Mitt Romney is under fire for an ad he released in New Hampshire after it became known that the spot contained an out of context quote by President Obama. The media didn’t hesitate to pounce on the error and of course liberal stalwart and former MSNBC employee Cenk Uygur was quick to note the contextual discrepancy. On the November 23 rd 2011 of The Young Turks, Uygur expressed his outrage: The main lie in the ad when they quoted Obama saying, “If we keep talking about the economy we’re going to lose.” Now, you want to know what the reality is? That was Obama in 2008 quoting a John McCain advisor. The early part of that sentence which they cut out of the video was, “a John McCain advisor says if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose. So you could not quote him more out of context. That is an absolute lie Obama did not say that about his own campaign…it’s the exact opposite of what the reality is. And Uygur was right. The line was taken completely out of context and should never have made it to air. Uygur’s outrage is rather disingenuous, however, when you consider one of his previous experiences with context in political campaign ads. If we think back on the most egregious cases of “out of context” quoting in recent history, Former Florida Congressman Alan Grayson’s ‘Taliban Dan’ ad from 2010. If you’ll remember, this is the ad in which Grayson quoted opponent Daniel Webster at a church function saying, “Wives submit yourself to your husband” and “she should submit to me, that’s in the bible”. The full context of the quotes , however, clearly show’s that Webster was specifically saying NOT to quote those passages in the bible. At the time, Grayson took a considerable amount of flak for the ad except for one person who had nothing but praise, Cenk Uygur. Take a look at this clip of Uygur calling Grayson’s ad a “show of strength” on September 27th of 2010: Looks like Cenk was for full context before he was against it. On a side note, congratulations to Current TV on it’s acquisition of Cenk . Considering his consistency issues, I’m sure that’s going to work out as well as his tenure at MSNBC. Update 11:08am: Lee Doren points out to me that Cenk later pulled a mea culpa on his praise of the Grayson ad saying that Grayson was right on the substance of Dan Webster’s positions but that he was ”Breitbarting it” with the editing. Credit where it’s due.
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Cenk Uygur’s Context Problem
I had to laugh at New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessore’s tweet this morning promoting an article by his colleague Jackie Calmes on Obama’s “new, more combative” tone on his West Coast fund-raising swing. Snortalicious : The Fishwrap of Record does its best to sell the illusion that only now is Chicago bully boy Obama taking his gloves off. From the piece : President Obama on Sunday criticized not only the Republicans vying to defeat him but also their party’s conservative base – symbolized by the audiences at recent candidate debates — in a busy day of four West Coast fund-raisers to collect money and rally dispirited Democratic donors. In Woodside, Calif., an affluent community between San Francisco and San Jose, Mr. Obama hit his stump-speech theme that the 2012 election will be “a contest of values,” and then suggested that some in his audience might well be former Republicans “puzzled by what’s happening to that party.” “I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately?” he asked. Referring to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who has sought federal aid to fight wildfires caused by a prolonged drought, Mr. Obama said: “You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change. It’s true. You’ve got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don’t have health care and booing a service member in Iraq because they’re gay.” “That’s not reflective of who we are,” Mr. Obama said. “This is a choice about the fundamental direction of our country.” Obama advisers in the past have said he does not watch Republicans’ debates. But by his remarks, Mr. Obama showed he is well aware that a recent string of debates produced moments in which reactions from audiences of Tea Party sympathizers became as widely discussed afterward as anything the candidates said – prompting some of the candidates to distance themselves later from the expressions of intolerance or hardheartedness. Besides the episodes Mr. Obama cited, at another debate the loudest applause came at the mention of the numerous executions Mr. Perry has sanctioned. To the relief of many Democrats, Mr. Obama has become more assertive lately in attacking Republicans and drawing contrasts with them. The Hill has a similar story here on the supposedly stepped-up attacks on the GOP. First quick point: So a few stray hecklers at GOP debates are representative of the entire Tea Party, but the Teamster who warmed up Obama’s Labor Day rally crowd in Detroit by urging them to “take these son of a b*tches out” warrant and the Democrats who keep heckling Republicans and Tea Party activists with suicide bomber smears and all the other Big Labor thugs threatening profanity-laced violence against Republicans somehow no comment from the civility police at the White House? Double standards — it’s what’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the Obama 2012 talking points menu. Now, let’s dispense with this idea that Obama has been a wallflower when it comes to attacking Republicans, shall we? A handy little reminder from my November 3, 2010 column : On the eve of a historic midterm election upheaval, President Barack Obama tried to walk back his gratuitous slap at Americans who oppose his radical progressive agenda. “I probably should have used the word ‘opponents’ instead of ‘enemies’ to describe political adversaries,” Obama admitted Monday. “Probably”? Here is an ironclad certainty: It’s too little too late for the antagonist-in-chief to paper over two years of relentless Democratic incivility and hate toward his domestic “enemies.” Voters have spoken: They’ve had enough. Enough of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner’s rhetorical abuse. Enough of his feints at bipartisanship. Whatever the final tally, this week’s turnover in Congress is a GOP mandate for legislative pugilism, not peace. Voters have had enough of big government meddlers “getting things done.” They are sending fresh blood to the nation’s Capitol to get things undone . Just two short years ago, Obama campaigned as the transcendent unifier. “Young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans have sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of red states and blue states,” he proclaimed . “We have been and always will be the United States of America.” It’s been an Us vs. Them free fall ever since. “We don’t mind the Republicans joining us,” Obama taunted a few weeks ago. “They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back .” “They’re counting on young people staying home and union members staying home and black folks staying home ,” the fear-mongering agent of hope and change jeered on the campaign trail last month. “ You would think they’d be saying thank you ,” he sneered last April, when millions turned out for the nationwide Tax Day tea party protests. “ I want them just to get out of the way ” and “don’t do a lot of talking,” he scoffed in response to prescient critics of the federal trillion-dollar stimulus boondoggle. In addition to labeling GOP opponents of his open-borders policies “enemies” who needed to be “punished” by Latino voters, Obama accused them — that is, us — of lacking patriotism. “ Those aren’t the kinds of folks who represent our core American values ,” he told viewers of the Spanish-language network Univision. Democratic leaders have taken their cue from Team Obama’s persistent politics of polarization. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called vocal citizens who protested the federal health care takeover bill during the town hall revolts of 2009 “ un-American ,” too. Remember? “These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American,” Pelosi and Hoyer blasted in an op-ed piece for USA Today last summer. “Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.” This from the woman who called for a vengeful government investigation of grassroots opponents of the Ground Zero mosque. Obama’s pal Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, whom the president hailed as an “ outstanding ” member of Congress, accused Republicans of wanting elderly people to “die quickly” and of presiding over a “holocaust in America.” Vice President Joe Biden hailed Grayson as a “guy who doesn’t back away from a fight, and doesn’t back down from what he believes in” and told him at a fundraiser: “We owe you one, buddy.” No mention of Grayson’s smear of a female Federal Reserve adviser as a “ K Street whore.” In California, entrenched incumbent jerk Pete Stark derided immigration enforcement activists at a town hall by asking: “Who are you going to kill today?” To an elderly constituent who opposed the health care bill, Stark retorted: “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn’t be worth wasting the urine.” As voters who have been maligned by the ruling majority as stupid, unwashed, racist, selfish and violent headed to the polls Tuesday, Democrats released “talking points” attacking Republican leaders who “are not willing to compromise.” But “no compromise” is exactly the message that un-American Americans delivered to Washington this campaign season: No more compromising deals behind closed doors. No more compromising bailouts in times of manufactured crisis. No more compromising conservative principles for D.C. party elites. No more compromising the American economy for left-wing special interests. No more compromising transparency and ethics for bureaucratic self-preservation. Let us be clear, in case it hasn’t fully sunk into the minds of Obama and the trash-talking Democrats yet: You can take your faux olive branch and shove it. Thank you. Tim Carney notes this morning that “Liberals always operate on the assumption that they haven’t won [because the] other side is “tougher.’” That, and the corollary assumption that when they lose, it’s because stupid voters don’t understand that their blame-avoiding demagoguery is good for America — and simply need to have the message pummeled into their heads more clearly. Like I always say: Hope and Change came to the White House wrapped in brass knuckles. Same old, same old. *** Speaking of stupid, Drew M. hits back at Obama’s insipid attack on Rick Perry, the Texas fires, and global warming. Obama snarked at a high-dollar fundraiser in San Jose: “You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change.” And we’ve got a voo-doo president exploiting natural disasters and shilling unreality-based junk science: Add this to the pile of, “Imagine if a Republican had used a tragedy in a blue state for political gain column”. Of course it won’t get the same play because the MFM is in Obama’s pocket and many reporters/editors/producers probably agree with him. Also, at this point, no one actually expects Obama to be anything but a classless son of a bitch. Someone should tell Professor of Climate Change Obama that the most recent major fires in Bastrop County, TX were caused by wind gusts knocking trees into power lines. Does “climate change” cause wind now? Trees to grow too tall? Of course it does all of that, it does EVERYTHING! Also, someone might want to clue Obama in that that wildfires aren’t exactly a new thing . And Obama has the gall to claim he represents “fact-based America.”
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Obama’s “new, more combative” tone…same as the old tone
Last fall, Florida Rep. Alan Grayson tumbled from the heights of his progressive pedestal when voters refused him reelection, ostensibly fed up with his outlandish and often crude, childish rhetoric. While Republicans celebrated Grayson’s demise, Anthony Weiner soon took up the mantle as the Democrats’ resident nut, soaring to viral status on YouTube for his immature rants , combative interviews and bombastic attitude : Grayson’s gone and with news today of Weiner’s resignation , I can’t help but wonder — Who will fill the Dems’ crazy shoes?
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Farewell to Weiner
There are many conservatives who advocate for cutting all foreign aid as a means to trim the deficit. But what some might not realize is that doing so would also end another popular conservative staple — aiding Israel, as it is one of the top benefactors of U.S. foreign aid. That’s the point GOP Rep. Dan Webster (who beat out Alan Grayson in Florida last fall) was trying to make last weekend when he appeared on the local TV program “Good Life 45.” But Webster went a step further. He said that discontinuing help to Israel would mean “we lose God’s hand and we’re in big time trouble:” Here’s the transcript : WEBSTER: I believe God’s hand needs to be on this country. HOST: That’s right. WEBSTER: Some people have been talking about, every place I go, they bring up the issue foreign aid. I go, you can’t get rid of all foreign aid. Why? Because you ask them and they go, ‘yea we can’t do that.’ You take away the money from Israel? No. That’s something we can’t do. Do I like foreign aid? Sometimes, but not every time. Don’t like giving money to our enemies, but I love giving money to Israel. And so there’s a picture there that people realize that, we stop helping Israel, we lose God’s hand and we’re in big time trouble. HOST: That’s right. Webster’s comments, which have riled up the left, make sense when you realize he served for years as a pastor. For him, then, supporting Israel is not just a conservative position, but it is a religious one. But one doesn’t need to be religious to defend continued aid to Israel. For example, there are those who see Israel as a key ally in the Middle East, and it’s existence guarantees a stable partner in a very unstable area. What do you think? Do you Agree with Webster on Israel? customer surveys
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GOP Rep. Webster: If We Cut Aid to Israel We ‘Lose God’s Hand’
One eight hour, door-to-door journey ends, another begins… but fear not: the Jolt continues . Today, a nominee for the best column about Obama ever, Patty Murray’s bipolar attitude toward violent metaphors, and then this news item, which feels like a rerun from about two years ago… Maybe the Crowd Was Angry Because They Expected Emmanuel Lewis This phenomenon sounds familiar, only the parties have flipped : “A town hall meeting held in Orlando by U.S. Rep. Dan Webster degenerated into bedlam Tuesday, with members of the crowd shouting down the freshman Republican congressman and yelling at one another. It was the last of a series of town hall meetings Webster has hosted during Congress’ spring recess, which ends Monday. While the others were civil and largely uneventful, the 300 people at Tuesday’s meeting were so raucous they were scolded by a police officer to act “like grown people.”
**Written by Doug Powers This is even better than the time Alan Grayson got saved by military contractors . Big Peace sets the stage : Two women who traveled from Portland, Oregon to Cairo last week to participate in Code Pink’s latest Hamas-aid trip to Gaza ended up getting rescued by a big oil company–the kind Code Pink usually protests as killing the planet, when the leftist group isn’t hobnobbing with terrorists and undermining U.S. allies like Egypt. This happened sometime at the end of January. The Oregonian has more details : But Boyd, 55, was on a mission. With a girlfriend from Seattle, she planned to meet up in Cairo with members of Code Pink, a U.S.-based peace group, and then travel to Gaza to support Palestinian rights. “My anxiety was getting out of control,” Boyd said. “It was so packed — a smash of humanity. You could feel all the tension, with all these people trying to get out of Egypt.” They found a group of other Westerners and stayed with them. Turned out they were a group of Shell Oil employees who had chartered a flight out of Egypt. In the end, the two women left Cairo on that flight to Amsterdam. “We were treated like royalty,” Boyd said. Shell put the two women up in a hotel in the Netherlands, where they plan to stay until Wednesday when they have a flight home. They gladly accepted the help? So much for the courage of their convictions . No doubt these two whiffle-brained irony magnets will be quickly reimbursing Shell because they’ll never be able to sleep at night knowing they’ve accepted blood money and favors from an evil oil company… right? A couple of choice Code Pink oil protest photos are at this link . Warning: What has been seen cannot be unseen. (h/t Moonbattery and Big Peace ) **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
Although it’s hard to believe, your eyes aren’t fooling you: the New York Times really did publish a profile of disgraced outgoing Rep. Alan Grayson in today’s paper. And while the Florida Democrat takes shots at the GOP, he also lives up to his scratch-your-head reputation by taking some curious shots at his own party. Why? It’s not been liberal enough. The profile begins as expected. Grayson, who was beaten handily in November, calls incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) a “tool of special interest,” brushes aside Tea Party success as “bought and paid for by the enormously rich and the selfish,” and labels his GOP successor (who is a pastor) as a “bizarre fundamentalist.” But then the Times quickly turns the article to highlight Grayson’s friendly fire: [I]n a wide-ranging interview as his term drew to a close, he repeatedly aimed his artillery in an unexpected direction: toward his own party. Not for overreaching, in this age of hand-wringing over big government and creeping “socialism,” or for ideological purism. Instead, while surveying the wreckage of the November elections that cost him his seat and looking to the Congressional term ahead, Mr. Grayson posits that many Democrats have not been acting Democratic enough. “What did the environmentalists see over the last two years?” he asks as he lays out an example. “A proposed monumental increase in subsidies for nuclear power industry and offshore drilling.” Then there are gay voters: “What they got to see was a judge order that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ no longer be enforced and a Democratic president appeal that decision. That is what that constituency saw before Nov. 2.” But no Grayson profile would be complete without a glimpse into his governing strategy. Simply put, reward those who support your campaign. “If you want people to support you, then you have to support them,” he said. “You have to think long about what you did for people who voted for you, made phone calls for you, who went door to door for you.” His views and remarks throughout the interview, which a generous person might only call odd, didn’t stop the Times from giving him the similarly odd, and unsubstantiated, label of “darling of many on the left.” A better term, however, might be “joker,” if only because the Times emphasizes that Grayson likes to wear steal-toed cowboy boots, “the better to kick Republicans with, he jokes.” But also maybe because Grayson “earned renown for colorful floor speeches and elaborate props.” And while the profile seems to end with what might be considered by many as another joke, Grayson is actually quite serious when the the Times notes that he has not ruled out running for Congress again “if that’s what people want.” No joke. Read the entire profile. Author’s note: See our previous articles on Grayson here , including his devastating loss and some of his more “darling” comments.
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Yes, the New York Times Profiled Alan Grayson: ‘Darling of Many on the Left’
The important thing is, the Democrats who lost in the 2010 midterms are going out in a classy manner … Outgoing Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter implied the Chinese cost her re-election in November and secretly funneled money to help her Republican opponent Frank Guinta during a post-election interview with ABC News. “They’re in the halls of Congress everywhere,” Shea-Porter said in
