Thursday, July 02, 2009

Hopey! Changey! and Transparency!! (updated)

Following a testy exchange during today’s briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

Easy answer to the question: no, they don't think you're their puppets; in many cases they KNOW it. You, earlier, and so many other members of the press have been so far in the tank for Obama that they knew they wouldn't have problems controlling the press; now you've decided you don't like it? Where the hell were you and some of the other "Do they think we're puppets?" people during the election? And up till now? Hell, an awful lot of you are STILL so far up his butt they need air piped in; so why shouldn't they think you're a puppet?

Generally speaking, I dislike Thomas greatly; it's nice to see her actually saying something about the Obama tactics.
Update: found this at Ace:
The president called randomly on three audience members. All turned out to be members of groups with close ties to his administration: the Service Employees International Union, Health Care for America Now, and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee. White House officials said that was a coincidence.
Coincidence. Yeah. These people are all going to have noses so long...

Speaking of,
"I want to emphasize that the president has not seen the questions ahead of time, absolutely not,” Jarrett said at a “town-hall’’ styled forum on healthcare reform today at the Annandale, Va., campus of Northern Virginia Community College.
...
The president’s staff chose the questions - the first from a woman with her hand up and aides pointing at her.
Naw, no way he could have known what was coming...



These interventions (ongoing since 2007) have “systematically violated the letter and spirit of the Inspector General Act,” according to Sen. Grassley. IG staffers now fear retaliation – and with good reason. Their boss, Weiderhold, lost his job on the very day Amtrak received the Willkie, Farr & Gallagher report. It may be hot and humid in the rest of the Beltway, but every inspector general’s office is feeling an Arctic chill.

The transparent sacking comes just as Amtrak is awash in more than $1.3 billion of new federal stimulus funds. It comes on the heels of the unceremonious dismissal of Gerald Walpin, the AmeriCorps inspector general who dared to probe financial shenanigans by Obama cronies. (See “Obama’s AmeriCrooks and cronies scandal,” June 17, 2009.) And it comes on the heels of the stifling of veteran Environmental Protection Agency employee Alan Carlin, the researcher who dared to question the Obama administration’s conventional wisdom on global warming. (See “EPA’s game of global warming hide-and-seek,” June 26, 2009).

Question the timing? You betcha
.
...
...Amtrak’s vice president and general counsel is Eleanor Acheson.

Acheson, an old friend of Hillary Clinton, also has close ties to Vice President Joe “Mr. Amtrak” Biden. She hired Biden’s nominations counsel Jonathan Meyer to serve as her deputy general counsel. The two had also worked together in the Clinton Justice Department. Meyer called his hiring at Amtrak by Acheson a “happy coincidence,” according to Legal Times. (In another “happy coincidence,” Biden’s lobbyist son, Hunter, sits on Amtrak’s board of directors.) Acheson oversees the very Law Department accused of interfering repeatedly with the taxpayer advocates in the inspector general’s office.

...They zeroed in on Amtrak’s choice of Lorraine Green to replace “retired” IG Weiderhold. (Click here for their letter to Amtrak Chairman of the Board of Directors Tom Carper.)

Who is Lorraine Green? She’s a former Amtrak human resources executive and faithful Democrat donor with no experience in the inspector general business. Her expertise? Managing “diversity initiatives” for the agency. Watchdog out. Lapdog in.

I guess all this HOPE! and CHANGE! counts as Chicago Transparency!!: "You don't see this, or else."

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