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/
Beyond that, it is the MSM playing propaganda arm for the DNC as it spins and obfuscates and covers for the communist it so dearly loves. Thank God for the internet, radio and Fox News.
It makes no sense to post a link so I am just going to link to FreeRepublic so my post is accepted. Hope that works.
Sorry folks, looks like I screwed up my links, which I thought would self html.
So here are the links to the above articles:
WASHINGTON POST:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/09/06/van_jones_resigns.html
CHICAGO TRIBUNE:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-us-obama-adviser-resigns,0,7496882.story
LOS ANGELES TIMES:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/09/obama-adviser-van-jones.html
USA TODAY
USA Today links to “Politico” article:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26809.html
WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Link to ABC News website:
Link to NBC News:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32712017/ns/politics-white_house/
Link to CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/06/politics/main5290652.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.6
Link to CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/06/obama.adviser.resigns/index.html
Link to FOX News main article (you can find the rest):
I think all these make Obama/Jones look bad.
On Fox News tonight, I think it was Bill Crystal who pointed out that the White House BRAGGED about getting this guy, and that the WH KNEW, full well, who Van Jones was.
I posted a thread with is a technical vanity, but it is a compilation of articles on the Van Jones story from various sources.
To achieve this, I had to embed all of the links in the body and in a post below (to get them to work) so I ended up just linking the URL back to FreeRepublic.
My point is, I used very brief excerpt and summaries. The news sources are The Washington Post, the NY Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and FOX News.
I just want to make sure I did not violate any of the copyright rules of the forum, and I am requesting if I have, please edit my post as needed. My excerpts are very brief and sometimes summaries and I am not aware that I violated any of the forum excerpting or linking rules. I would appreciate your confirming that.
Thank you.
The ABC comments were from Jake Tapper, who is the only person in the White House press corps to call it like it is.
Why in the world shouldn't Republicans be doing this? These are people that could have a major effect on legislation, yet they have not been vetted in the least. Frankly, shame on the media for simply rolling over and not doing their own homework on these guys. But this isn't a surprise, of course.
I see no problem. Good job!
Good job, thanks for posting!
I agree. And may I add, Well Done Glenn Beck!
Good job!!
BTTT !!
Not a single other news source will admit to that truth. A few blame poor vetting while the rest ignore the question entirely.
Glenn Beck has asked the question “Did Obama know about Van Jones radical communist background or is he ignorant about all the radical czars surrounding him?”
This is the fulcrum that Beck is going to beat on, and correctly. This is not about Van Jones. This is all about Obama surrounding himself with radical communists. The die has now been cast, as a few of the MSM sources covering for him are calling it a matter of bad vetting. So that is going to be the “official” reason.
As Glenn Beck and Rush, Hannity, Savage, FOX and all the rest begin to expose more and more radical communists surrounding Obama, he is going to look very stupid for having not vetted these dozens of personal advisors so close to him and he will look incompetent.
Obama chose the right way to go. He could not admit “OK you caught me. I’m a communist and I’m trying to move the USA there and here is my army to do it.” He had to throw Van Jones under the bus with a “oops, we didn’t vet this obscure underling.”
Now Obama is trapped. As more and more radicals are exposed close to him, he is going to have to start explaining why he missed so many of them being unvetted, and that will lead to the obvious question, “Mr President, how could you recruit so many radical communists? Just coincidence?”
Some Congressmen are already calling for vetting his remaining czars and advisers, based on Van Jones “slipping through”. This is the opening the Republicans in Congress need to out the other czars. “Mr. President, if Van Jones wasn’t competently vetted, you better let us vet the others competently so we can be sure you don’t have any other accidental radical communists slip through.”
Obama is trapped. Check and mate.
If the Republicans are aggressive enough at this, it puts Obama on the defensive and he has to abandon even pursuing socialized medicine until he can get through the entire process of vetting all of his advisors.
Not that this will happen automatically. The Republican Senators and Congressmen have to demand this, with the help of the public demanding this. The Republicans need to go on the offensive immediately and demand that the backgrounds of all of Obama’s czars be rechecked, on the suspicion that others may have oops slipped through. If Obama didn’t vet this czar, then it stands to reason there are others he didn’t vet either, and so the Congress is right to demand it. If Obama refuses, then he is caught in “what are you trying to hide, Mr. President? Are you saying you know there are others who can’t pass being vetted?”
Check and mate.
Gotta love how the media blames “poor vetting” by the Obama Administration, while they themselves did no vetting of Jones at all (or, if they did, failed to report their findings).
I always fear that the Republican are just the other side of the coin. Remember, when they hold power over a socialist USA, it is still their power over us. So I don’t see them fighting too hard.
We need true conservatives and there are damn few among the Republicans who are.
Your point is spot on, of course. Why aren’t the Republicans fighting to get back power by exposing who Obama’s radical communist character and agenda. Does Hillary still have those 900 FBI files? I would like to see the Republicans get a spine and fight for their return to power. This is a golden opportunity. Come out swinging, only they have to have FACTS. Hard facts. Not innuendo or leads. Beck exposed Van Jones on the hard facts.
My fear is the country club republicans don’t want to be kicked out of the clubhouse.
Thank you. I sought to not violate your policies or create trouble.
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.
Glenn Beck has nailed him down. He had to either reveal his communist character or show his incompetence at vetting his advisors. He chose incompetence. That is now the angle of approach. Who else did he incompetently fail to vet and how many radical communists infiltrated his administration as a result of sloppy or negligent vetting?
You and I know he was intentionally recruiting communists so as to transform the US government into a socialist body. Now he has been caught at it. He has chosen to look incompetent rather than reveal it, and it is this opening that Republicans and conservatives at every level must seize. “Who else did you fail to vet. We’ll do that for you just to be sure”. As more radical communists are revealed close to him, the public will start to ask why and how this could happen. It won’t be his downfall, but he could lose support among the wishy washy middle and independents that he needs to implement his communist agenda.
If the Republicans get off their butts and seize this opening, Obama will be the one on defense instead of the Republicans, and they could turn this into many picked-up seats in 2010. But they have to do in deep. They have to demand to vet all the czars and they have to expose all the communists and the crazies therein. They don’t even have to call on Obama to fire them. All they have to do is reveal them for the people to see. That would be enough. Guilt by association.
Glenn Beck hammered home the point that Obama said, “judge me by those around me”. Well, lets expose them and judge them. The Republicans need to vet every single one of Obama’s advisers. Every one. Do they have the constitutional authority? I have no clue. But if Obama refuses to let them, they can play the “what are you hiding from the American people, Mr. President”. Not checkmate, but certainly, “check”.
It is time for the Republicans to start playing offense and not just reacting to the avalanche of socialist legislation and policies Obama and Pelosi have been drowning them with.
My hat is off to Mr. Tapper. He showed no fear of his fellow newsmen. I didn’t think I would ever see anyone in the MSM use the words Communism, Marxism and Leninism to label a Democrat, let alone one of Obama’s inner circle.
Wow, we have an actual JOURNALIST at ABC. Just when I thought journalism was completely dead, one appears. Very cool.
[”Jones’s position did not require Senate confirmation, so he avoided the kind of vetting Cabinet officials were subjected to.”]
Oh, now that they have finally brought the subject up, doesn’t our “watchdog” press consider Barak Obama’s position important enough for him to be subject to the kind of vetting that his Cabinet officials were subjected to?
When I applied for even a job as a low level engineer I had to produce college transcripts. For a low level security clearance one has to produce a real birth certificate.
We know that Van Jones matriculated through Yale, even if it was, as he has acknowledged, a boolsheeatt program. But this Obama character! Was he even born? Maybe he was hatched from an egg. It’s beginning to appear that we’ll never know for sure.
Keep working at it, watchdog press. Let us know as soon as you find something. The suspense is killing us.
I think that your last post only further serves to point out that it is as much about the MSM’s failure to honestly report Obama’s radical connections as it is about Obama’s radical connections themselves.
There is no way Obama could have been elected with an honest media. In fact, there is no way Bill Clinton could have. It took 60 minutes to save his candidacy and have Hillary “stand by her man”.
The MSM is the DNC. They are one and the same. At least, they are a propaganda arm of the DNC. But the time has past for how Obama seized power. The problem now is how to stymie him — expose him — drain his popular support so he cannot push through his socialist agenda. We need to pick up a lot of Republican seats and get back either the House or the Senate. In the meantime, he has AT LEAST 15 more months with a willing legislature to keep ramming his agenda through, and possibly 39 more months.
We need to stymie him in the meantime and that means exposing his radicalism so as to drain his popular support.
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