CBS News - Democrat Operatives with Press Passes.

Via Althouse

//Sharyl Attkisson says CBS News suppressed a clip of Obama refusing to call Benghazi a terrorist attack.

This clip — recorded in a Steve Kroft "60 Minutes" interview — was evidence of the precise point that Obama denied in the second debate with Mitt Romney, the moment when the debate moderator Candy Crowley stepped in to side with Obama. In the "60 Minutes" clip — which was left out of the edited interview that aired — Obama said: "Well, it's too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved. But, obviously, it was an attack on Americans."//

Perhaps Republicans should stop agreeing to let partisan journalist hacks "moderate" debates?

Holding Paper - CBS witheld news showing that Obama lied during the second debate.

Via the Washington Post:

Oct. 17. That’s the date on which President Obama’s position on the Benghazi, Libya, attack peaked as a national issue. The night before, in a town hall debate moderated by CNN’s Candy Crowley, the president made a spectacle of noting that on the day after the Benghazi tragedy, he stood in the Rose Garden and called it an “act of terror.” His opponent, Mitt Romney, seemed convinced otherwise, prompting a controversial fact-check by Crowley. The fuss over all of this prompted politically involved Americans to debate just how Obama had categorized the tragedy.

Cue the “60 Minutes” video. Or not.

In a passionate post today, Bret Baier of Fox News hammers CBS News for waiting till Nov. 4 to post a bit of video quite relevant to all of this. In it, Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” asks the president about Benghazi. The question was posed on Sept. 12, the same day of the Rose Garden address:

KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya Attack, do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?

OBAMA: Well it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.

The president’s response packs it all: 1) Avoidance of the question; 2) refusal to use the term “terrorism”; 3) reliance on talking points about bringing people to justice. In other words, big news.

Had this clip embedded itself in the news cycle after the town-hall debate, the following would have happened:

1) CBS News would have reaped millions of page views;

2) Mitt Romney’s slip-up in the town-hall debate over this issue would no longer look like as a slip-up; it’d look like a quest for accountability;

3) Team Obama would have had to spend days responding to questions about the discrepancy between what he said in the town-hall debate and what he’d told Kroft; and

4) After that town-hall debate, Romney pretty much dropped Libya as a talking point. In a strategic move much observed by pundits, he declined to pound away on the topic in the final presidential debate, which centered on foreign policy. Had CBS News released what it had on hand, perhaps Romney would have had charged ahead with a Libya message.

Now the clip is way past its sell-by date. It’ll cause a ruckus among media critics and Libya geeks, and that’s about it. As insulting as CBS News’s timing is its position on the matter. It has issued a short statement that skirts the issue in the hope of changing the subject, perfect symmetry for Benghazi: “We’re proud of our Benghazi coverage, which from Libya to Washington has been the most comprehensive original reporting of any network.”

Left unaddressed is how this possibly could have happened. An honest mistake? A producer who missed the second debate? Whatever the cause, the episode grinds to the detriment of Kroft, who had the prescience to ask the president the question that would preoccupy Washington for weeks. Perhaps it was he who agitated to release this clip.

Critics will elevate CBS News’s selective video publishing to a prime exhibit in their brief that the mainstream media is protecting Obama. Barring a better explanation from CBS News, that’s a hard case to contradict. The only note of mitigation for the network is that it didn’t wait till after the election to publish the video or suppress it altogether

Snarking Truth to Power.

Ann Coulter makes this point:

Perhaps if liberals hadn’t coddled Obama his entire life, giving him college acceptance letters, standing ovations and Nobel Peace prizes just for showing up, he would have been more prepared to debate someone a little more challenging than John McCain.

Debating and the Virtue of Prudence.

This White House Dossier post seems to correspond to my prior post on the virtue of prudence and the third presidential debate:

Gov. Mitt Romney today pulled a bold move in the final debate with President Obama, opting for relatively limited verbal combat with his opponent while instead showcasing his knowledge of foreign affairs, adopting a presidential demeanor, and offering a sense of optimism for the future.

This strategy was the political equivalent of the Muhammed Ali Rope-a-Dope against George Foreman in the heavyweight boxing championship in 1974. Everyone expected a war, but Ali laid back on the ropes and let his bigger, stronger opponent pound away until Foreman was exhausted, and Ali knocked him out.

And I think Romney may have scored a knockout too.

Some commentators are suggesting Obama won because he scored more points. But I think such people are looking at this from within the paradigm of what they expected, and not what happened.

Everyone – including me – thought Romney would tear into Obama once again and engage in another slugfest, spending as much time as possible discussing the failures surrounding Benghazi. Instead, Romney completely walked away from Benghazi.

What Romney needed tonight was not to beat up on Obama – he had already proven he could do that – but to cast himself as a leader people will be comfortable having as their president.

He threw some jabs, but the knockout punch wasn’t delivered by fist, but by feint.

Romney stood tall while Obama appeared a little surly, eager to re-litigate domestic policy points that the two had already plowed through in two debates. By repeatedly demeaning Romney, Obama demeaned himself. The proverbial Martian visiting earth for the first time would have been convinced that Romney was the king the earthlings, not Obama.

The CNN post-debate snap poll gave Obama an edge, with 48 percent saying he won compared to 40 percent who thought Romney did. The poll as a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 point, a relatively large number.

But the impression that will linger through Election Day is that of the sunny guy to the left of the screen who seemed to have ideas about where to go and was interrupted repeatedly by the guy on the right who made lots of points but, in the end, had no new ideas, couldn’t defend his record the few times it was challenged, and seemed a little unlikable.

"Obama has made a compelling case to be Emperor of Lilliput, while surrendering a claim to retaining his current office along the way."

As a "debate nerd" I've got to rethink my approach to the Presidential Debates.

The point is not to treat these debates as hermetically sealed tests of the contestants skills. That's not what they are about because they are about the real world, and treating them as something apart from the real world permits the kinds of things we saw perpetrated by Obama and Biden, who contradicted each other (on Libya) and contradicted the facts that we knew (in so many ways, such as Obama's misdirection that military spending hadn't/wouldn't go down, when his own White House OMB shows the reductions planned for military spending in the next several years.)

The debates ought to be about the first virtue - prudence - which is nothing less than an awareness of the truth. If the presidential debater doesn't display prudence, then they ought not be president.

Shannon Coffin at NRO notes:

President Obama’s candidacy for president in 2008 and, to some extent, his entire presidency, has been built on an aura of grandeur. Big, bold ideas by a big, bold man — or so he would have us believe. It has always been a case of political tulip-mania, but nothing burst the bubble with the American voters in his first four years.

The Colorado debate was the first dent in Obama’s inevitability strategy. Mitt Romney looked and sounded more informed, energetic, and presidential. But what has happened to the Obama campaign since can only be described as self-inflicted wounds. Sesame Street and Big Bird, binders full of women, bayonets and horses, these things called aircraft carriers. These aren’t the utterances of mindless surrogates who spew talking points on command, but instead, have been stump lines and debating points perpetuated by the president of the United States.

The net effect? President Obama looks childish and churlish. His challenger looks and sounds presidential. In most elections, a presidential candidate seeks to remain above the fray, letting others do his dirty work for him. But not President Obama. He seems to relish the insignificant, the one-liners, the zingers. This has led many to declare that Obama has won the last two debates “on points.” But elections are not about debating points. Obama can rack up all the technical victories he wants in debates (and for my part, I actually don’t think Obama won last night’s debate, but we don’t need to debate the debate too much today). In the process of winning style points and landing jabs, he has diminished his “aura” and more importantly, his office.

And that, too, is a way of failing the test of prudence.

Epically Delicious Schandenfreude Alert.

Undecided Ohio voters on CBS focus group break in favor of Romney; CBS morning news crew act like their dog died.



Well, of course they are unhappy.

Wouldn't you be if you had to go back to covering the news after a four year vacation in the Land of Lotus Eaters?

"The more you think about this supposed zinger, the more it sounds as if Obama made a fool of himself, not Romney."

Jonathan Tobin at Commentary:

At the foreign policy debate, President Obama thought he was putting something over on Mitt Romney when he acted as if the Republican was an imbecile for suggesting that the rapid decline in U.S. Naval strength was anything but a good idea:

You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

That was quite a zinger. In one fell swoop, he portrayed the Republican as ignorant about defense issues and established himself as the competent commander-in-chief. Except for the fact that he was dead wrong and did himself far more political damage than good.

Contrary to the president’s assertion, the creation of aircraft carriers and submarines did not mean that we needed fewer ships. Quite the contrary. Aircraft carriers need just as many if not more supporting vessels than the obsolete battleships that no are no longer under commission. So do subs. The decline in naval strength compromises America’s ability to project power abroad. That is particularly true in places like the Persian Gulf, where President Obama is trying to sound as tough with Iran as Romney.

Even more foolish is the president’s attempt to portray contemporary naval vessels with cavalry horses. That says more about his own lack of understanding of the military than Romney’s. It also may cost him some votes in a state that he still hopes to win: Virginia, home of the largest U.S. Naval base in the country and hotbed of support for a stronger military.

One more point about those horses and bayonets. For all of his contempt for them, it bears remembering that horses played a not insignificant role in the armed forces’ successful fight in Afghanistan, a point that Obama should have remembered. The Army and the Marines operating Afghanistan still use bayonets in close combat

MORE SNARKY, CONDESCENDING, PEEVISH & SMALL...

...Elizabeth Price Foley writes:

Obama’s arrogant, small ball behavior continues. As I stated in an earlier post, this ain’t a law firm name, it’s the theme of Obama’s entire campaign. If you can’t go big, go small and distract, I suppose. Here are examples from tonight’s 3d presidential debate:

Does the demeanor of Romeny and Obama tell us what the polls are really saying.

Jonah Goldberg writes:

Well, it looks like Romney took my advice (no not literally). In boxing terms, Romney went for a clinch. While Obama constantly tried to push Romney off to start a real fight and heighten the contrast. In other words, Obama behaved like a challenger in trouble and Romney acted liked a candidate with something to lose. That tells you something about the poll numbers both of these guys are looking at.

And while I obviously think Romney followed the right strategy, I have to say I wish he’d broken out of the clinch a couple times to land a some easy blows. It was often painful to watch Romney blur the difference between them. Still, I think he was smart not to take the bait.

Meanwhile, Obama looked a bit desperate at times, particularly when he was staring at Romney as if to force the former governor into spontaneous human combustion.

Ultimately, I think this debate served Romney well, even if the flash polls say Obama won narrowly on points (the polls said the same after the second debate and Romney’s numbers continued to improve). If you went into this debate worried that Romney isn’t a safe presidential pick, you came out reassured. Also, the long tail of this debate will play well to Romney’s advantage in that he had a few more memorable lines and was better on the economy. Obama’s one really memorable line — about the navy and bayonets — will not help him in swing states or with constituencies not already in his column.

"Was Candy in Cahoots."

James Taranto examines the question of whether the claim that Obama called the Libyan murders "an act of terror" was a "set up" with the debate moderator. Read the whole thing, but here is his considered and prudent judgment:

Here's what almost certainly happened: After the interview, Axelrod, or someone else from the campaign, called Crowley's attention to the White House transcript. She read the relevant portion and conceded that Axelrod was right: Obama had called the attack an act of terror. As we wrote yesterday, such an interpretation was reasonable, although it was a matter of opinion because the president's statement was ambiguous. Obama was briefed on all this during his debate preparation.

If this surmise is correct, then Crowley knew about the "acts of terror" Easter egg hidden in Obama's Sept. 12 speech, and Obama knew she knew. Romney did not know and was as incredulous as Crowley had been, because the administration had spent weeks peddling the claim that the video dunnit. Obama brought the matter up expecting incredulity from Romney and backup from Crowley. She therefore unwittingly played her role in Obama's little ambush of his opponent. She was just clarifying the facts--or so Axelrod & Co. had led her to believe.

Can we really conclude that Obama really follow the Sunday talk shows when we know he doesn't follow his own security briefings?

Much more likely, he knew that the speech used the phrase "no act of terror" in an equivocal fashion because (a) it was included to give him cover and (b) he gave the speech.

Obama's real problem is that he also knew that while he may have happened to use the phrase "no act of terror", he also knows that he wasn't calling Libya an "act of terror" in that (a) he blamed a "film" in the speech and (b) he and his administration kept referring to the murder as the result of a spontaneous demonstration caused by an "offensive" "movie."

It's what he said, not what did not say, that's the problem for Obama.

Could the common denominator be that the moderators are part of the media?

What are the odds of this weird coincidence? Democrats get extra time in all three debates.

It's time to bring in a retired judge.

Katarina Trinko at NRO writes:

If you want more time to get your message out in debates, it’s good to be a Democrat.

According to the CNN debate clock, President Obama spoke at greater length than Mitt Romney during both debates, as did Vice President Biden during his debate with Paul Ryan. In the first debate, Obama spoke for 3 minutes, 14 seconds more than Romney — which means he got 8 percent more talking time than Romney. In last night’s debate, Obama spoke for 4 minutes and 18 seconds longer than Romney, giving him 11 percent more talking time. Obama talked for 52 percent of the time when either man had the floor, while Romney talked for 47 percent.

During the vice presidential debate, the gap wasn’t as wide: Biden spoke for 1 minute, 22 seconds more than Ryan. Still, that gave Biden 3 percent more speaking time than Ryan.

Is this the year the media jumps the shark?

Megyn Kelly's focus group opines that the the loser of the debate was the media.

Who hates "the 1%"? The 98th percentile.

Last night when Obama made his snippy little comment that he didn't look at his pension because it wasn't as big as Romneys. It reminded of all the envious, grasping, wanna-be's who are so consumed with the wealth of others but deny that they are. I wrote on Facebook, about Obama, "what a small man."

James Taranto hits the same point:

The Washington Times reports on a telling scene from just outside last night's debate:

[Mitt] Romney was trying to make the point that both his and [Barack] Obama's investment funds probably include investments in China--something the president has attacked Mr. Romney for.

"Mr. President, have you looked at your pension?" Mr. Romney said.
"You know, I don't look at my pension. It's not as big as yours, so it--it doesn't take as long," Mr. Obama retorted. His reply prompted laughter in the debate hall where the two men were squaring off--but across the way in the separate room where the press was stationed, a brief round of applause broke out.

It's a good idea for journalists to avoid applauding politicians, for we are supposed to be independent and, in the case of straight-news reporters, impartial. But what was it about this particular Obama rejoinder (in what was a rather entertaining exchange) that inspired such enthusiasm among the presumably left-leaning scribes?

The answer, it seems to us, says a lot about the politics of "class" in America. You hear a lot about "income inequality," but most people don't particularly care. Last year's effort to begin a mass movement around the question was a whimpering failure, yet it got hyped to the sky at first because it played into powerful class resentments--on the part not of poor or low-income working people but of academics and journalists, which is to say intellectuals.

Now, academics and journalists are not exactly downtrodden. Although life as an adjunct or a freelancer can be a challenge, a professor with tenure or a journalist at a major media outlet makes a good enough living to make him affluent. Affluent people with elitist pretensions often have a strong distaste for the wealthy, especially those, like Romney, who earned their riches by being successful in business. If you want to find bitterness against "the 1%," don't look at "the 99%." Instead, focus in on the 98th percentile.

`"It's common for eggheads to nurture ressentiment against fat cats," as we observed in July. "Intellectuals are apt to hold a self-serving belief in cognitive meritocracy, in the idea that the brightest are also the best. They envy the rich because wealth is a concrete measure of status that is out of proportion to what the intellectual believes to be true merit. If they're so rich, how come they're not smart?"

(Some academics will feel we are disrespecting their status by lumping them in with journalists. They are invited to write a letter to the editor.)

Barack Obama is no scholar, but he has the quintessential egghead's arrogance. That came across most clearly in this passage from the infamous "You didn't build that" speech:

Look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there.

Some of those smart people are right there in the press room. Where's their fair share of Mitt Romney's millions?

Obama should get a vote of "no confidence" based on his answer about gas prices.

According to Bryan Preston, Obama's claim that gas prices were lower in 2008 because of the state of the economy would have been be the gaffe of the night if it had been spoken by a Republican:

During the second presidential debate, President Obama uttered a line so full of ignorance that, if he were a Republican, it would be all anyone talked about afterward. Mitt Romney noted that gas prices are roughly double now what they were when Obama took office. Obama replied that gas prices were so low because the U.S. economy was about to go into collapse.

Obama never mentioned the effect of supply or demand on the price. He never mentioned the effect that Middle East instability has on the price of gas. He never mentioned that the mere possibility of an energy giant like the U.S. making the public decision to get serious about energy independence can bring prices down. He never allowed that his own energy policies have had any detrimental effect.

He blamed a collapse that had not happened yet for prices that had been lower for years than they are now.

What an economic buffoon.

Preston also notes:

I was initially less displeased with Crowley’s performance as moderator than than that of Martha Raddatz, the ABC reporter who moderated the vice presidential debate. Raddatz consistently changed the subject when things got too difficult for Vice President Biden, and she interrupted Paul Ryan 31 times, to interrupting Biden just 19 times. She was clearly biased.

But Candy Crowley’s bias was more insidious. She chose the questions and the questioners. She let Obama’s towering ignorance on gas prices slip by unremarked. She corrected Mitt Romney with incorrect facts, allowing Obama to escape the most dangerous moment of the entire debate. She did what she could to tilt this debate in Obama’s favor without ever acknowledging that she was doing so. She knew what she was doing.

No mainstream media figure should ever be allowed to moderate another debate. They keep stacking the deck and favoring one side over the other. It’s always the same side that they favor. They’re despicable hypocrites who keep getting worse year by year.

Disemble in the debate...

...and reap the whirlwind in the ads.

Michael Walsh at NRO askes the question that Obama has painted himself into:

Don’t Worry, Be Happy.“Whatever marginal help President Obama got from Candy Crowley’s wrong-headed intervention re Libya will dissipate in the morning air, as the stenographers in the MSM contemplate the question: If Obama knew it was terrorism on Day Two, then why did his administration continue to blame the video for days afterward?”

Moderator Candy Crowley admits that Romney was actually right on Libya.

Her defense is that Romney used the wrong "word."



What say we get a judge to moderate?

I've been in enough trials to know that a judge would have said, "the jury will figure that out for themselves."

Just remember - journalists are unbiased professionals, every one of them.

I can't wait for the profession to go extinct.

Here is Crowley's unprofessional intervention into history.



Also, notice how Crowley violated the groundrules by which she was appointed.

October 16, 2012 "The moderator will not... intervene in the debate except to acknowledge the questioners from the audience or enforce the time limits, and invite candidate comments during the 2 minute response period."

That was the contractual term that Candy Crowley agreed to and blatantly violated in the debate tonight. She let us know in advance that she wasn't going to follow it:

"They will call on 'Alice,' and 'Alice' will stand up and ask a question. Both candidates will answer. Then there's time for a follow-up question, facilitating a discussion, whatever you want to call it," Crowley said. "So if Alice asks oranges, and someone answers apples, there's the time to go, 'But Alice asked oranges? What's the answer to that?" Or, 'Well, you say this, but what about that?'"

But she went way beyond her own statement of how much she was going to violate it.

What a pompous ass.

The MSNBC panel of "undecided" leans toward Romney.

3 on the panel lean toward Romney, one leans toward Obama because of abortion and gay rights.

The Fox panel showed a more definite move toward Romney.

Whoosh, just like that Obama's two weeks of lying about "spontaneous protests" and "outrageous movies" goes down the memory hole and he was talking about "acts of terror."

Here's his Rose Garden statement -

No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.

He equivocates about whether Stephens was killed by terrorists.

But the biased moderator adjudicates it in favor of Obama.

Here's Obama's effort to downplay the terrorism issue:

Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.

And then he went on to blaim the so-called movie for provoking a spontaneous protest for the next two weeks.

Biden’s toxic "victory."

The Washington Post's Michael Gerson writes:

"...in a mere 90 minutes, Biden managed to throw Hillary Clinton under the bus, CIA Director David Petraeus under the bus, our Afghan allies and the Afghan people under the bus and our Middle Eastern allies who fear an Iranian bomb under the bus. Which means that Obama, in trying to explain himself, is in for a bumpy ride. There is a reason Biden is generally kept out of press earshot. He is forever poised between an indiscretion and a different indiscretion.

But Biden’s performance will be forever remembered not for its content but for its tone. I have occasionally admired Biden’s emotional transparency and “happy warrior” enthusiasm. His debate presentation in Kentucky, in contrast, was a collection of disturbing, disorderly appetites. He displayed scene-chewing antics and preening exhibitionism and smirking rudeness and egotistical exuberance and bullying condescension. It was the attack of the feral ham actor. It would have been embarrassing if done in front of a mirror, much less on a debate stage.

This has complicated Obama’s life in another way. The road-rage wing of the Democratic Party (the GOP has one as well) views the Biden meltdown as a pioneering achievement in political discourse. Former governor Howard Dean — an expert in nontraditional political deportment — argues that Biden is “an excellent role model” for Obama. Since adopting this model would disqualify Obama for the presidency, elements of the left are bound to be disappointed with the president’s debate performances. And it will be harder for Obama to claim the mantle of bipartisanship when his running mate is celebrated for his incivility.

Biden has also marginally complicated the work of democracy. His supporters say that Joe is just being Joe — that he is one of a kind. But all ethics — from the Golden Rule to the categorical imperative — involve universalization. If Biden’s behavior were universalized, American politics would be a squalid, carnival sideshow. Or cable television. Whichever is worse. Americans have every right to hate politics if it looks like this."

It's a good thing that Democrats are happy with "Crazy" Joe Biden's debate performance ...


...because otherwise they'd be suicidally depressed about what a goldmine he's provided to Romney.