OMG! Really, another interview with predictable Debbie Wasserman-Schultz on Channel 10's TWISF tomorrow? Why? Will there be any mention of the Sun-Sentinel STILL ignoring the Glenn Thrush book's depiction of DWS's unpopularity at Obama HQ in Chicago?; Sun-Sentinel has completely morphed into the Snooze-Sentinel! It's now more of an idea of a newspaper, and a bad one at that, rather than a newspaper you actually look forward to reading

POLITICO video: Debbie Wasserman Schultz disputes POLITICO e-book
http://bcove.me/iysunfmy
Related article at: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80465.html

OMG! Really, another interview with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz on Channel 10's This Week In South Florida (TWISF) program tomorrow morning at 11:30 a.m.? Why?

There are only 66 days until Election Day and they're consciously choosing to put HER on?
What a colossal disappointment!

Not to mention, another missed opportunity to bring viewers up-to-date with someone new or interesting or amusing -three things that DWS no longer is.

I guess this only proves all over again that not every TWISF program with Putney there is going to be a hit, which is what I always think whenever I see certain people on the show as guests that I find bores and quickly flip-over to Fox Soccer Channel to see what the score is in the Premier League game I was watching earlier.
Looks like I will be watching MUCH more of the Manchester United at Southampton match LIVE than I originally thought I would -after the Liverpool at Arsenal at 8:25 a.m..

It's not just that I disagree with DWS, or that she has never had to run from a competitive CD, though I do and she never has, it's also that she's just completely predictable, like Alan Simpson and Richard Lugar and Charlie Crist and Dan Gelber.
Or, even more deadly dull, like watching the Dolphins and Hurricanes offense the past few years -SNOOZE...............

I know when that check-down pass to the running back coming out of the backfield is coming even BEFORE the ball is snapped, even BEFORE the linebacker covering him does, so I'm groaning even BEFORE seeing it painfully come to life -over-and-over again!
And rarely if ever getting the First Down!

There's no need to watch this program tomorrow, no need to tape it, you already know what DWS is going to say before she says it, based on Michael Putney's questions.

Use that time to walk along the beach with your kids or finally change your oil or air filter under the hood, because there will be no news there at all, and besides, next weekend is wall-to-wall NCAA and NFL football again.

Yes, unlike watching a favorite Seinfeld episode for the 100th time -and isn't that about how many times DWS has been on TWISF since I came back here from D.C., 100 times?- watching and listening to DWS say the same exact thing about Romney or Ryan with that unpleasant voice is NOT as enjoyable the 100th time.

It's a bore.


Will there be any mention about the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel -almost uniquely among all American newspapers with circulations above a college newspaper- STILL completely ignoring the negative revelations in POLITICO's Glenn Thrush's e-book, and its negative depiction of her and the level of her unpopularity at Obama HQ in Chicago, and the local papers refusing to make any mention of it in-print?

Yes, the very subject I wrote about over a week ago, the only person in South Florida publicly noting its complete absence from the scene?
Yes, this part of my August 22nd post
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/paul-ryan-why-he-matters-and-needs-to.html

Here it is again, and nothing has changed since then -still nothing new about the book or its author in the Snooze-Sentinel.


Speaking of DWS, here's another piece you won't be reading in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel if any of her many trained poodles over there have anything to do with it, though logically you should, right?
Supposedly, DWS is on the hot seat! 
Or is it on thin ice? 
She's on one of the other, which ever you find personally worse in the summer.

The Weekly Standard
Book: Wasserman Schultz Most Unpopular Obama Campaign Surrogate
By Daniel Halper
8:33 AM, August 20, 2012

According to a new ebook released today by Politico writer Glenn Thrush, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida, is the most unpopular of all surrogates for President Obama's reelection campaign. That finding is the product of polling done by the Obama campaign, according to Thrush.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/book-wasserman-schultz-most-unpopular-obama-campaign-surrogate_650276.html

The Washington Post
Report: Obama campaign has doubts about DNC chair
Posted by Rachel Weiner on August 20, 2012 at 7:36 am

President Obama’s Chicago team is not thrilled with Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, according to a new ebook from Politico’s Glenn Thrush.

Read the rest of the post at:  
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/08/20/report-obama-campaign-has-doubts-about-dnc-chair/

Don't believe me?
Okay, check the Sun-Sentinel for yourself: nothing about it as of right now.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=Debbie+Wasserman-Schultz&target=adv_article&date=07%2F23%2F2012-08%2F22%2F2012&range=pre&facet=

As for the author of the book, the last time the Sun-Sentinel ran a piece by Glenn Thrush was April 28, 2012, so it's clear that they have not touched the story, even though it's right there in front of them.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=%22Glenn+Thrush%22&target=adv_article
Hmm-m...

Yes, her crew over at the newspaper is definitely looking out for her, as per usual. 
Just saying... the facts are the facts.
If this sort of thing had been said about Rep. Allen West at GOP HQ based on some sort of polling, the paper would've had it on the front page ASAP, so what's the Sun-Sentinel's explanation for the complete absence of information in print on this re DWS?

------

Douglas Lyons is the Sun-Sentinel's... well, it depends upon whom you talk to.
Some would say that he's the guy whose job consists largely of cranking out a column once in a while and going around Broward making excuses for the poor and scatter-shot local news coverage they crank out for fewer and fewer readers, but his official title is senior editorial writer. 

Here's a thought -Why don't you ask him why his newspaper refuses to mention a negative story about the most prominent elected official in its coverage area, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

His contact infromation is here:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/columnists/sfla-opinion-lyons,0,1403324,bio.columnist

Personally, my days of writing him a serious and fact-filled letter and expecting a reasonable response are over, so if he's on your own email list, you might want to seriously ask yourself why -and then purge him.

Lots of people I know, some of whose names you'd even recognize, have done this the past year or so, something they wouldn't do if this were a more normal American community and they had to engage in some sort of pretense to take him seriously and care what he thought or wrote.
Nope, they've tossed him and others there overboard with no negative effect whatsoever. 
They actually like the idea that they and other people who really know what's going on DON'T communicate with him, and he's less aware of what's going on than ever.
But that just makes him like 99% of the people working there.

They're NOT at all like the competitive reporters I've known and interacted with in Chicago and Washington, and the results are readily apparent to readers when you see the newspaper in print.
It seems more like an idea for a newspaper, NOT an actual newspaper you'd read at the beach or take on a plane ride.
And the less said about their website the better.

Where are all the South Florida reporters? As of 9:48 p.m., the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel are STILL completely ignoring Debbie Wasserman Schultz income tax/hypocrisy story. She'll always be their Little Debbie who can do no wrong! Drudge Report publicizes stories while Herald & Sun-Sentinel say "What story?" They are NOT watchdogs, they are lapdogs!

http://youtu.be/lGKurJs40bo

Where are all the South Florida reporters? As of 9:48 p.m., the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel are STILL completely ignoring Debbie Wasserman Schultz income tax/hypocrisy story.  She'll always be their 'Little Debbie" who can do no wrong! Drudge Report publicizes stories while Herald & Sun-Sentinel say "What story?" They are not watchdogs, they are lapdogs!

Both newspapers slide further into irrelevancy, as if there was any way they could slide deeper, further alienating their declining number of loyal readers by their clear lack of focus and attention to detail, as they snooze the summer away.

I was actually going to mention this story yesterday afternoon, but got side-tracked.

The Weekly Standard

Blog

Dem. Chair Invested in Swiss Banks, Foreign Drug Companies, and the State Bank of India 

BY DANIEL HALPER

11:55 AM, JUL 10, 2012

Disclosure forms reveal that Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida, previously held funds with investments in Swiss banks, foreign drug companies, and the state bank of India. This revelation comes mere days after the Democratic chair attacked presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for holding money in Swiss bank accounts in the past.

Read the rest of the story at"

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/dem-chair-invested-swiss-banks-foreign-drug-companies-and-state-bank-india_648350.html 

Real Clear Politics

Wasserman Schultz: "It Would Be Nice If We Had A Candidate for President Who Was Committed To America"

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/07/10/wasserman_schultz_it_would_be_nice_if_we_had_a_candidate_for_president_who_was_committed_to_america.html

What we can expect is that the South Florida news media that has treated DWS with kid gloves for years as I've previously and frequently noted here, and done almost no original reporting on her, merely accepting what she says as fact, will probably NOT report on this until they have her side of the story, a situation they wouldn't do with more than a few other people.

We all know that if this were Allen West, they'd already have the fire-breathing editorials in print!

The two largest newspapers in South Florida and Miami's TV stations don't want to get on her bad list, so we can expect that they will tread very, very lightly with her on this.

Should we expect her press people to generate another banal story planted in the news media soon about cancer?

Don't be surprised.

See for yourself what a search for any news about this high-profile Democratic Party spokesperson gets you- nothing about her own refusal to release her most recent income tax form or her investments overseas..

All day today I wondered if this would get some mention before I was half-way thru a post on it during a commercial break during USA Network's White Collar.

Nope.

As of 9:47 p.m. there is nothing on the Herald or Sun-Sentinel's websites.

Surprise, this is where you live, folks, the tropical boondocks!

154 results for "debbie wasserman schultz"

http://www.miamiherald.com/search_results?aff=1100&q=debbie+wasserman+schultz

91 search results for "Debbie Wasserman Schultz"

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=%22Debbie+Wasserman+Schultz%22&target=adv_article 

Give the devil her due: nobody in Florida demagogues & obfuscates like the dreaded DWS; Politico: "Wasserman Schultz says GOP seeks ‘dictatorship..."

Give the devil her due, nobody in Florida demagogues & obfuscates like the dreaded Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20) -Politico: "Wasserman Schultz says GOP seeks ‘dictatorship..."

POLITICO

Debbie Wasserman Schultz says GOP seeks ‘dictatorship … spark panic'

By Mike Allen

July 27, 2011 5:52 PM EDT

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), chair of the Democratic National Committee, said Wednesday that House Republicans are trying to impose “dictatorship” through their tactics in the debt-ceiling negotiations. She said the GOP rhetoric could “spark panic and chaos,” which she called “potentially devastating” to the economy.

Read the rest of the post at:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/60080.html

Meanwhile, north of here in the Panhandle part of Florida I've never ventured into, Tallahassee Democrat Senior Political Writer Bill Cotterell weighs in on the recent contretemps between DWS and Allen West that I wisely avoided writing about since it was everywhere you looked, and you could only NOT know about it if you lived in... well, no, you'd know about it there, too.

Tallahassee Democrat

The art of the political insult

Today's lack elegance, but they get the job done

By Bill Cotterell

6:33 PM, Jul. 27, 2011

http://www.tallahassee.com/article/20110728/COLUMNIST03/107280310/Bill-Cotterell-art-political-insult?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s

The above piece by the very insightful Bill Cotterell, is an exception to what I've often written here of the hagiography that goes on in the Florida press corps with regard to DWS, esp. at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and local Miami TV stations.

The female reporters in South Florida are especially reluctant to ask DWS questions that are either hard or original, just the same softballs, year-after-year.

It's monotonous with a capital "M."

But then that's why so many female reporters here are simply not taken seriously by well-informed people regardless of gender.

Simply put, too many of the reporters are personally shallow AND happily uninformed and really ought to be in much smaller media markets.

But like DWS -and most of the female sideline reporters at ESPN- they are gerrymandered into their current positions.

In some cases by virtue of this area's low-pay and need to have a certain demographic group represented on TV, regardless of how unappealing they are -dopey women who really do think stories on plastic surgery ARE imp0rtant, and ought to be on within the first ten minutes of a newscast- but nothing short of video of them shooting someone will get them off the air or off the newspaper beat.

The joke is on us, the readers and viewers who have to tolerate the towering mediocrity.

Here's a recent example of the sort of hagiography I meant, which actually compelled me to write in and comment because it sounded so much like a puff piece from her own paid govt. flack.

St. Petersburg Times

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz uses her resolve to fight cancer, lead DNC.

By Alex Leary, Times Staff Writer

In Print: Sunday, July 17, 2011

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/article1180722.ece

Back on the 16th I wrote:

Is there no end in sight to the number of articles that can be written about this woman and cancer? Are there so few compelling political or government stories in the fourth-largest state in the country that this sort of filler must continue to be churned out, over-and-over? Simply put, there is nothing here that hasn't been written a dozen times before -and better.
And I surmise THAT is something that both liberals and conservatives can agree on.

For instance, how about writing about the number of State House and Senate members that DON'T live at the addresses they claim they do, both before and after the election, and how the legislature just looks the other way, despite the fact that it's illegal?
There are three of them in just South Florida alone!
Just saying...

Alex, what happened to you? You used to show such promise.
Is this how it ends, with a banal whimper?

Debbie Wasserman Schultz puts politics above public safety? Yes.

I've watched with curious fascination the last week or so,

as South Florida's print and electronic media have actually

had to report some negative news about someone they're

usually so starstruck of and quick to praise, whether it's

deserved or not, whom I personally find loathsome in the

extreme.

No, not Rep. Kendrick Meek, though he's on that list,

but Pembroke Pines-based U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman

Schultz, a.k.a. DWS.

You know, the strident know-it-all who actually represents

the nice parts of Hallandale Beach east of U.S.-1,

the expensive condo towers on A1A -so many of which

are empty- and the water-side homes with boats,

while poor ol' Liberty City-based Kendrick Meek gets

the rest of the city, the part that falls into the Hallandale

Beach CRA district.

The part that the city officially considers the blighted part,

which includes HB City Hall, which is more ironic than you

know.

You could almost hear the disbelief dripping from the

TV anchors words lips as they actually say that

well-respected national medical experts actually think

her latest attempt to make the personal political,

is a foolish and poorly-thought out exercise, which also

has the bad luck to be a huge waste of money that will

only encourage fear among those with less to fear than

fear itself.

Not that DWS really cares, since the South Florida

media is so easily cowed and manipulated, and fearful

of her office putting them on their Do Not Call list.

Lee Francis of the BPB New Times' The Juice

blog wrote a good piece on Wednesday about this,

for a moment at least, upside-down world, where

she doesn't get the last word.

And yes, I felt the need to add my well-informed

two cents, as you can see for yourself, though this

latest fandango of hers is but the tip-of-the-iceberg

on my list reasons for viscerally disliking and

objecting to DWS and what she represents.

More below.

Wasserman Schultz Pummeled in Press

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2009/04/wasserman_schultz_bad_press.php#comments

In his story, he links to the following:

Weston lawmaker's cancer legislation faces criticism

by Lesley Clark

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/southflorida/story/994926.html

Those wanting some much-needed critical perspective on South Florida media darling DWS, please see Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power: Making Washington Work Again by John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC; reporter, The New York Times, and Jerry Seib, Washington bureau chief, The Wall Street Journal.

See Chapter 6 titled The Fundraising-Phenom Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
You can also do a Look Inside at www.amazon.com/ and find lots of interesting items, too.

It's telling that in the year 2009, a real nobody from a non-competitive CD, someone with little positive impact on important national public policy issues, can be so important in Congress -a Cardinal- and SO popular on cable TV, esp. MSNBC, which is in love with her.

And yet this power comes almost entirely from her ability to generate campaign funds from well-heeled Jewish donors in South Florida, and around the country, where she's flown around as part of 'dog and pony' fundraisers to get Jewish donors in those CDs to give to their local Dem incumbent or nominee.

After I moved down here from the Washington area, friends of mine, many of whom had been Capitol Hill staffers or media folks who also moved across the country, often sent me emails about or with copies of the very sorts of fundraiser invites I just described, which they or their freinds had received or heard about.

Since they are largely moderate, fair-minded DLC-types, which is to say, more interested in actual solutions to problems instead of exploiting an issue largely for campaign purposes -along the lines of the DWS, Rahm Emauel and Robert Wexler School of Political Management- most of them share my p.o.v. towards DWS, though to be fair, I dislike her more than any of them because she's so embarrassingly transparent.

No Democrat comforts the affluent check-writers like DWS.

Trust me, nobody in Congress bases their own decision on how to vote on an issue based on what someone like DWS thinks, the same way they once might've done with Lee Hamilton, my former Congressman in Bloomington, and the former Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee after Miami's own Dante Facell, whose CD I lived in when I'd come home for the summer from IU.

I was present and accounted for during what seemed like hundreds of full committe andEurope Subcommittee hearings they chaired over the years I was there, which is why I knew all the committee staffers and became friends with some them, as well as LAs who worked for Comm. members.

Lee Hamilton earned that broad respect because of his intelligence, collegiality and work-ethic, best exemplified by the fact that he stayed in broiling D.C., working even during the 1992 Democratic National Convention, when lots of smart and savvy people were encouraging Bill Clinton to select Hamilton as VP, not Sen. Al Gore.

(I know that because I talked to him in the Rayburn bldg. hallway that very week, surprised to run into him, given what was happening.)

This book has an entire chapter on DWS and her ethics, overwhelming personal ambition and fundraising prowess, is a book that garnered good to very good reviews, had a national media tour, and was written by two very well-respected veteran reporters from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

It was even on the front page of The New York Times Book Review!

Despite all that, though, the book itself and the stories it tells about DWS have NEVER been mentioned in The Miami Herald or the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Or mentioned in a TV newscast or on a TV public affairs program.

Not in print, not online, not even a blog post entry! (Besides my own.)

What are the odds of that?

To me, given how the local media has always bent over backwards to be pals with her even before her recent cancer revelation, this lack of context is even more troubling, and quite telling about the true low state of journalism in South Florida.

Not a single South Florida reporter, editor, columnist, producer or anchor has EVER mentioned it.

And I've checked!

I've even asked well-placed people I know at the newspapers and the local TV shows. Nope!

I particularly call your attention to page 80, re a proposed pool-safety bill she co-authored.

Well, despite having bipartisan support and President Bush's interest in signing it to make it federal law, in order to politically attack Sen. George Allen, one of the Senate co-sponsors and a Republican running for re-election, she let the bill die, rather than let something become a law that EVERYONE supported.

That's DWS -always willing to put politics above public safety!

And all these months later, South Florida media ignores the book and the troubling picture it paints of DWS.

Harwood and Seib discussed the book and called attention to her (creepy) efforts on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR from May 15, 2008, which generated some calls disgusted with the ethical antics of DWS. http://wamu.org/programs/dr/

It's available in both Real Audio and Windows Media at: http://wamu.org/programs/dr/08/05/15.php

After you listen to it, you'll really wonder how DWS generated so much disgust from well-informed national listeners, while South Florida media completely ignored what she did, or made excuses for her.

Sadly, most South Florida reporters don't really want to be adversarial or thorns to elected officials or govt. employees, they want to be their pals, which explains why they are usually so easily co-opted. (And might be their future employer!)

And it also explains why so much of what's printed and broadcast locally is such an insult to reasonable, well-informed citizens, who merely want all sides of an issue to be fairly-but-fully presented.

----------------------------------------------

Kudos to WFOR-TV's Jim DeFede for having brought up the subject of a previous version of the bill, but it's hard not to notice that Anonymous -a DWS defender?- bringing up a December 2006 video of DeFede's, hardly trumps my central point, proven by her own words, below, in a 2008 book that was the featured book in the New York Times Book Review last year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/books/review/Widmer-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Pennsylvania%20Avenue&st=cse

As the direct quotes from the book demonstrate, yes, she does put politics about public safety. And makes no apologies. That's who DWS is, so South Florida media, please stop pretending that she's anything but a partisan hack.

I guess that's why DWS is no Profile in Courage in my book, even using the dumbed-down standards of today that saw Caroline Kennedy include former New Jersey governor Jim Florio in an updated version of her father's original book of that title called Profiles in Courage for Our Time.

In case you forgot, he had the courage to raise taxes. For which Christine Whitman was eternally grateful, showing her thanks by defeating him when he ran for re-election on that record.

Quick: Try doing an archival search for the Harwood & Seib book on the Miami Herald or South Florida Sun-Sentinel's website, using whatever parameters you want: title, authors name, etc.

Knock yourself out!

It won't have ANY results because it's NEVER been mentioned, even by their D.C. bureau.

(In fact, the handful of times their names even appear in archives the past ten years, individually, it's always with someone else quoting something they wrote, never them speaking directly.)

Q.E.D.

-----------------

from Page 80 of Harwood & Seib:

But her role as a "team player" in Democratic election strategy can also impede her legislative work. Among the principal initiatives of her first term was a pool-safety bill designed to set more stringent
rules for barriers around pools, and the kinds of drains manuafacturers are permitted to install. Battling uphill in a Republican Congress, she obtained support from the swimming-pool industry and a prominent
Republican co-sponsor -Senator George Allen of Virginia.

In the run-up to the 2006 election, Senate democrats wanted to hold up progress on the bill for a singularly partisan reason. Allen was in a dead-heat race against challenger Jim Webb; with partisan control of the chamber potentially hanging in the balance, Democrats didn't want to provide ammunition favorable to Allen, which he could use with Virginia voters against Webb.

Senate Democratic leaders "didn't want to give Allen a victory before the election," Wasserman Schultz says matter-of-factly. And she was in no position to object. "I was co-chair of the 'red-to-blue' campaign. It was hard for me to say, Give one of your most targeted members a big victory." The result: a bill that had majority support in both chambers of Congress didn't become law.
Wasserman Schultz insisted she'd win passage of the bill later in any case.

Yeah, I guess that's about what you'd have to say given your choice of tactics, having already once played up your "desperately searching for Members in the hallways for votes" card.

I lived in Northern Virginia for almost 15 years and voted against George Allen when he ran against Chuck Robb in 1998, but it hardly seems likely that George Allen could claim "credit" in his race against Jim Webb for a bill passing that everyone in the Congress is in favor of and that President Bush wanted to sign.

I guess it's just a good thing that nobody stood in her way when she expended so much effort to get a bill passed for yet another dopey "Month" bill.

Like if I didn't have the link here, http://www.jewishheritage.gov/about.html you'd already know that Jewish American Heritage Month, the great political success of DWS, is in May and not June, right? Yes, that's quite a political legacy!