable public servant seeking to help poor people and the environment, obviously to disrupt Obama's attempt to fix health care.
I'll just call this the Standard AP Version for future brevity:
Link to CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/06/politics/main5290652.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.6
CNN:
No mention of vetting or what Obama knew, just that Van Jones didn't read the 9/11 petition carefully enough to know what he was signing. I failed to mention that this is a common theme in as much as 1/2 of the above news reports. He just accidentally goofed up. Oops. Another repeated theme in this and several other news reports is that Van Jones was not fired by Obama, but decided to spend more time with his family. You know the drill...
No bother with exerpts you've seen already.
Link to CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/06/obama.adviser.resigns/index.html
FOX NEWS:
Do I need to post their information? They are the ONLY news source I can find reporting beyond the basic sound bites.
No mention of vetting but in-depth reporting all of the other MSM refuses to do, including multiple articles from the basic facts of the resignation and reasons for it, to a bio of Van Jones's radicalization, to the fate of the remaining czars, the vetting process as it relates to the current and future czars. The in-depth reporting you would expect form Fox being the only news source not to perform outright propaganda for the Obama communist machine. Without doubt, the Fox version is far more specific and less vague and deeper in the factual details -- even exposing his extreme racism -- that ALL of the other outlets covered up, with the exception of ABC mentioning his communist confessional.
Some interesting excerpts from the main article, and just assume I snip a lot:
"White House green jobs adviser Van Jones resigned in the middle of the Labor Day weekend following persistent controversy over his past remarks and associations.
"Jones, who served as an adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, had generated mounting criticism over the past week. He earlier issued back-to-back apologies -- first, for calling Republicans 'assholes' during a videotaped address earlier in the year, and second for signing a petition in 2004 supporting the '9/11 truther' movement, which believes the Bush administration may have been involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
"Jones was a self-described 'communist' during the 1990s and previously worked with a group dedicated to Marxist and Leninist philosophies. His comments, even in recent years, were often racially charged. He's blamed 'white polluters and white environmentalists' for 'steering poison' to minority communities. In 2005, he drew a distinction between white and black youths involved in shooting incidents by referencing the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
" 'You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never,' Jones said. 'They always say, 'We can't believe it happened here. We can't believe it's these suburban white kids.' It's only them!' he said. 'Now, a black kid might shoot another black kid. He's not going to shoot up the whole school.'
"Such statements did not draw widespread attention until after a February video surfaced showing him calling Republicans 'assholes' during an address in Berkeley, Calif. Jones apologized, but faced down his past again when it was discovered that he signed a 2004 statement calling on then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others to launch an investigation into evidence that suggests 'people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.'
Link to FOX News main article (you can find the rest):
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/09/06/obama-green-jobs-adviser-van-jones-resigns-amid-controversy/
No mention of vetting or what Obama knew, just that Van Jones didn’t read the 9/11 petition carefully enough to know what he was signing.
***
Give me a friggin’ break - this from a Yale Law graduate ???
The NYT, WaPo, and ABC are somewhat concerned that one day they may be caught in a pile of steaming excrement needing to backpedal with their bare hands, so they are only up the President’s backside as far as the upper rectal area.
All of the rest of the papers and channels are so far up in Obama’s large intestine that there may not be a way out for them from any angle.
Great job, thanks
Low level and no vetting! How many billions was he in charge of?
I thought the same thing earlier today.
During the presidential campaign last fall, the nation's economic meltdown swamped any attempts by Republicans to portray Obama as having radical associations with figures such as his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
Some conservatives, such as Fox's Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, have argued that Jones, an outspoken Bay Area black activist who once described himself as a communist, fit the same pattern.
Of course, it wasn't only the financial meltdown that KO'd attention to Obama's radical associations. It was the media cheerleading and the refusal of McCain to press the issue. The article concludes with the thought that all will be well when health care is passed, but still, at least a tiny glimmer of reality might be dawning for the non-Marxists in the media.
Exactly, and that is why this is about the MSM just as much as it is about Obama himself.
Obama has shown himself to be very thin skinned. He can’t keep his mouth shut when he or his policies are criticized. That’s why his mug is always on TV. Against the advice of his staff, he kept the Gates controversy brewing for days when he could have just let it drop.
By throwing people under the bus continually rather than ignoring the criticism, he keeps the stories alive and forces the DBM to explain what happened.
Are we supposed to be upset by being called "A$$hole" by an a$$hole. Sorry, Charlie...doesn't bother me one iota.! OTOH...
Are we supposed to believe that the totally inept "crackhead" POTUS (their description of Bush) was able to-- in only 8 months-- engineer and bring off a plan to fly two planes into the WTC and bring them down?
These radical Marxist a$$holes are also delusional!
I think Bernie Goldberg’s next book should be titled, “The Story Not Told...Until Now,” and expose the MSM and the people surrounding O.
Remember, this is NOT about the MSM. This is about Obama. The golden boy, the annointed one, the Messiah who can go no wrong, has now shown some incompetence in vetting his people.
You did a thorough job of proving that "the MSM" and Obama are joined at the hip, and now you say it is "not about the MSM?"That doesn't work. I certainly agree that it is about Obama - but whether you are at war with the "MSM" or not, it is at war with you. And your article shows that you have to know it.
I do not say that there is anything wrong with freedom of the press, to the contrary it is something that we should try again. We haven't had a free press since the Associated Press was instituted in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. The AP makes all its members part of the same union, destroying any ideological competition among them (squabbles among editorial pages notwithstanding). And that is why the AP is our enemy.
Here is what I mean when I say this is not about the media.
We need to focus on exposing the radical communists around Obama and join them to him, to deprive him of the support of the moderate people in the USA. When he loses their support, he will not be able to pass his communist agenda.
So I am talking about fighting a specific battle, and that is the one Glenn Beck is fighting by trying to educate people about Obama’s radical communist inner circle.
I am saying, let us focus on this golden opportunity to keep the pressure up on him and keep him on the defensive so he is reacting and not pushing his agenda, and deprive him of public support.
So it is not about going after the media at this time, unless you have ideas about how to make them report accurately on these issues. I don’t. The alternate media is going around them and their audiences are plunging. I see the MSM being less relevant as time goes on, and more people seeking out internet news from a myriad of sources.
This specific episode of Van Jones being forced out of the Obama administration is not about the MSM. We know they are biased and we know they will be useless and even combative. This is about keeping the pressure on the president. It is about forcing him to answer the question Glenn Beck wants him to answer:
Why did his close adviser, Valerie Jarrett, recruit a radical communist? Why are there so many other radicals surrounding Obama? If Van Jones wasn’t vetted and got through, how can we depend on his vetting at all? Shouldn’t he allow congress to re-vet all of his czars?
Etc. Stay no point.
I think there's no doubt that Obama can be a softer target than the Associated Press, but IMHO there is the outside possibility that the AP can be taken down (at least a notch or two) in court. Because at least according to one web site, the AP was held to be a monopoly by SCOTUS back in 1945. And there is a fundamental disjuncture between the principles of the Constitution - freedom and equality before the law - and the principles of the AP, which are that the only political discourse which matters happens in the pages of the members of the AP, and that nonmembers have no communication rights worth respect.We are up to our hips in the alligators from the Obama Administration, but the ultimate problem is the journalism monopoly which is the wire services generally and the AP in particular. I'm afraid we'll be stuck playing whack-a-mole indefinitely unless we defeat McCain-Feingold and the rest of the nonsense which proceeds from the assumption by the sheeple that "all animals are equal - the associated press animals are more equal.
I have an idea that I have posted before:
Conservatives in Congress need to start offering Amendments such as:
1.) No person in the executive branch, described as a “czar” by the President, will have the power to hire or fire anyone in the Federal Government.
2.) Every Cabinet Secretary, after having been confirmed by the Senate, will have the power to fire anyone in the Executive Branch who has ANY “czar” type responsibility in any particular branch of government. If that decision runs counter to the opinion of the President, that Cabinet Secretary shall STILL have the power to fire that “czar” and the President is, hereby, put on notice that the firing of ANY Cabinet Secretary, for such action, will automatically prompt a Congressional oversight hearing, and the President will NOT be able to fill that vacant Cabinet post until Congress is convinced that all problems have been corrected.
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