Showing posts with label Mainstream Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mainstream Media. Show all posts

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Dear Europe: No, it wasn't your imagination. In the year 2013, the only current African-American member of the 100-member U.S. Senate was NOT invited to the 50th Anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech. It wasn't an oversight, it was intentional by the event organizers. And some African-American members of the U.S. news media are quick to say they're happy about that decision. Really! When Obama arrives in Sweden soon, if you see some of these "journalists," like DeWayne Wickham, you might want to ask them about that


Dear Europe: 

 No, it wasn't your imagination. 
In the year 2013, the only current African-American member of the 100-member U.S. Senate was NOT invited to the 50th Anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech. 
It wasn't an oversight, it was intentional by the event organizers. 
And some African-American members of the U.S. news media are quick to say they're happy about that decision. Really! 
When Obama arrives in Sweden soon, if you see some of these "journalists," like DeWayne Wickham, you might want to ask them about that.




Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog
Where Was Senator Scott?
by David W. Almasi
August 28, 2013 at 10:12 PM
This morning, the Project 21 office received an e-mail asking for the organization’s comment on the fact that Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush would not be attending today’s event to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.
Obviously, the person asking for the comment assumed it a slight among the highest order of racism that neither living Republican president would be there while Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were there with the current Commander-in-Chief.
Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.conservativeblog.org/amyridenour/2013/8/28/where-was-senator-scott.html

 Nobody is suggesting that South Carolina's junior U.S. Senator Tim Scott should've been speaking at the ceremony. 
Nobody -not even his supporters.
But why wasn't he even invited?

 Here's what all honest and smart people I know inherently know, regardless of ideology.

 If this had been a scene from a documentary film being directed by any number of the top dozen or so American film directors of the past 50 years, say Steven Spielberg or Sydney Pollack, they'd have figured out a way to not only shoot it on a day when it didn't rain, they'd have figured out a powerful way to end the film by showing via quick succession of shots of the assembled crowd the many elected Black leaders that make up American society, and show that it was many people, familiar and unfamiliar who benefitted from Dr. King's words.
Not just Barack Obama.
You know, inclusive, not exclusive.
Unlike the event organizers' way of doing things.




CNN Guest: Why Should ‘Appointed’ Sen. Tim Scott Have Been Invited to MLK Anniversary?
by Noah Rothman, 5:13 pm, August 28th, 2013
Video at:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnn-guest-why-should-appointed-sen-tim-scott-have-been-invited-to-mlk-anniversary/

Mini-History lesson for Today: Something to keep in mind as you watch this video excerpt.

In case some of you longtime readers of the blog have forgotten, or, you are one of the newer readers to the the blog who never knew in the first place, I was one of Bill Clinton's first supporters in Northern Virginia in early 1991, though to be honest, I'd been waiting since 1988 for him to run. 
1992 Bill Clinton for President buttons
1992 Bill Clinton for President buttons from my collection

(c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

I actually thought long-and-hard about running to be a DNC delegate to the 1992 Convention in Los Angeles from my Congressional District, then as now represented by pugnacious Jim Moran. In fact, in early 1991, I was the first person in the whole state to ask the Virginia Democratic Party down in Richmond for the information and forms I needed to file and run as a delegate. (They didn't have them yet.)

 Because I'm me and have my personality, interests and background, and was blessed to have as my best friend in all of the world when I lived in the Washington, D.C. area in the 1990's, a wonderful woman was not only from the same small town in Arkansas that Bill Clinton was born in, Hope, a woman whose own mother had grown-up across the street from him before he and his mother moved him down to Hot Springs with her parents while she was out-of-state studying nursing -my friend had a framed photo of herself while in high school and then-Governor Clinton on her desk at the National Press Building two blocks from The White House, where she worked as a producer and sometimes on-air reporter and was a member of the White House press corps- there is almost nothing about Bill Clinton pre-1997 that I don't know, haven't heard and then heard repeated as well.
My "license" to talk about Arkansas, which I first saw in 1965
My "license" to talk about Arkansas -which I first saw in 1965. That is, my Arkansas key chain 'license' is courtesy of Shannon, my thoughtful, beautiful, brainy, beguiling, globe-trotting and multi-lingual friend. (And Asian foreign policy expert, too!)
So, that said, since many of you might not know it, when Clinton worked on Capitol Hill as an intern, he worked in the office of one of the most-powerful senators in the country, especially on foreign policy: Arkansas Sen. J. William Fulbright. 
(Correct, the Fullbright of the Fulbright Program.)
Another thing they had in common besides their great love of Arkansas was that like Clinton, Fulbright was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

But whatever else he was besides being a strong voice for an American foreign policy that has a strong multi-lateral approach, Senator Fulbright, being from Arkansas and having the background he had, was also an ardent segregationist.
No, being a Rhodes Scholar didn't prevent him from voting against the 1964 Voting Rights Act, as did a powerful senator from neighboring Tennessee -Al Gore's father, Al Gore, Sr.

 (Blog historical nugget: My family moved from San Antonio where I and a younger sister were born, to Memphis on Easter Weekend in 1965. We left in 1968 for Miami just months after Dr. King was assassinated there while supporting striking city sanitation workers. I was there for all the rioting. Saw the Army tanks come rolling down the street from the armory towards downtown. Not that most people appearing regularly on TV today could even tell you who Dr. King was in Memphis to see unless a show producer whispered it into their hidden earpiece. But history matters!)     

The Voting Rights Act of 1964 only passed because of the votes and influence of Northern Republicans in Congress, and among the Black Republican voters in New York who championed it was someone whom you may've heard of: Jackie Robinson.
Did you know that Jackie Robinson was a Republican?

I'm guessing not.
Yes, given the generally sorry state of political discourse today, and the embarrassing lack of knowledge about basic American history among many people who regularly appear on U.S. TV, to say nothing of the Mainstream Media's well-known bias for liberal orthodoxy and hiring policies, there are a lot of otherwise smart people who would prefer that you not learn the true history that happened, but rather the history that best supports their political narrative and view of the world.
But as we know, facts are funny.
Sometimes they get in the way.

That's why in this particular case, with smug and history-deficient USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham in the video above, it's great that he was given the opportunity to publicly show that when it comes to all sorts of common knowledge, he's someone who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground -and certainly shouldn't be lecturing anyone on anything.
He's just further proof of the powerful role of the Peter Principle in American journalism.

And see, now you know that he's a horse's ass, so that mystery is solved and the next time you see him on TV, you'll know enough to change the channel.
The worst part of all is not his embarrassing performance, and showing his ignorance, but that by CNN putting someone of his ilk on the air, it prevented someone we've never heard of with something original and insightful from appearing and sharing their insight.
I'd love to play him in Jeopardy!!!

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The State (Columbia, South Carolina)
A Tim Scott-Rick Wade U.S. Senate race would be historic
Published: August 29, 2013
TIM DOMINICK/TDOMINICK@THESTATE.

By Warren Bolton — Associate Editor
http://www.thestate.com/2013/08/29/2947208/bolton-a-tim-scott-rick-wade-us.html

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._William_Fulbright

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Saturday, August 17, 2013

Obama's passivity in U.S. foreign policy, esp. in Egypt, is setting-off alarms in D.C. Old Conventional Wisdom: Nero fiddled while Rome burned. CW for 2013: Obama golfs while Egypt burns. Even while majority within pro-Obama U.S. Mainstream Media continue giving him a free pass, many at The Washington Post and other D.C. foreign policy centers are VERY ANXIOUS about Obama's lack of concern or influence, witness WaPo's Jackson Diehl's devastating column, "Obama’s Dangerous Passivity on Egypt and Syria on Display." Consider this but a taste: "Obama looks like a president in full flight from a world that looks nothing like what he imagined when he took office." Diehl is 100% correct!





Obama's passivity in U.S. foreign policy, esp. in Egypt, is setting-off alarms in D.C. Old Conventional Wisdom: Nero fiddled while Rome burned. CW for 2013: Obama golfs while Egypt burns. Even while majority within pro-Obama U.S. Mainstream Media continue giving him a free pass, many at The Washington Post and other D.C. foreign policy centers are VERY ANXIOUS about Obama's lack of concern or influence, witness WaPo's Jackson Diehl's devastating column, "Obama’s Dangerous Passivity on Egypt and Syria on Display."
Consider this but a taste: "Obama looks like a president in full flight from a world that looks nothing like what he imagined when he took office." Diehl is 100% correct!


The Washington Post
Obama’s dangerous passivity on Egypt and Syria on display 
By Jackson Diehl
August 15, 2013 
There was hope a few months ago that mounting chaos in the Middle East, and a revamping of President Obama’s national security team, would prompt the president to snap out of what looked like a deepening torpor in foreign policy.  
Instead, this president’s extraordinary passivity in the face of crisis may have achieved its apotheosis this week. On Wednesday, as Egyptian security forces gunned down hundreds of civilians in the streets of Cairo, an unperturbed Obama shot another round of golf at Martha’s Vineyard. His deputy press secretary was left to explain to reporters that the administration remained firmly committed to not deciding whether what had happened in Egypt was a coup.
Read the rest of the column here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jackson-diehl-obamas-dangerous-passivity-on-egypt-on-display/2013/08/15/69d085fc-0522-11e3-9259-e2aafe5a5f84_story.html

 @JacksonDiehl https://twitter.com/JacksonDiehl

 Jackson Diehl archives at Washington Post: 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/jackson-diehl/2011/02/24/ABccMXN_page.html







The Washington Post
By Editorial Board
Egypt erupts as security forces attack Morsi supporters
August 14, 2013

 The Post's powerful mince-no-words editorial includes this passage;
This refusal to take a firm stand against massive violations of human rights is as self-defeating for the United States as it is unconscionable. Continued U.S. support for the Egyptian military is helping to push the country toward a new dictatorship rather than a restored democracy. Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, the coup leader, increasingly is styling himself as a national savior in the mode of such former dictators asGamal Abdel Nasser;
Read the rest of the editorial at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/egypt-erupts-as-security-forces-attack-morsi-supporters/2013/08/14/f230a080-04fa-11e3-9259-e2aafe5a5f84_story.html



















When one of the most-dependable and prominent Obama supporters in the Washington new media, Eugene Robinson, an actual Pulitzer Prize winner, takes him to task and personally attacks his morality and lack of backbone, that's more than just news within the Beltway. 

 The Washington Post
A lack of spine on Egypt
By Eugene Robinson
August 15, 2013
There may be little the United States can do to end the savage bloodletting in Egypt, but at least our nation can be loyal to its ideals by bearing witness and telling the truth. In this, President Obama has failed.
Read the rest of the column at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-a-lack-of-spine-on-egypt/2013/08/15/33a7bc80-05df-11e3-9259-e2aafe5a5f84_story.html













Christian Science Monitor
Why Mahmoud Badr is pro-Army, anti-Muslim Brotherhood
Interview: Mahmoud Badr, the activist whose online campaign helped to bring down Egypt's president, now supports the army attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood. Why?
By Yasmine Saleh, Reuters
August 17, 2013
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0817/Why-Mahmoud-Badr-is-pro-Army-anti-Muslim-Brotherhood

More at: http://www.csmonitor.com/content/search?SearchText=Egypt



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Friday, June 14, 2013

"Fertile" territory for media bias! Or, that's why it's the Miami Herald -and is shedding longtime readers! Former Florida governor Jeb Bush makes some nonsensical comments on Friday morning in hopes of passing the amnesty-first immigration bill, but while MSM and blogosphere duly write about what he said and give it due attention, the Miami Herald wouldn't post the story and leave it visible on their website for hours -like they'd do if other pols had said same thing -like Rick Scott for instance

Above, what the Miami Herald's webpage looked like shortly before 11 p.m. Friday.

On a day when an embarrassing and nonsensical comment by former Florida governor Jeb Bush was one of the top political stories of the day as judged by the country's political class and blogosphere, guess which Florida newspaper has nothing about it on the front page of their website, even while continuing to carry a story at the top of their website about Brit boy band One Direction?
Yes, the Miami Herald.
Surprise!

More than 12 hours after The National Journal has posted their story using some informed tweets, 

Jeb Bush Says Immigrants Are 'More Fertile,' Twitter Gets Mad
By Ben Terris and Matt Berman
Updated: June 14, 2013 | 10:34 a.m. 
June 14, 2013 | 10:24 a.m
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/jeb-bush-says-immigrants-are-more-fertile-twitter-gets-mad-20130614 

you literally couldn't find the story by examining what appears on the Herald's landing page.

Another example of the Florida news media running interference for the darling of the GOP East Coast Establishment and Florida's influential low-wage agribusiness industry, and a scenario that keen-eyed observers have seen time and again at the Herald the past ten years as its era of genuine relevancy in the community recedes farther and farther back in time and memory.

But then the Herald has long treated Jeb Bush differently than it does other pols in Florida -that is, once he finally got elected governor.
Typical media suck-ups.

By the way, who, exactly, is going to be persuaded to support this bill, S.744, because some self-serving and over-rated politician says that female immigrants are fertile?
That's a very, very weird thing to say aloud and makes you wonder what would have happened if some quick-witted reporter had asked him how he knew that.

I'd like to meet those people, or rather, I'd like the Florida news media to try to seriously try to find even one person in this state who is convinced by Bush's comment to change positions.
Just one person.
You couldn't find one, which makes Bush's comments even more asinine and queer.
This guy could NOT win an argument to save his life -or our country's..

If current Florida governor Rick Scott had said something along these lines, that story would've been the lead story on Friday night's six o'clock TV newscasts in Miami and be parked at the top of the Herald webpage for days on end, full of feigned outrage by liberals and La Raza about "the hurtful comments."

But yet again with Jeb Bush, someone I'd never vote for, and someone too weird, off-putting and self-serving for my tastes -to say nothing of his being very, very over-rated as a policy person- the Miami Herald gives him another hall pass.

Here's where the Herald buried the story
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/14/3451208/jeb-bush-america-will-decline.html

 And if you're paying attention, you'll see that it was an AP reporter doing the story on the former Florida governor, not even one of the Times/Herald reporters or a McClatchy reporter in D.C.
Now that's embarrassing!

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Saturday, May 25, 2013

There's a reason it's called the First Amendment: Americans want a free and energetic press corps, not a Mainstream Media chorus full of kiss-up sycophants to the President and the powerful, but many in MSM don't care -until Holder & DOJ over-stepped, and even then, some "journalists" can't put Constitution first over their love for Obama: The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza calls out media Obama kiss-ups in public re James Rosen case, while Balt. Sun media critic David Zuirawik deconstructs Obama & Co.'s obsession with Fox News -and attempts to marginalize it- by simply letting facts and Roger Ailes' own words appear in print: "Roger Ailes grabs moral high ground over Obama on phone, email seizures. Memo to Fox staffers shows character, righteousness, leadership"






There's a reason it's called the First Amendment: Americans want a free and energetic press corps, not a Mainstream Media chorus full of kiss-up sycophants to the President and the powerful, but many in MSM don't care -until Holder & DOJ over-stepped, and even then, some "journalists" can't put Constitution first over their love for Obama: The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza calls out media Obama kiss-ups in public re James Rosen case, while Balt. Sun media critic David Zuirawik deconstructs Obama & Co.'s obsession with Fox News -and attempts to marginalize it- by simply letting facts and Roger Ailes' own words appear in print: "Roger Ailes grabs moral high ground over Obama on phone, email seizures. Memo to Fox staffers shows character, righteousness, leadership"

Baltimore Sun
Roger Ailes grabs moral high ground over Obama on phone, email seizures
Memo to Fox staffers shows character, righteousness, leadership
By David Zuirawik, The Baltimore Sun
6:12 p.m. EDT, May 23, 2013
The Obama White House has been trying to de-legitimize Fox News almost from the day it took office. Remember the media blitz of 2009 launched by then White House Communications Director Anita Dunn?
I stood with Fox on that one on principle and came away impressed with the almost tribal unity that Roger Ailes inspired in his troops in the face of White House pressure.
Read the rest of Zuirawik's column at:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/z-on-tv-blog/bal-roger-ailes-rosen-obama-moral-20130523,0,6047321.story

Such a great closing, and not just because I agree with it 100%::
But I am going to rejoin the battle, because what the White House is doing is truly in a league with Nixon. The difference is that we now have a dumbed-down, wimped-out and suck-up press compared to the one Nixon faced. And what passes for media criticism is, in the main, even more spineless and pathetic.
Too many of the press folks, especially in Washington, are all too happy to kiss up to the White House rather than doing their jobs as Rosen has. Or, maybe they just don't have his dedication and courage.
-----
Ryan Lizza  @RyanLizza  https://twitter.com/RyanLizza

 Read his three most recents columns on this subject here:

The New Yorker
May 20, 2013
BLOG: NEWS DESK
THE D.O.J. VERSUS JAMES ROSEN
Here is the full forty-four-page Justice Department application for the search warrant of the Gmail account of Fox News's James Rosen.
By Ryan Lizza

May 21, 2013
BLOG: NEWS DESK
THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND FOX NEWS’S PHONE RECORDS
The Obama Justice Department has seized the phone records of numbers that are associated with White House staffers and, apparently, with Fox News reporters.
By Ryan Lizza

May 24, 2013
BLOG: NEWS DESK
HOW PROSECUTORS FOUGHT TO KEEP ROSEN’S WARRANT SECRET
The Obama Administration fought to keep a search warrant for James Rosen’s private e-mail account secret.
By Ryan Lizza
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/how-justice-fought-to-keep-rosens-warrant-secret.html
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Mediabistro's Fishbowl DC's Eddie Scarry reminds us that POLITICO is "always selling" and always promoting themselves, even to the point of creating a video patting themselves on the back for being -wait for it- legen-dary.; Remembering D.C. and the daily anticipation of getting The Hotline by fax in the early 1990's, when the Internet was still not a daily reality


POLITICO: Our Story; http://bcove.me/oawud7k0

Mediabistro's Fishbowl DC's Eddie Scarry reminds us that POLITICO is "always selling" and always promoting themselves, even to the point of creating a video patting themselves on the back for being -wait for it- legen-dary.; Remembering D.C. and the daily anticipation of getting The Hotline by fax in the early 1990's, when the Internet was still not a daily reality

The former Washington Post reporters behind it, Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris,
whom I read for years while living up there, are trying to create a wave of publiclity that will create a corresponding interest in that.

 But how will they keep that information only in select hands when everyone at the law firms, lobbying firms and trade associations they are trying to convince to subscribe to it can always  copy and email real "nuggets" to their friends who don't get it?.

 It reminds me a lot of the problem faced by The Hotline -now owned by The National Journal- in the pre-Internet era of the early 1990's, when that goldmine of information used to be faxed daily into offices throughout The Beltway and people would gather around the printer mid-morning waiting for it all to spill out, so they could grab a page and see if there was something in it that dealt with their area of coverage or responsibility.
People would be positively giddy on days after big events in Washington to see what was being written about that subject, and that was especially true during the 1992 presidential election.

And there was always someone in an office who would try to pull the last sheet out before it was finished printing, who'd be yelled at in a milli-second. Good times!

 That was also back when if you saw someone reading a copy of The Hotline on the Metro in the evening on your way home, especially an original copy with the Red masthead, that was your clue that the person you were looking at was someone much smarter and better-informed than the average Washingtonian around you.

 I kept old copies of them in stacked banker boxes in my garage, with colored 3M Post-it's on the sides with subject areas written on them that I dealt with or was interested in. 
My little treasure trove!

 Of course, that was also in the era of heavy faxing, when people routinely forgot to replace the paper in the paper tray of the printer and there was hell to pay if it turned out to be you.
Email is so much easier! 

FishBowlDC blog
New Video Reminds Everyone That Politico Is Still Politico And Always Will Be
By Eddie Scarry on March 27, 2013 12:00 PM
A new three-minute video produced by Politico touts the publication’s “early success” and its plan for the future. Full of Politico bluster, it’s part of a new “brand and advertising” site the publication launched this week, according to Mike Allen‘s Playbook.
Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/new-video-reminds-everyone-that-politico-is-still-politico-and-always-will-be_b100185

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Saturday, February 23, 2013

Boy Blunder on The Hudson: The opposite of crisis management -pouring more gas on the fire and your own already bad reputation. N.Y. Governor Andrew Cuomo is the thin-skinned boy governor who can't help himself


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Boy Blunder on The Hudson: The opposite of crisis management -pouring more gas on the fire and your own already bad reputation. N.Y. Governor Andrew Cuomo is the thin-skinned boy governor who can't help himself Cuomo the Bad, who if you didn't know it, opposes a version of Jessica's Law in New York State, would make a very good South American general who overthrows the democratically-elected government and who -wait for it- imprisons reporters in a soccer stadium, a la Missing.
Unless you want to go another way and go the Emperor's New clothes route, though I've probably used that metaphor a little too often here on the blog over the years.

 New York Times 
Top Cuomo Aide Delivers Public Rebuke of State Worker Who Talked to the Press
By Thomas Kaplan
February 21, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/nyregion/top-aide-to-cuomo-rebukes-state-worker-who-talked-to-the-press.html

CapitalNewYork
Why Andrew Cuomo is losing a fight against an engineer named Mike
By Azi Paybarah
February 22, 2013 4:02 p.m.

Andrew Cuomo freaks out over a little hostile media coverage.

For those of you who don't already know the story, let me share with you a true tale about Andrew Cuomo that happened in Washington, D.C. when I was living and working there, and sadly, many years pre-blog.

it's the sort of delicious and meaningful story that likely didn't make its way down the media food chain to South Florida because the Herald and Sun-Sentinel's editors were either asleep at the wheel, disinterested, or deemed it too-inside-baseball.

That sort of lazy journalism attitude 15-20 years ago -and continuing to this day- explains why, as I've stated here and other places previously, so few people in South Florida, even usually well-informed people, DON'T realize the extent to which the Beltway press corps had completely soured on Sen. Bob Graham, and towards the end, often could barely stifle their contempt and laughter for him.

So here's the story as best I remember it. 

Cuomo, while HUD Secretary for the Clinton White House and with the tough task of filling the boots of perpetually effervescent Jack Kemp, was actually verbally reprimanded by top people within the White House -by Chief of Staff Mack McClarty if I recall correctly-  as well as verbally tonue-lashed by Congress, for being SO overly concerned with his own image and
press that he actually over-spent HUD's budget for PR/media, and spent either three years worth in two years, or four years in three.
Don't recall which of the two it was but it really happened, so you get the larger point.

(As has been said so often about New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, especially the first few years post-9/11, when Sunday morning network TV chat show bookers semed to have him on every weekend, to everyone's dis-satisfaction, don't ever, ever get between Cuomo and a mirror or a microphone.)

So, on top of that episode, and then the very weird situation with his ex-wife, Kerry Kennedy, where we're led to believe that largely for their kids' sake, she seems to have gone out of her way NOT to talk publicly about his well-known control-freak tendencies when they split -which raised all sorts of flags among the crowd I knew in Washington precisely because of what was being squelched- we can add this latest episode of Cuomo-style "Seldom is heard a discouraging word."

The paint is beginning to dry on Andrew Cuomo and the overall picture that emerges is increasingly looking more and more like one of a megalomaniac elected official who is getting
closer and closer to exploding, like Martin Sheen's fictional character, Greg Stillson, at the end of the awesome film version of Stephen King's The Dead Zone, just as Christopher
Walken's character Johnny Smith had foreseen.

As for those East Coast/Beltway media types who, rather than focusing their time and efforts on writing about pols who are genuine problem-solvers and not puppets, instead, keep writing that Cuomo, hyper-liberal Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and moderate Virginia Senator Mark Warner will emerge as the top 2016 Democratic presidential candidates from east of the Mississippi, would be wise to drop Cuomo from the equation before they invest too much more time and energy into a relationship that will never bear fruit.

He doesn't have either The Right Stuff or enough self-control, and if you doubt me on this, wait until his competitors and their supporters get a chance to bait him. 
He can't help himself.
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Friday, February 15, 2013

re Marco Rubio: Oh dear! Another predictable Beth Reinhard paint-by-numbers piece on Rubio in The National Journal, full of the usual resume/personality recitals. I'll bet I can guess what Reinhard will say about him before reading it. Yes, and so can you! That's the whole problem -Reinhard writes about Rubio by rote; Where's the plan for positive changes at McClatchy's Miami Herald -still missing!

U.S. Senate longshot candidate Marco Rubio in Hallandale Beach, FL at Southeast Broward Republican Club. June 23, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

The National Journal
POLITICS
Can Marco Rubio Live Up to the Hype?
He's the GOP's Barack Obama, a fresh-faced politician with an immigrant name, a playlist full of rap, and a collection of fawning press clips. The challenge: He's selling the same old party message.
By Beth Reinhard
Updated: February 14, 2013 | 8:50 p.m. 
February 14, 2013 | 8:20 p.m.
The freshman senator from Florida had joined four veteran colleagues to unveil a proposal for the first major overhaul of immigration law in a quarter-century. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced “my friend, Senator [Marco] Rubio, who obviously is a new but incredibly important voice in this whole issue of immigration reform.”
Two weeks earlier, Rubio had laid out a similar set of principles in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal under the headline, “Marco Rubio: Riding to the Immigration Rescue.” The article came as a surprise to McCain and other members of the bipartisan group of senators who had been sketching out an immigration plan with and without Rubio for weeks. The blueprint was inspired by legislation that McCain first spearheaded in 2005.
The dig was subtle, but Rubio didn’t let it go.

Oh dear! Another predictable Beth Reinhard paint-by-numbers piece on Marco Rubio in The National Journal, full of the usual resume/personality recitals.
Bet I can guess what Beth Reinhard will say about Marco Rubio. 
Yes, and so can you! 

That's the problem -Reinhard writes about Rubio by rote.
Just like her last piece on him.

Even the new anecdotes she drops throughout the column sound just like the old ones she used, since they are almost always cobbled together to create the same old product: Marco the Magnificent.

It would be far better if she spoke to veteran analysts like Charlie Cook, also of the National Journal and someone whose every word I read religiously for meaning and portent, as mentioned many times here in the past, which is why I've linked to so many of his columns here over the years.

Specifically, speak to Cook about the dangers of over-exposure, which he is getting closer to everyday, and the graveyard of presidential candidates that peaked early and never made it to Election Day because they prematurely annoyed or bored America silly, or flat out didn't have the sort of practical experience needed or the ability to articulate a cogent, distinct message that resonated with the public and which could grow even larger with hard work.
Bill Bradley for instance.

Even though I was an early and very confident Senate supporter of Rubio's in 2009, when the entire Florida GOP and business establishment, along with Florida's sycophantic Mainstream Media, plus the East Coast drive-by MSM, practically handed the 2010 Republican Senate nomination to then-Governor Charlie Crist, in my opinion, Rubio needs to actually accomplish a lot more of substance sooner -and be seen LESS in a pop-culture prism- otherwise, everyone in America may be bored silly by the sight of him within two years as the new car smell wears off, just as he's campaigning for House and Senate candidates throughout the country, and actually getting most of the questions, not the candidates he's with.

Yes, just like a once interesting new TV commercial that you have now grown to cringe at within a milli-second of seeing on TV and reach for the remote.

And if and when that happens, the only thing that will be written about him will be the hit pieces by the usual suspects, especially among liberal reporters and columnists in the West, who have no secret of the fact that they resent the collective power of Cubans in the political process compared to Mexicans, who vastly outnumber them.

And Univision, of course, in their creepy stalker-like relationship with Rubio, where they are always looking to see if he's spending too much time with someone else.
Y
es, Univision, the Spanish-language channel that the Miami Herald is always kissing the butt of and overplaying the significance of, but who will, not so curiously, not mention in print that they didn't air President Obama's State of the the Union address, which is why they won Tuesday night in the TV ratings.

Nope, no mention, as you can see for yourself. 

I thought they were the new "It"?
Qué pasa, Herald?

Yes, Univision, the politically-biased TV network that makes it very clear in their so-called news coverage that the only reasonable side of the immigration debate is pro-amnesty, otherwise, you are a racist. 

 Oh yeah -and the supposed news network whose employees loves to take public whacks at 
Rubio.

That is, if they, too, aren't already bored silly by Rubio and tired of pointing-out the same deficiencies they saw/see in him, over-and-over.

On the other hand, it's good to remember that Rubio eventually got so bored/irritated with Reinhard asking him the same ol' leading questions over-and-over during his long Senate campaign, that as I wrote here at the time, towards the end, he eventually started freezing her out because he simply couldn't take the routine anymore

You might recall that was back when the Herald's then-Ombudsman took Beth Reinhard (and the Herald) to task in his once-in-a-while Sunday column for having one person perform both reporter and columnist duties, saying that it was a conflict of interest.

The Ombudsman was right, of course, and Reinhard proved why that was true by being whiny publicly in her columns about being frozen out by Rubio, which not only made her less attractive to Rubio as a person to speak with, but for voters and newspaper readers, made her 'articles' about him not at all reliable, since you already knew that she was mad at him enough to say so publicly.
But I guess I'm the only one who remembers that, huh?

Alas, the Herald's then-Ombudsman left in April of 2011 and has never been replaced, with rather predictable results from my perspective: more bias than ever in articles as well as more missing facts and context.

 As many of you regular readers know, I've directly asked the Herald's top management why there's been no replacement and no mention made in the paper of what their plan is, if any, for an eventual replacement.
And, what their plan for improvement in print and online was to keep the faith of readers.
That's been met with stony silence. 
Followed by more silence.

A smart and fair-minded person representing the interests of Herald readers and ethics is not in the cards there.

Folks, it's time to face the fact that publisher David Landsberg has no actual plan for the Herald's future that positive for news consumers, because if he did, he'd have already made them public months before they went to a pay wall, and only added the pay wall AFTER getting rid of the problem step-children, adding new and curious columnists and reporters who don't take things for granted -one of the worst daily offenses there!-  and completely re-do the website from top-to-bottom, so the same stories don't appear in three separate places there, as happens now, which is acutely embarrassing for everyone, most of all, them.

That's why in my opinion, with the same people in charge, the Herald's problems are only going to get worse over time.

 But if someone with some smarts and money bought the Sun-Sentinel, fired all the dead wood and made it more like some of the Swedish newspapers that I've become increasingly  used to, and read daily while I was in Stockholm last month, newspapers which are very popular, well then, you could well see will see a very interesting dynamic take place here
in South Florida.
But not right now.

Now, each newspaper and its management seem locked in a battle of lethargy to do the least amount of original enterprise reporting possible.
  
------
TheWrap
Ratings: Univision Wins Night By Skipping State of the Union
By Tim Kenneally
Published: February 13, 2013 @ 10:03 am

November 1, 2010
Hallandale Beach Blog endorses Beth Reinhard & Charlie Crist's departure - asks they get escort to airport so they don't miss their flights out of FL

September 3, 2010

Addition by subtraction: Beth Reinhard leaving Miami Herald, heading to D.C. and The National Journal. Herald readers finally win one!


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Univision staffer attacks Sen. Marco Rubio on Facebook

No doubt after the Castro Brothers finally go adios for good, many of the Univision employees will try to move to Cuba and try to suddenly reinvent themselves as real journalists, after years of being celebrity hand-holdres, political suck-ups and amateur political science professors based in LA, NYC and Miami, forever intent on lecturing us on how important Latin America is, despite the fact that we mostly don't care about it for perfectly valid reasons, no matter how much they insist it's important.



But it's not, even with changing demographics and population changes, Americans aren't going to suddenly care about Honduras or Uruguay or Brazil if they never did before, and they can't let on that the whole thing has been a journalistic con for years to fleece advertising dollars.

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