Author Archives: David Preiser (USA)

Jeremy Bowen’s Bias Revealed: Muslim Brotherhood "Conservative, Moderate and Non-Violent"

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Yesterday, As I See It posted a comment in the open thread about how Lyse Doucet gave a report on Radio 5 in which she gently sanitized the Muslim Brotherhood ( I can’t find a link to it right now, but if someone points to it I’ll add it here).  At one point, she apparently slipped up and said that Salafists are “extremists….er…..let me say strict….”  Oops, nearly tanked the Narrative there.  In any case, I was reminded of a post I saw by Jeremy Bowen back in February, where he said that the Muslim Brotherhood are “conservative, moderate and non-violent”.

WTF? I said to myself.  How can  they be both?  By definition one cannot be the other.  Any group calling for Shariah Law cannot be moderate. Yet Bowen saw no problem saying it.  However, somebody had a problem with it, as he stealth-edited it out quickly.  I failed to take a screenshot at the time, assuming News Sniffer would catch it if anything happened, but when I went back the next day, “moderate” had been removed, and News Sniffer had nothing.  So I gave up on it.

Fortunately,  I’ve just remembered the Wayback Machine.  Within a minute, I found this:

Why would he say such a thing?  Somebody pointed it out to him, and he or an astute BBC News Online sub-editor sent it down the memory hole.  Wake me up when a Beeboid says the same thing about the Tea Party movement.

If anyone still had a modicum of trust in Bowen’s reporting, it’s surely shredded to pieces now.  He’s obviously partisan, and not thinking clearly.  Defenders of the indefensible may dismiss this simply because it’s 10 months old, but I fail to see how that makes any difference.  Bowen truly believed it, and clearly meant to sanitize the Muslim Brotherhood so the license fee payers wouldn’t get too worried about them.  He’s not, so why should you be?  I’m sure his superiors at the BBC know all about what he really thinks, and simply don’t care.  Some of them may even agree with him. It’s irresponsible, not to mention delusional.  I’d say it’s impossible to trust his reporting on Egypt any longer. 

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Twitter Me This

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Ranting about biased Beeboid tweets has become something of a favorite past time around here recently, and deservedly so.  DB’s trap shooting in particular has provided some real gems, and several other people have brought biased tweets to our attention. The problem, though, is that, with one exception, ultimately the BBC employees revealing their bias remain unaccountable, unaffected by any controversy, and the biased behavior continues unabated.  They have no problem openly laughing at us.

We know that the official BBC guidelines abjure openly biased utterances on social media.  The catch phrase is “Don’t do anything stupid”.  They make a distinction between “official” Twitter accounts and personal ones.  Only the “official” ones (NB: pdf file), which require the approval of management and are allegedly monitored by a senior editor, are required to follow BBC guidelines of impartiality.  If we take a broad constructionist interpretation, this means that anything which is not strictly prohibited in the text would be permitted.  Thus, all those personal accounts can use the “opinions my own” disclaimer as a get-out-of-bias-free card, even though they openly state their positions at the BBC.  It’s pretty obvious that there’s a massive grey area here, and I seriously doubt that BBC management has spent much time trying to draw a line between them.

I have my doubts because we know from Mark Mardell’s appearance at the BBC College of Journalism that they accept that their use of Twitter “doesn’t follow BBC guidelines” (@36:45).   I don’t know how much more proof we need.

The reason I bring this up is because there’s been a highly relevant incident recently at the Washington Post.

Jennifer Rubin, the lone non-Left voice at the paper (she’s a blogger and not even a reporter or editor), recently retweeted a blog post by “Bad Rachel” about the release of Gilad Shalit, which was full of rather unfortunate anti-Palestinian vitriol.  There was naturally a backlash, and Patrick Pexton, the WaPo ombudsman, chose to publicly chastise Rubin for it.  He admits that he always gets a load of complaints that the paper even allows a conservative voice in its pages, which is pretty funny.  But what he said was instructive. Remember, this is about a mere retweet, and not somebody telling George Osborne to f@#$ off or calling for support for Occupy Wall Street:

But how responsible is Rubin for it? She didn’t write it. It did not appear anywhere in The Washington Post — online or in print. It appeared on Abrams’s independent “Bad Rachel” blog, and then Abrams broadcast it on Twitter.


Some readers suggested that because an employee retweeted this link, The Post somehow condones genocide against Palestinians. That’s nonsense. The Post’s journalism and its editorials show a deep commitment to human rights around the globe, from Russia to China, to North Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and beyond.


It’s also worth noting that the rules of objectivity that apply to editors, reporters and bloggers in The Post newsroom do not apply to Post opinion bloggers and columnists. Post opinion writers are given greater leeway to say what they want. That’s how it should be. If the opinion section were too politically correct, it’d be dull.

So we see here a distinction between columnists and opinion bloggers.  But is the BBC’s distinction between “official” Twitter accounts and the rest of them equally valid?  I would say not, as people like Matt Danzico and Mark Sandell and Jane Bradley are not opinion bloggers or op-ed writers for the BBC.  Yet they reveal their bias and, in the case of Bradley, seem to be proud of it.

The Washington Post ombudsman then lays out the official guidelines:

Social-media accounts maintained by Washington Post journalists — whether on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or elsewhere — reflect upon the reputation and credibility of The Washington Post’s newsroom. Even as we express ourselves in more personal and informal ways to forge better connections with our readers, we must be ever mindful of preserving the reputation of The Washington Post for journalistic excellence, fairness and independence.

He again points out that writers hired specifically for their personal opinions are not included in the “journalistic excellence and fairness” bit, but that their public behavior reflects on the credibility of the WaPo nevertheless.

With this example in mind, one has to ask if the BBC should similarly be concerned about how the constant stream of biased tweets from Beeboids from a number of different departments and job levels reflects on their credibility.  Does the “opinions my own” disclaimer really excuse all of it?  Does the Washington Post – a paper so biased that the previous ombudsman apologized for their pro-Obamessiah bias during the 2008 election, and the publisher had to apologize for trying to organize dinner parties at her own home to provide personal access to Administration officials – have more integrity than the BBC?  Unless they rein in this partisan behavior, I would have to say yes.

If nothing else, the sheer volume of biased utterances from the Left and the fact that there has yet to be a single example of a Beeboid tweet from the Right shows that the BBC is full of Leftoids, and the groupthink is endemic. Intellectual diversity at the BBC seems to be practically non-existent, and their public behavior with social media proves it.

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BBC Censorship: Billions Down The Green Toilet Edition

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Everyone here is by now well aware of the Solyndra scandal, where the deadly combination of campaign cash influence and the Warmist ideology of Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, led the White House to give over half a billion dollars to a solar energy company, owned by a top Democrat money man, which they knew was going to fail.  Several people (DB, John Anderson, and Cassandara King, to name a few off the top of my head) have posted comments about it over the last few months as the damning facts keep coming out, and I think it’s worthy of a full post.

The BBC has done exactly five reports on it (plus one brief mention during a Daily Politics segment on how government behavior might possibly drive up energy costs, and one even briefer mention in a story on Republican complaints about government spending).  Can’t say they’re censoring the Solyndra story, but it’s pretty poor reporting considering what they’ve left out. As far as I’m aware, the story has never made it to any of the flagship news-oriented programmes, and even these news briefs never seem to stay on the front US & Canada page very long, or get noticed in the Features & Analysis section.  In short, BBC News Online whips up a news brief every couple of weeks, and that’s about it.  Mark Mardell, the BBC US President editor, has never blogged about it, nor have any of the other correspondents dared bring it up.

But this problem is much more than just the one company.  The ideologically twisted Chu has thrown money at several failed or failing green energy companies, nearly all of which are connected to Democrats or Democrat campaign cash.  None of the battalion of Beeboids working on US stories has reported on any of them.  So now I’m going to tell you what the BBC doesn’t want you to know.

First, the money thrown down the Solyndra toilet was $535 million.  Even the BBC was forced to admit that the White House gave them the money even though they knew the firm wasn’t viable.  But notice that they censored the fact that the majority owner was the Kaiser Foundation, owned by one of the President’s top money men.  Since the subpoenas and Congressional investigation started, emails have come out showing that Kaiser was pressing the Administration for the money, even though they all knew the company was doomed from the start.  The best the BBC could do was admit that “a Democratic fundraiser warned that investors did not rate the chances of survival for the firm.”  They don’t want you to know – or, as difficult as this is to believe, felt that it was unimportant – that this particular Democratic fundraiser owned the company, and was the one pushing for the cash.

The House investigation is ongoing, and the most recent BBC report on it framed it as a strictly partisan affair, reporting that voting to subpoena the White House records on the loans was “along party lines”.  Pathetic.  So the BBC has massively played down any possibility of cronyism or political reasons for the loans, and tried to paint the investigation into this fraud as partisan behavior by Republicans.  The BBC’s coverage is mostly from the White House perspective.  The BBC has also censored news that the White House told Solyndra to postpone layoffs until after the November mid-term elections.

But as I said, this is just the tip of the Green Iceberg.

SolarReserve got $737 million.  That company part-owned by a firm run by Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law. Oh, and partners with another Kaiser Foundation company.  Cronier and cronier.  The company hasn’t gone bankrupt yet, but surely it’s only a matter of time.

SunPower, also in California, got $1.2 billion, thanks to lobbying from the son of a Democrat Congressman.  The company is now $820 million in debt, and rapidly heading down the green toilet.

Abound Solar, mostly owned by Democrat donor billionaire Pat Stryker, got $400 million.  So far, it seems the company hasn’t done much more than count the money.

Granite Reliable Wind Generation got $169 million.  That company is owned by CCMP Capital (NB: pdf file, pg. 29).  A former Managing Director of CCMP is none other than White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Nancy-Ann DeParle.  She was also head of the ObamaCare communications department back when the President was pushing for it.

The National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado got $200 million from Steven Chu. A top Democrat Congressman from Colorado works with them (whatever that actually means).  It’s now failing.


Beacon Power in Massachusetts, who were supposed to be building storage devices to make the highly inefficient wind turbines more viable, has gone bust.  They got $43 million of taxpayer cash, now down the green toilet.  Beacon was first brought to the government’s attention by Democrats: Sen. John Kerry and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.  Beacon is a spinoff of Satcon Technologies, who are cozy enough with the Democrats that they provided a fuel cell power plant for the 2004 Democrat National Convention.  That’s the one where John Kerry was the nominee.  Say no more.

Evergreen Solar got $5.3 million and SpecraWatt got $500,000 of that Stimulus money the BBC was so enthusiastic about.  That cash wasn’t directly from the Dept. of Energy, although it was from local authorities handing out Stimulus money allocated to them.  Both firms are now bankrupt.

Last, but certainly not least, is BrightSource, which got a whopping $1.4 billion in bailout funds from the Dept. of Energy. The principal investor is co-owned by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., co-conspiritor of Newsnight-trusted investigative advocate, Greg Palast. BrightSource was in deep financial trouble at the time, and the Dept. of Energy bailed them out.  The project for which it got the money is being led by NRG,

UPDATE:  I forgot to add that, while the NRG Political Action Committee sends campaign cash to both political parties, the majority of their cash goes to the Democrats.  Worse, the two top NRG bosses themselves seem to donate exclusively to Democrats.

To sum up:

Apparently something like 80% of the taxpayer cash doled out by The Obamessiah Adminstration to allegedly promote Green Energy and “green jobs” went to firms heavily involved with Democrats or Obamessiah campaign donors.  This adds up to nearly $4.7 billion thrown down the Green toilet, all for ideological and partisan reasons.  It’s a combination of irresponsible ideology and old-fashioned corruption.  Some may call it Venture Socialism, but I call it Crony Corporatism.  This is all hidden from you because it makes the President look bad. 

As the Solyndra investigation goes on, we’ll start hearing a lot more about this stuff, and the BBC will continue to hide it from you. I think the end result will be calls for Chu to step down. As the 2012 election looms and we approach next November, the President just might throw him under the bus. It’s not like this has been ignored by the press, either. The BBC figures this isn’t as important as Natalie Wood’s death or sexual abuse scandals in college football, or celebrity gossip.  But they won an award for their online coverage of the US, so what do I know?  Your license fee hard at work, I guess.  Still, one can only imagine what the BBC editorial decisions would be had this stuff happened while Bush was in charge.

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#OccupyFail: Three Occupiers Exercise Their Freedom of Speech by Bringing Mortars in Glass Jars

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The BBC will never report this, because their thought-leaders in the US media and Left-wing blogosphere won’t.

3 men claiming to be Occupy Portland protesters arrested in Marion County for possession of explosives

Inside the car, the deputy also found a number of firecrackers and two commercially made mortars inside glass canning jars, designed to be fired into the area during professional pyrotechnic displays. One was found in the floorboard of the vehicle, and the other was allegedly in Luff’s jacket.


The deputy also found two gas masks, protective eye goggles and a safety helmet. All three men told the deputy that they had spent the night at the Occupy Portland demonstration, and they brought the mortars and safety equipment to the demonstration in preparation of the expected confrontation between police and protesters Sunday morning.

The three had been at the demonstration during the confrontation Sunday morning and had left about an hour before the vehicle was stopped. During that confrontation, a police officer was injured by a firework, but the three men denied being involved in the incident.

When asked about the explosives, the three men told authorities that they knew the canning jar would explode, causing glass shrapnel to fly and possibly cause injury.

(emphasis mine)

A reminder of Mark Mardell’s partisan bias and hypocrisy:

Healthcare row gets physical?

We are used to terms like “Nazi” being bandied around in the health debate at overheated town hall meetings.

But a new way of persuading opponents has just emerged – biting off their finger.

It reportedly happened in California and the man took his detached little finger to a local hospital to be sewed back on.

I don’t yet know how he fares. But as we in the media are always on the look-out for real-life case studies to illustrate political debates, this seems ideal.

Did he have insurance and did it cover Severed Pinkie Syndrome?

As he was 65, was he covered by a government-run, taxpayer-funded scheme?

And can any Americans out there explain why this debate has got quite so heated?

Mardell can tut-tut about this non-story, and openly sneer at what he assumes to be the senior citizen’s own hypocrisy, simply because he disagrees with the victim’s political views.

Yet there has been utter silence from him and the BBC about all the violence and foul behavior by their darling Occupiers.  And all this while the BBC has increased spending and hiring for their US coverage.

#OccupyFail.  #BBCFail.

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The BBC’s Dishonest and Biased Questions For Republican Candidates

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Saturday night’s Republican candidates’ debate was on the topic of foreign affairs.  In that spirit, the BBC asked PJ Crowley, a former State Dept. flack, to come up with a list of what the media likes to call “3 am phone call” questions, after then-Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign ad that was critical about her opponent, when she was running for President, not being ready for major foreign policy decisions.  As this is the BBC handling a US issue, before we even get to the questions there’s a glaring bit of bias and dishonesty.

Right at the top of the page, next to his photo, the BBC describes Crowley as “Former US Assistant Secretary of State”.  Partially false.  He was actually the US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. The White House officially used that title for him,  In other words, he was a mouthpiece, not a policy wonk or actual diplomat.  His career has been entirely in Public Affairs, not actual policy making. Even CNN referred to him as “State Department spokesman”.  What’s that you’re saying? That CNN link reveals something else the BBC casually left out about Crowley?  You’re right.  They forget to mention that Crowley was fired for criticizing the unfriendly detention treatment of Pvt. Bradley Manning, the Wikihacker who stole all those documents and gave them to St. Julian to publish, in the hopes of harming US foreign policy goals.

The reason the BBC redacted the key part of Crowley’s title is to give you the impression that his opinion carries more weight than it should.  I have a screen shot in case of stealth edit.  So this piece is misleading even before it starts.  They even forgot to mention that Crowley worked for The Obamessiah Administration. So he’s partisan as well, but the BBC doesn’t want you to know about it.  Once again, a vox pops presented as an innocent commentator is anything but the way the BBC wants you to think. (They did mention it at the very bottom, which I missed. My thanks to Craig for pointing out my error)

Now for the questions.  I’m not a Republican candidate, but I’m going to answer them as if I were, just to highlight the bias.

Actually, before getting to the questions, just have a look at the sarcastic, dismissive way Crowley misrepresents the candidates’ various answers.  He even spends a moment belittling the candidates as being ignorant and bashing Bush (calling Musharaf his “BFF”).  So even before you get to the substance, you already know where this is coming from: an attack on the President’s opponents, full stop.

Okay, now the questions.

1. The IAEA this week says that Iran more or less knows how to build a nuclear weapon. Assuming when you become president, there is not yet evidence of an actual weapon, what will your policy be? Will you continue to contain Iran and add pressure through sanctions until it is clear Iran is constructing a bomb? Or are you prepared to act preemptively to prevent Iran from acquiring a weapon?

This is a “gotcha” question.  “Preemptively” can mean many things. It doesn’t have to mean bombing the crap out of Iran, which is what the question obviously implies.  Under my Administration, the US would only act “preemptively” if we had real proof that Iran was about to acquire an actual weapon, or had just acquired one.  But as I said, that can mean many forms of action, both covert and diplomatic, not just bombing the crap out of them, which is what you’re trying to catch me out saying.  So the question is designed for one particular answer, sorry you’re not going to get it.

2. The Bush administration invaded Iraq to eliminate suspected weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration negotiated an end to the Libyan WMD programme, one of its signature achievements. You all have strongly indicated that Iran should never gain a nuclear weapon. Is the ultimate solution to declare the Middle East a nuclear-weapons-free zone, as called for under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

That’s a nice dig at Israel, isn’t it?  Let’s be honest about the subtext of your question.  When you say the “Middle East” as a region, that includes Israel, which is the only country so many people on the Left and in the media are really worried about.  How many times have we heard the whining about hypocrisy in allowing Israel to have nukes but not wanting Iran to have them.  Please rephrase the question more honestly.  Still, such a treaty in that region is sheer fantasy anyway, and not because Israel has secret nukes.

3. Most of you have said that Libya was not a vital interest to the United States and that you would not have militarily intervened. Does that mean you would have preferred leaving Gaddafi in power? If not, then why was Obama wrong?

On this issue, my position was different from that of most of these candidates.  Libya is a vital interest to the US because of the threat of Islamic fascism taking over if Gaddafi was removed.  I think we all know by now that’s what’s going to happen.  But that means the President was wrong to sit on his hands until Secretary of State Clinton and her staff had to convince him that it wasn’t working, and that he was going to continue to butcher his people and plunge his country into chaos.  That’s never good for US interests. Plus, there’s always an economic component to vital national interests: if Libya ends up being a reasonable, stable country on the road to prosperity, that can only be good for everyone. Since the question of military intervention became moot once Britain and France and their coalition were going to do it anyway, it was in the US’s best interest to at least take the diplomatic lead with rebels and any other potential new leadership faction.  That didn’t happen.  We sat on our hands out of fear of the usual complaints of US Imperialism. And look where it got us?  Another potential Mullocracy.  That’s not good for US vital interests.

4. President Bush achieved regime change in Iraq, but at a cost of about $800bn (£502bn). President Obama’s intervention in Libya, achieving a similar result, cost just over a billion. Keeping in mind our current financial situation, as President, what are the lessons learned from both experiences?

Total apples and oranges here.  Regime change in Libya was due to a whole host of factors, only one of which was US strategic bombing.  There was no rebel army waiting to move against Sadaam.  There are huge geographical and tactical differences between the two countries.  There was no Arab Spring-type scenario going on in the region at the time.  The only lesson to be learned here is that this question reveals a willful cluelessness and that the questioner has an agenda to push.

5. If the deficit super-committee fails, defence will take an even bigger hit than the roughly $430bn already planned. Congress may delay sequestration until after next year’s election. In 2013, are you prepared to enact deeper defence cuts to balance the budget? If not, please explain how, if Ronald Reagan could not raise defence spending, lower taxes and balance the budget, results would be different in your administration?

Another apples and oranges question revealing cluelessness and an agenda to push.  Under my Adminstration, there will be all sorts of cuts and reform that will mean we won’t have to decimate Defense.  Repealing ObamaCare alone with save nearly enough money to render this question moot. Furthermore, reducing the Departments of Education, Energy, and Health to shadows of their current selves, along with a complete dismantling and redefining of the EPA will save tens of billions. Getting rid of the insane amount of regulations which harm small businesses and curtail most others will help increase revenues and growth.  Reagan had a completely different economic situation, and didn’t have the massive, sclerotic bureaucracies we have now.  It’s ridiculous to compare the two situations.

6. Will any troops be in Afghanistan in 2016? If so, doing what?

Who knows?  A million things could happen between now and then.  Nobody wants troops there just for the sake of it. Next!

7. You have all declared you are strong supporters of Israel. Are the foreign policies of the United States and Israel identical? If not, name one area where you believe Israeli actions are contrary to US interests. What will you do to encourage a change in Israeli policy?

Another dig at Israel.  One could just as easily say that the foreign policies of the US are virtually identical to those of Britain, France, Germany, South Korea, and Gambia. All those countries surely have one area where we disagree. This question is asked from the perspective that having very similar foreign policy goals to Israel is a problem.  Why?  Ask me a more honest question, and I’ll try to answer it.

(Remember, this anti-Israel mug was the Spokesman for the State Dept. No wonder so many people have been worried that The Obamessiah is going to throw Israel under the bus.)

8. Do you consider climate change a national security issue? If not, as president, what will you say to the president of the Maldives when he tells you that emissions of greenhouse gases by China and the United States threaten the very existence of his country because of rising sea levels?

Climate Change is only a national security issue in that all these draconian rules and regulations forced on us by Warmists are causing serious damage to the economy, and to those of our strategic allies.  If the President of the Maldives tells me that my country is dooming the existence of his, I’ll tell him he’s full of it and needs to find another way to get my country to redistribute wealth to his.

9. Some of you have indicated a willingness to militarily intervene in Mexico to control violence perpetrated by drug cartels. Those cartels are battling Mexican authorities using weapons purchased in the United States, including combat weapons like the AK-47. If the war in Mexico threatens the United States, should we on national security grounds first restrict the sale of combat weapons that cannot be plausibly tied to individual security before putting troops in harm’s way at significant cost?

The reason those drug cartels are using weapons purchased in the US is because the ATF made that happen.  How can you not be aware of this?  Operation Fast and Furious and the rest of it has lead to how many deaths now?  That whole scheme was created specifically to cause the exact trouble you’re now using to demand stricter gun control.  The current Administration has the blood of US border agents and hundreds of innocent Mexican civilians on its hands, and you’re asking me about stopping something that’s happening only because the current Administration made it so?  You bet I’ll stop it, but not what you’re hoping for. Unbelievable.

(Of course the BBC has misled the public on this issue, and engaged in suppressing news which might make you better informed. So they can get away with such an unbelievably, disgustingly biased question.)

10. Congress is considering legislation that would require all terrorism suspects to be tried in military rather than civilian courts. Do you support this legislation? If so, given the strong record of open trials and convictions in civilian courts, why do you think they are not the appropriate venue for at least certain kinds of terrorism cases?

 Yes.  We’re at war. Different ball game.

Thank you for having me here today.  Don’t trust the BBC on US issues.

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#OccupyFail: You Know Your Movement’s Over When….

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For Twitter fans, it’s a hashtag: #OccupyFail

Here’s just a sample of what the BBC doesn’t want you to know about their favorite US political movement.

A Petri Dish of Activism, and Germs

The chorus began quietly at a recent strategy session inside Zuccotti Park, with a single cough from a security team member, a muffled hack between puffs on his cigarette. Then a colleague followed. Then another.

Soon the discussion had devolved into a fit of wheezing, with one protester blowing his nose into the mulch between clusters of tents.  

“It’s called Zuccotti lung,” said Willie Carey, 28, a demonstrator from Chapel Hill, N.C. “It’s a real thing.”

Seems to be spreading. No headlice in NYC yet.

Future of Occupy Burlington encampment uncertain after police clear City Hall Park to investigate man’s death 

The city closed half of City Hall Park and put a halt to all camping at the Occupy Burlington site Thursday night while police investigate a shooting in a tent that cost a 35-year-old man his life. Meanwhile, the movement’s participants mourned a member of their community and planned the future of the encampment.

Just a day after the joyful spontaneity of a Gogol Bordello performance Wednesday night at City Hall Park, Thursday’s shooting that police believe may have been self-inflicted spiraled into a tense confrontation between Burlington police and some protesters over access to the park.

UPDATE: BBC News Online found a moment to acknowledge this story, plus that of the murder in Oakland.  Naturally it’s written in defense of the Occupiers, total sympathy, no effort spared to portray them in the gentlest of lights.  Naturally, the BBC continues to describe it as a “protest against corporate greed and income inequality”.  This is only partially true, and true mainly of the Union organizers and middle-aged and part-time hangers on, who are just your average Leftoids.  As I’ve shown previously, the real organizers and hard-core Occupiers want an end to what they think is Capitalism, and an end to the entire US system of government and rule of law.  That the BBC continues to deny this is not surprising, but still pathetic.

 Mostly Peaceful Occupy Portland Rape Policy: “Nobody Should Contact the Police”

Video at the link.  We keep hearing that the Occupy leadership (when the BBC said this was a leaderless movement, they were misleading you) try to dissuade their fellow campers from going to the police.  Much better to do what they’ve done in Zuccotti Park and set up a women-only anti-rape tent, I guess. 

Man found dead in Pioneer Park, Occupy SLC ordered to leave both camps

The police were already on hand, as they had to turn up earlier to quell a pre-dawn riot that broke out amongst the little darlings of the BBC.

Elite Berkeley Students Upset They’re in the 1%, Throw Occupy Tantrum:

A clique of privileged U.C. Berkeley students, upset that they’re the top 1% of elite students in the state and thus disqualified from participating in the Occupy movement, could no longer contain their frustration on Wednesday and threw an Occutantrum, attempting to “occupy” a few square yards of the 1,200-acre campus. The police dutifully played their roles in the street theater performance, showing up in riot gear and looking scary so the privileged students could shout at them and feel properly revolutionary, as instructed by their professors. Following the script, the police repeatedly removed the handful of occupation tents so that the students could feel sufficiently wronged by authority figures and thereby earn their “Berkeley protest stripes,” which have been a requirement for graduation since 1964.

 Harvard Keeps Occupy Harvard Harvard-Only

The Harvard iteration of the Occupy protests is ironically, appropriately, and unwillingly now the most exclusive Occupy protest in the country. Guards closed and locked the gates to Harvard Yard in the minutes leading up to the inaugural Occupy Harvard general assembly, meaning that the tent city now built in front of the John Harvard statue will be as exclusive as the university itself. Only people flashing Harvard IDs were allowed in the Yard for the 7 p.m. protest, and Harvard police officers stood sentinel into the night to keep the riffraff out.

UPDATE: Apparently they’re so dedicated to the cause they…um…all went home to mater and pater for the weekend.

 Occupy Oakland 11_02_11 shut down Burger King

Video at the link.


Occupy DC becoming increasingly violent, police say

Mayor Vincent Gray and D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier on Monday said the Occupy DC protesters have grown violent, and the police department will adjust its tactics to ensure the public’s safety.

 SoCal Street Cart Vendors Hurting After ‘Occupy’ Group Splatters Blood, Urine

Coffee cart owner Linda Jenson and hot dog cart operators Letty and Pete Soto said they initially provided free food and drink to demonstrators, but when they stopped, the protesters became violent.

Occupy Thugs Taunt Black Security Guard

In which there’s not so much of what Katty Kay said was the Occupiers’ “love of humanity”, but more calling a black man a “slave” and telling him he’s “no one’s brother”.

Head and Body Lice Outbreak Announced at #Occupy Portland Squatters Camp (Video)

After all this, hands up anyone who thinks the majority of Beeboids still support these people, and would join them if they could.  My vote is yes, they still do, which is why Simon Wilson and Matthew Davis don’t think you need to know about this stuff.

During the first week or two of the Occupy activity, the BBC swooped in and did a number of gushing, positive reports.  After establishing the Narrative, and satisfying themselves that they’d gotten the word out and made sure the license fee-payers understood the correct version of events, the Beeboids got bored and moved on to more viable pastures.  They’ve ramped up their coverage of the US, spent more money and hired more staff, and all you get is an endless series of lightweight video magazine segments (some of which helpfully promote the BBC’s Lonely Planet commercial interest – at your expense), the latest Republican candidate faux pas and declaration that Romney is the “real winner here”, Mark Mardell’s slipshod analysis, Jonny Dymond’s one-dimensional drivel, and assorted celebrity gossip.

Does anyone feel that any of this makes you better informed about what’s going on in the US?  Or is that not even the BBC’s goal?

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Jonny Dymond’s Biased Sob Story

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One of the battalion of Beeboids covering the US these days, Jonny Dymond, has just done an extremely one-sided collection of sob stories for Today about the struggles of the middle class.  He went to a couple of slowly dying cities in Connecticut to create his tapestry of woe, and his agenda is clear.

I say it’s one-sided not because there are tons of stories of rising successes for the middle class he could have provided in the interests of balance, but because of the way Dymond presents the situation in the first place.  Highly selective, and framed in a very narrow-minded fashion.  The whole story is presented as a case study in how the 2008 financial disaster and the subsequent recession has ravaged the middle class, the backbone of the US. But the agenda here is really to support the Occupiers’ cause.

Dymond starts out in a metal parts factory in Prospect, CT, where he wrings his hands over the plight of the workers.  They no longer get the guaranteed annual raises, or the constant overtime which pads the  regular paychecks of anyone on an hourly wage in any industry (especially including the public sector), so their American Dream, he opines, is on hold at best, and possibly even disappearing for good.
The factory boss also laments the plight of his employees.  But in the middle of all this, he casually mentions that Connecticut hasn’t actually has any net job increase in 20 years.  What does that have to do with 2008 or the recession?  He and one of his suffering employees also point out that the food prices and gas prices and taxes are going up and up, which makes things tough for those on an essentially fixed income.  Well, we can all guess what the standard BBC answer to that is:  they need pay rises.  Never mind that Connecticut ranks 47th in crushing taxes which hurt businesses and job growth.

The Tea Party movement – so disparaged by the BBC – wants to lower taxes, something that’s an anathema to Left-wingers like Dymond, so he doesn’t mention the idea. Nor does he mention that the Democrats who run the state recently enacted the largest tax increase in state history. (Over the last two decades, when the state wasn’t run by Democrats, it was run by Bush-style Big Government Republicans, the kind the Tea Party movement has been working to get rid of.) Dymond also better hope that none of these factory workers earn more than $50K pa, or have spouses earning a similar middle-class income, as the Democrats who run Connecticut recently raised state income taxes for both.  These aren’t even the “millionaires and billionaires” against whom the President often rails, either.

Food prices going up?  Even the Guardian admits that this is in large part due to the Warmists forcing biofuel down our throats, causing edible corn prices to skyrocket, which drives up everything else.  Who’s robbing the American dream here, Jonny?

One of those responsible is the Democrat former Senator, Chris Dodd, who was partially responsible for driving the mortgage crisis, and got a sweetheart deal from one of the failed sub-prime companies. Never mind all the campaign largesse he got from the industry.

One of the staples of the American Dream Dymond mentions is home ownership.  Well, he better hope none of his struggling middle class workers in Connecticut own homes these days, as the Democrats who run the state have made property taxes there 50% higher than the national average.  Sure, these geniuses think they’re doing to it soak the evil rich bankers and David Letterman who live within commuting distance of New York City, but the unintended consequence – as always in these cases – is that hurts the middle class most.  Dymond couldn’t be bothered to find this out, as it would detract from his Narrative.

If that’s not bad enough, they also just raised the state sales tax from 6% to 6.35% (still significantly lower than New York, but then New Jersey has no sales tax on retail good at all), and eliminated tax exemptions for all kinds of things which affect these middle class factory workers, like heating oil and the sacred property tax credit.  They even killed the tax exemption for products which help people quite smoking. At the same time, they jacked up taxes on cigarettes.  I hope none of those struggling factory workers smoke, or if they do they’re not thinking of quitting any time soon.  So much for the American Dream, eh, Jonny?  As we all know, and which the BBC has mostly kept from you, some states not controlled by Democrats have cut taxes and added jobs. Even New York, with the highest tax burden in the country, the Democrat Governor is trying to fix the budget without raising taxes. But that doesn’t help the Agenda, now, does it?  So don’t bring it up.

To tie it all together, Dymond goes to the city of Hartford to meet up with his darling Occupiers.  He manages to find one of them who hasn’t pulled a knife on someone.  This Occupier laments that we’ve all been lied to, that there’s no such thing as the American Dream.  What Dymond fails to realize is that this, just like the factory bosses’ statement about no net job growth for the last 20 years, also has nothing to do with the recent financial crisis and recession. This Occupier means that there has never been an American Dream available to everyone willing to work for it.  He’s not talking about a temporary rough time we need to fix at all.

This keeps happening with BBC reports on this issue.  On the one hand they say that the Occupy movement is inspired by anger at the greedy bankers who caused the financial crisis that everyone else has to pay for.  Ask yourself how many times you’ve heard someone (usually a trade union mouthpiece or Labour politician or Robert Peston) say that people are being forced to pay for a crisis they didn’t cause. On the other hand, they moan about income inequality and corporate greed. But if this is all anger at a recent phenomenon, why do the Occupiers keep saying that this has always been a problem, and everything has always been bad?  It’s because the BBC keeps misleading you about the whole story, as Dymond is doing here.

This is a very biased report.  Everything is framed from one side of the issue, and facts which detract from the Narrative are swept under the rug.

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BBC Censorship: Occupier Ugliness Edition

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Has anyone else noticed that the BBC has gone totally silent about the Occupy Wall St. movement in the US? With the exception of a couple stories about the violence innocent exercising of rights in Oakland, where they shut down a shipping port and attacked police were victims of unprovoked brutality from The Man, there has been scarcely a peep from BBC News for days.

After a flurry of encomia impartial reports on how nice and earnest and well-meaning the Occupiers are, the more violent and unhinged they became, the quieter the Beeboids got. Just two days after the original Occupiers hit Zuccotti Park, Daniel Nasaw tried to tie them directly to the Democrat/Union protests in Wisconsin (which the BBC also reported dishonestly), claiming that this was the “birth of a movement”.  It all seemed so wonderfully clear then, didn’t it?

The Occupier activity around the country is one of the most important stories going lately, especially since the Oakland City Council is about to cave in to the violence and now support the Occupiers. But the BBC seems to be censoring nearly all news of it. They’ve gone silent because they don’t want you to know about things like this:

Zuccotti protesters put up women-only tent to prevent sexual assaults

Zuccotti Park has become so overrun by sexual predators attacking women in the night that organizers felt compelled to set up a female-only sleeping tent yesterday to keep the sickos away.*

 Or this:

Occupy protest turns violent outside Washington Convention Center

UPDATE 11/7: Occupy DC becoming increasingly violent, police say

Citing injuries to five people outside the Washington Convention Center on Friday night, the mayor urged the demonstators to show restraint so that their protests are not discredited by violence.

“We will not tolerate behavior that jeopardizes public safety,” Gray said.

Lanier said in a statement that the protesters have become “increasingly confrontational and violent toward uninvolved bystanders and motorists.”
Related Examiner Occupy DC coverage
Jesse Jackson downtown Monday, compares Occupy to civil rights movement
D.C. police chief says Occupy protesters getting more violent

Four of the injured people appear to be protesters themselves. A fifth injured person was a 78-year-old woman who was knocked down while attempting to get around the Occupy DC’s blockade of a dinner for a conservative group Friday.

“That is no longer a peaceful protest,” Lanier said.

And this is coming from the DC police who generally support the Occupiers’ cause so much that the 911 operators hung up on a couple people inside the AFP event who called to complain about Occupiers blocking all exits and preventing people from leaving.

Or this:

Occupy Chicago protesters interrupt Wisconsin governor’s speech here

The Republican governor, who appeared before about 300 people at a public policy breakfast at Chicago’s Union League Club, saw his speech interrupted by union-backed Occupy Chicago protesters for about six minutes before they left the event.

Or this:

Occupy Boston Occupies Israeli Consulate

According to the Twitter feed of @kade_ellis, chants included, “hey hey, Ho ho! Israeli apartheid’s got to go!,” “long live the intifada! Intifada intifada!,” “not another nickel! Not another dime! No more money for Israel’s crimes!,” and “Viva viva Palestina!”

Or this:


A Chill Descends On Occupy Wall Street; “The Leaders of the allegedly Leaderless Movement”

On Sunday, October 23, a meeting was held at 60 Wall Street. Six leaders discussed what to do with the half-million dollars that had been donated to their organization, since, in their estimation, the organization was incapable of making sound financial decisions. The proposed solution was not to spend the money educating their co-workers or stimulating more active participation by improving the organization’s structures and tactics. Instead, those present discussed how they could commandeer the $500,000 for their new, more exclusive organization. No, this was not the meeting of any traditional influence on Wall Street. These were six of the leaders of Occupy Wall Street (OWS).

What on earth? The BBC told me that this was a leaderless movement, which is why the poor lambs had so much difficulty getting a clear message out to the media.

Occupy Wall Street’s Structure Working Group (WG) has created a new organization called the Spokes Council. “Teach-ins” were held to workshop and promote the Spokes Council throughout the week of October 22-28. I attended the teach-in on Sunday the 23rd.

According to Marisa Holmes, one of the most outspoken and influential leaders of OWS, the NYC-GA started receiving donations from around the world when OWS began on September 17. Because the NYC-GA was not an official organization, and therefore could not legally receive thousands of dollars in donations, the nonprofit Alliance for Global Justice helped OWS create Friends of Liberty Plaza, which receives tax-free donations for OWS. Since then, Friends of Liberty Plaza has received over $500,000. Until October 28, anybody who wanted to receive more than $100 from Friends of Liberty Plaza had to go through the often arduous modified consensus process (90% majority) of the NYC-GA—which, despite its well-documented inefficiencies, granted $25,740 to the Media WG for live-stream equipment on October 12, and $1,400 to the Food and Medical WGs for herbal tonics on October 18.

At the teach-in, Ms. Holmes maintained that while the NYC-GA is the “de facto” mechanism for distributing funds, it has no right to do so, even though she acknowledged that most donors were likely under the impression that the NYC-GA was the only organization with access to these funds. Two other leaders of the teach-in, Daniel and Adash, concurred with Holmes.

Ms. Holmes also stated at the teach-in that five people in the Finance WG have access to the $500,000 raised by Friends of Liberty Plaza. When Suresh Fernando, the man taking notes, asked who these people are, the leaders of the Structure WG nervously laughed and said that it was hard to keep track of the “constantly fluctuating” heads of the Finance WG. Mr. Fernando made at least four increasingly explicit requests for the names. Each request was turned down by the giggling, equivocating leaders.

And this is from an Occupier comrade.  Oh, dear, how the anarchists hate it when they get what they didn’t understand they actually wanted.  And only a couple weeks ago they all seemed so warm and fuzzy about their cute little group democracy.  I got the impression from my visit to Zuccotti Park that this is how it was going to be, and it turns out that I was right.

So how about it, BBC?  Where are you?  You were so sure this was an important movement only a couple weeks ago, yet now it’s as if you’re bored and have moved on. Reality not fitting the Narrative?  The double standard between the BBC’s coverage of the Occupiers and their reporting on the Tea Party movement couldn’t be more obvious.  Hey, maybe the BBC’s silence about all this now is a belated attempt to make up for the fact that they censored all news about the Tea Party movement for the first two months of its existence.

What disgraceful behavior for a news organization which claims to be superior to the rest of them.

* I blame Bloomberg and the NYPD for this and not the Occupy movement, to be honest, as they’ve let drugged out homeless men hang out in the park. Although their childish refusal to allow police to do their jobs inside their precious encampment is also a factor. There are rumors that the police actually direct the homeless there with promises of free food.  But that should be a scandalous story in and of itself: evil billionaire politician and oppressive authorities using a sick tactic to secretly undermine the sainted protest with no regard for safety or decency.  How about it, BBC?  Any of you dozen or so intrepid young digital media geniuses looking for a big scoop?  I won’t hold my breath.

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The Unbearable Whiteness of Occupying

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Here’s one for you:

Internal Survey Confirms #Occupywallstreet Is Overwhelmingly White, Janeane Garofalo Unavailable For Comment

Fast Company conducted an internal survey of the #OWS crowd and found it to be as white as the line-up at MSNBC.

Specifically 81.2% white and 1.6% black.

The funniest part? The survey results were made into an infographic which was being distributed by some #OWS members until other #OWS members looked at the results of the survey and freaked out causing arguments and fights.

This wasn’t an outside party saying it, either. The guy behind the study is a data analyst for an advertising company.  And he is one of the Occupiers.

Full graphic of the study is below the fold.
Harrison Schultz claims to have been with the Occupier movement from Day One at Zuccotti Park.  In the piece I’ve linked to, he constantly refers to his “comrades”.  He also claims that this isn’t political like the Tea Party, but is in fact a “post-political” movement.  Anyone even slightly paying attention will have noticed that what these people actually want is good old-fashioned anarchy.  Problem is, they’re so deluded, so caught up in the emotion, that they think they really can achieve a new kind of society where there are national organizations, no corporations, and no national democratic system, but there will still be MacBooks, a well-managed and maintained national infrastructure, high quality backpacks and free wifi.  My own discussions with his comrades have shown that.

Now about that graphic. This was published by Fast Company, a hard-Left magazine which promotes innovation and technology.

The Occupiers are hideously white. And this was published in a magazine which only recently was cherry-picking photos to create the impression that it wasn’t the case. So where is the BBC on this?  Nowhere.

Let’s recall just how much they tried to tell you that the Tea Party movement was overwhelmingly white, which in itself was supposed to be proof of perfidy, and tried to create a strong association with racism.  Mark Mardell, the BBC’s top man in the US, still believes that the Tea Party is driven by crypto-racism.

Some of us noticed when this all started a few weeks ago (and the BBC rushed to tell you about how important it was, and what they believed it to be) that the Occupiers were mostly white.  Even the BBC’s first vox pops segment featured only white people. Mardell had to go out of his way to find a person of color. Yet this has remained unremarked by the same people who were sure that a lacuna of black people at a handful of events in the Midwest gave them the right to slander millions of people.  If there was a significant percentage of non-whites, the Beeboids would be going out of their way to remind you how superior they are to the Tea Party movement.

So I’m calling out the BBC right now.  Mark Mardell, Katty Kay, Laura Trevalyan, Daniel Nasaw, Matt Danzico, Jonny Dymond, Simon Wilson (behind the scenes), Franz Strasser, Caroline Hepke, Michelle Fleury, Andy Gallacher, and all the anonymous Beeboids furiously churning out content for BBC News Online, and even the various Washington-based Beeboids:  Where the hell are you on this?  Furthermore, why aren’t you comparing the clashes with police, the illegal encampments, vandalism, and calls for violence from the Occupiers with the genteel, law-abiding, civic-minded behavior of the Tea Party movement.  Where are your suggestions of guiding hands, or admissions that people from mainstream US media are enabling and coaching them?

BBC reporting on the US is a disgrace.

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Mark Mardell Defends The President

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The BBC’s US President editor (“North America editor” is not an appropriate title, as he reports exclusively on the President and the US politics surrounding Him) has noticed that the President’s popularity and job approval has been at something of a low ebb.  Naturally, concerned that his audience might be worried, Mardell leaps to His defense.  Under the time-honored journalistic pretext of posing a question, he proceeds to give you the answer.  He’s got a defense for every single criticism of the President.

Is President Obama a good leader?

When President Obama was elected he seemed like a different kind of leader.

Only to those caught up in the cult of personality foisted on us by a complicit media.  Mardell himself came to the US as one of those true believers, excited by the possibilities.  He knows he was wrong then, but goes through a series of intellectual contortions to prove to himself otherwise.

Not just the first black man in the White House but a new sort of American president: thoughtful, reflective and determined to represent all of his country.

Again, only those caught up in the worship believed this for a moment.

Now, a year away from the next presidential election many people question what sort of leader he has turned out to be.

Many of you may question His leadership, but Mardell is here to set you straight.

One unkind critic said that he seemed like a 50-year-old man who has just got his first proper job, that he has had no experience of running any organisation and it shows in his management of the White House.

Unkind?  How about “honest”?  He is a 50-year old man who has had no experience of running any organization, and this is His first really challenging job.  What would a “kind” critic say, anyway?  Still, let’s hear some real criticism.

Republicans are of course the harshest critics. Ed Rogers, a veteran of the George H W Bush and Reagan White House told me: “I think Obama is not a very effective leader.

“I think he is a thinker and a ditherer to a fault. I think his leadership style does not lend itself to crisp decision making.

Those familiar with Mardell’s coverage of (for) the President will know this is one of the criticisms which most angers him.  No surprise that this is how he sets it up.

“I get the impression he anguishes before a decision, and even worse for a president, he anguishes after a decision. So, his team never has certainty.
“They never know if the other side is back in appealing to the president, they never know if they have gotten clear, certain decisions.

“And at the end of the day being president is about making decisions and sticking with them.”

Think about that for a second, before reading Mardell’s defense.

Of course in part Mr Obama’s initial appeal was that he did consider the facts, carefully and dispassionately.

That’s not what Rogers is saying at all.  Mardell is misrepresenting things.  The criticism isn’t that He is thoughtful and wanted to contemplate all the facts, but that He kept changing His tune afterward.   Try not to laugh too hard about the “dispassionately” BS.  Mardell obviously doesn’t get it, so starts his defense in earnest:

He was seen as the diametric opposite of his predecessor, President George W Bush, in the popular imagination a cowboy president who shot from the hip, trusting his first gut instinct.

Mr Obama, on the other hand, likes to get down with the details.

Remember, the criticism isn’t about whether or not the President considers the details, but whether or not He is capable of  making a firm decision.  Only Mardell still thinks this is about why it seems to take Him so long to make one.  We all know this isn’t true, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The US President editor then gives us an anecdote from Jared Bernstein, a former adviser to the Vice President, who heaps praise on the President for being so deeply concerned and interested in real detail.  This is, of course, how Mardell shows you that He is so very different from that tiresome cowboy.

In order to drive this point home, we’re told that the President actually saved the US economy.

He makes the point that Mr Obama was faced with an immense challenge and says he stopped the economy going off the edge of a cliff.

Never mind that the initial round of TARP bailouts was begun before He took office, and that He kept Bush’s finance team essentially intact to continue that progress.  Praise Him!  Then back to the defense.

However, he accepts there is a perception of dithering:

“The guy has an amazing capacity to assimilate a lot of information. He really likes to solve a problem pragmatically – but from a perspective of being as well informed as he can be.

“He certainly doesn’t reach snap decisions. He is a pretty deliberative guy, but you put the facts in front of him he will reach a conclusion pretty quickly.”

Hmm. How does reaching a conclusion “pretty quickly” give the appearance of dithering?  In the case of going to war against Libya, for example, it turns out that the President wasn’t dithering so much as He actually didn’t want to do it at all.  He thought light sanctions and hard, Paddington-like stares were working, and had to be shown that it wasn’t before He gave the green light.  It’s why Hillary Clinton has said that she won’t be working for Him if He gets a second term.  Yes, I know the BBC never told you about that.

“I think what looks like excessive deliberation has more to do with the politics. The president might come to a decision on economic policy pretty quickly, but then you’ve got to navigate this Congress and that is a fairly tough equation, getting through all those road blocks.”

“This Congress”?  You mean the one with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and a Democrat-controlled Senate?  Or the totally Democrat-controlled Congress He had for the first two years which rammed through ObamaCare and Stimulus via backroom deals and end runs around the opposition?  You know, the one that Mardell called a “Golden Age”? What a load of garbage.  But Mardell thinks you’re all too stupid to remember that, and continues his “Trapped in a world He never made” defense.

But the president has to be a navigator, or at least know people who are.

Mr Obama does not seem to have a strategy for dealing with the sausage factory that is Congress. It has perhaps been his worst failure.

Seriously?  What about the billions thrown down the green jobs toilet, mostly to His Democrat moneymen?  What about the failure of the $1 trillion-plus Stimulus?

True, he not only got through economic packages which admirers would say saved the country, he also in the end got a healthcare package that has long been a dream of Democrats.

Mardell knows he can’t give the President too much credit for that because, as I said above, that was mostly the doing of the Democrat leadership when they controlled both the House and the Senate.  But now it’s time to pretend to criticize Him from the Left.

But it was so diminished that it offended his own side while enraging the right and helping the Tea Party to get off the ground.

Hello: the Tea Party movement was well “off the ground” by April 15, 2009, almost a year before ObamaCare was signed into law.  How can Mardell still get this wrong? And it can’t have been too much of an offense to supporters at the time, judging from the way the BBC lauded it.

The trail of sometimes grubby compromises that led to a deal made him look part of a Washington he said he had come to fix.

Yeah, that’s much worse than the fact that the President is the recipient of more money from the finance industry than all the Republican candidates combined, or that the CEO of GE is His Jobs Czar, or that He gave more than half a trillion dollars to a green energy boondoggle because it was backed by one of His moneymen.  But I digress.

Perhaps even more importantly it led to an unclear proposal that left many Americans confused and worried that it would leave them worse off.

Oh, God, we’re back to the Narrative that people don’t like ObamaCare only if they don’t understand it properly.

Mr Obama seems to lack the sort of special political skills you need to make sausages (Bismarck said you don’t want to know how sausages or laws are made).

It certainly doesn’t help when practically the first words out of His mouth as President when trying to work a deal with Republicans was “I won“.  There’s a difference between not having certain political skills and being an arrogant asshole.

He’s obviously not a thug nor, more oddly, a charmer.

“More oddly”?  Why does Mardell say that?

Undoubtedly he has buckets of charisma.

Oh, right.  Silly me.

Mardell then goes on to say that the President hasn’t been much good at reaching across the aisle, and – bizarrely – that not even “charming bully” Rahm Emmanuel could get both sides to work together.  To my surprise, though, he does acknowledge that critics on the Left don’t want Him to compromise at all.  Hey, what happened to all that Republican intransigence?  Never mind that, of course, as this is about how the President feels pressure from the Left to stay on course, and that’s why He’s not such a bridge-builder.  As always, Mardell has a defense ready for any charge.

He then moves on to the next section.

What made Mr Obama a unique political phenomenon was that he, quite literally, wrote his own story.

Er, no.  The media did that.  His book was promoted far and wide by them, and they didn’t even spend a tiny fraction of the effort checking into His past that they did on Sarah Palin.  More than anything else, though, it was cos He is black.  Let’s face it, that was the number one selling point.  No white neophyte politician with a vague background of association with questionable characters would have been catapulted to stardom in such fashion.

So Mardell is wondering what happened, how the bloom came off the rose.

Yet this master storyteller appears to have lost control of the narrative in office.

Uh-oh, please, not this again.

Some may think this is post-modern claptrap or simply a silly way to look at politics.

But part of being a leader, and especially an American president, is telling people in very clear terms what is going on, why it’s going on and what should happen next.

Mr Obama himself has said the best solutions to the economic crisis may not be the best story.

Damn.  If you don’t agree, it’s because the message hasn’t been made clear to you enough.  This is seriously wrong.  The President has been absolutely clear on all of His policies, and on all of His various messages.  Nobody doubts what He wants to happen or thinks is going on.  But Mardell still, after all this time, thinks that if we don’t think He’s doing a bang-up job, it’s only because He hasn’t made the Gospel clear to us yet.  Does anyone here think His Plan For Us hasn’t been made crystal clear over and over again?  And here comes more defense:

The plot twists of real life get in the way of a simple tale. The president – and just about everyone else – thought the economy would be showing stronger signs of recovery by now.

No, not everybody thought that.  Why else would the Tea Party movement have transformed the face of the House?  Lots of people knew things weren’t going to go well.  Now, why would we think that?

But the author of a critical book about the president’s handing of the economic crisis, Ron Suskind, says the disconnect is the problem.

“Even if the words of a leader are not along the lines of what people want if they match his deeds people say ‘Well, I may not agree with him, he’s a straight shooter’ and that gets you confidence points.

“Mr Obama has had trouble because of his brilliance at soaring rhetoric – inspirational rhetoric.

Wait….what?

“And often the caution that has abided his deeds, a kind of split-the-middle-let’s-find-some-middle-ground, even if there is not much coherence to it, a half of this and a little of that, often does not make sound, dramatic policy. “

Name me one big speech where the President wasn’t scolding His opponents.  This is Beltway BS.  The general public doesn’t think this way.  We’ve heard His message, and found it wanting.  Suskind, by the way, is not an impartial observer.  He’s an Obamessiah supporter who wrote an entire book shifting blame for the economy away from Him.  Even far-Left ideologue and JournoList founder Ezra Klein, who wrote the review I’ve linked to, can see that.  But Mardell isn’t going to tell you.  He, like Suskind, wants the President to go back to the “Yes We Can” stuff.

“When you are president, people always need to know what you would do if you were a dictator. What you would do. Not what’s possible or the realities of Congress or the limits on your authority.

“What would you do if you were dictator? People don’t know that about Obama. And that’s a problem. A weakness. And stylistically it is going to be hard for him to get that back.”

This is a joke, right?  Who here doesn’t know how that would go?  Any excuse to distract people from wondering about His competence.  And that’s the key here: a lack of competence.

Everything in Mardell’s piece is about blaming factors beyond the President’s control, or how people get the wrong idea because He doesn’t fit the typical Washington mold. As I said earlier, trapped in a world He never made.  In other words, not really His fault.  Don’t question His competence.

Mardell and Suskind both still think He’s brilliant, and potentially a great leader.  He’s already shown that He isn’t, but they can’t see it.  If He fails, it won’t be His fault. Mardell’s doing a whole series of this stuff this week, hoping for more Hope, and I’m not sure I can stomach it.