iPad’s are great. Like most Americans who own one, I use mine to check work and personal e-mails. You probably check sports scores, update your Facebook status and send out an occasional Tweet. But you and I wouldn’t dare to think that it takes the place of human relationships and personal interaction. But did you know that President Barack Obama uses his iPad to read the Top Secret President’s Daily Brief (PDB), rather than attend these critical and time sensitive meetings with seasoned intelligence officers in person? Despite the turmoil in the Middle East and elsewhere, author and investigative journalist Bob Woodward recently reported that President Obama does not “regularly attend security briefings”.
According to History.com, PDB’s are like a laundry list of sensitive intelligence matters, configured in order of importance. They are vital lists containing time sensitive data that are pertinent to both our imminent and long-term national security. Each morning the head of the CIA and other intelligence branches are to meet with the President, so that they can explicate in detail any development that would catch the Commander in Chief’s eye. In fact, every President since JFK has attended the President’s Daily Brief in person, with the exception of Barack Obama.
Marc Thiessen and the Government Accountability Institute report that Obama has attended only 38% of all PDB’s in the last 3 years and 9 months.
That’s right, the leader of the free world prefers what amounts to treating America’s national security like a social network, where he can simply log on and log off or change his status to “offline” when he doesn’t want to be bothered with defending the nation. Resorting to simply reading the brief rather than meet with its authors amounts to gross negligence and dereliction of duty.
On September 11th 2012, Al Qaeda operatives stormed the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Terrorists then reportedly raped and murdered US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Two former Navy Seals were also murdered in the terrorist attack. After the embassy was stormed, a black Al Qaeda flag replaced the American flag.
Maybe Rose Mary Woods’ grandson is the ultimate source
We know that former President Jimmy Carter’s grandson brokered the deal that provided the tax exempt non-profit news organization Mother Jones the secretly recorded video of Mitt Romney speaking to donors that the media has made such a fuss over for the last 48 hours.
Turns out there is a “one to two minute” gap in the tape. Maybe the grandson of former President Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, was the shooter of the tapes. For those readers too young to remember Watergate, Woods admitted to “inadvertently” erasing 5 minutes of the 18 1/2 minute gap in the White House audio tapes that lead to Nixon’s resignation in disgrace.
Mother Jones insists that the gap is only 1-2 minutes, but we’ll never really know unless someone else comes forth with another video of the event.
The gap occured just at the end of Romney’s now famous “47%” remark that those who don’t pay taxes will not vote for him. When the recording resumes, Romney is talking about China. A transcript of the video before and after the gap can be found here.
Now that the Obama administration’s spin that the ongoing anti-American riots in the Middle East that started on September 11 are caused by a reaction to an idiotic video is failing to hold up under scrutiny, the State Department has told reporters to stop asking about the crisis. Most mainstream reporters and media outlets seem to be fine with that.
Have you seen the video? Probably not. According to YouTube’s counter, it has only been viewed 3.6 million times. That may sound like a lot of views. By typical YouTube standards the video is viral. Yet for the supposed impact it has had on the world, the lives it supposedly cost and the news generated about it, the equivalent of less than half the population of New Jersey has viewed it. More people have seen pictures of Princess Kate’s boobs, which were easier to find on the Internet than the video was. I guess it is refreshing to know that the President of the United States has more influence on the media than the Queen of England does.
Bob Woodward’s new book, “The Price of Politics” may do more to threaten President Obama’s reelection than the anemic jobs reports.
Obama may be a great orator with a clever campaign, but Woodward’s book depicts his White House as dysfunctional and disorganized. The president himself is depicted as aloof and unable to develop the relationships necessary to lead the nation. Congressional leaders of his own party, Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate, have little regard for Obama’s leadership abilities.
The book focuses on the debt ceiling crisis that the nation face during the summer of 2011. A crisis that was so serious that “they wouldn’t tell the world how bad in was at the time,” according to Woodward in a interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer that will be aired Monday night.
As I was reading several reviews of the book I was reminded of Governor Chris Christie’s frequent criticism of Obama’s lack of leadership and inability to work across the aisle. It’s worse than Chrisite imagined. Harry Reid asked Obama to leave the room, at a meeting Obama called of congressional leaders at the White House, so that the congressional leaders could hammer out a deal to avert our nation defaulting on its debt that Obama would have no choice but to sign. Earlier in the Obama administration, Nancy Pelosi muted a conference call from Obama while she and Reid were together working on details of the stimulus package so that the president wouldn’t know that he did not have their undivided attention for his pontification. Clint Eastwood was right. The chair is empty and even the national Democratic congressional leaders know it.
The mainstream media’s coverage of the book may be more damaging to Obama’s reelection chances than the content of the book itself.
Reviews in the New York Times and Washington Post read like the reviewers compared notes before publication. They are trying to suppress sales by depicting the book as boring and a rehash of previous reporting. Yet they have enough integrity to report Woodward’s conclusion:
“It is a fact that President Obama was handed a miserable, faltering economy and faced a recalcitrant Republican opposition.
“But presidents work their will — or should work their will — on the important matters of national business. There is occasional discussion in this book about Presidents Reagan and Clinton, what they did or would have done. Open as both are to serious criticism, they nonetheless largely worked their will.
“Obama has not. The mission of stabilizing and improving the economy is incomplete.”
But ABC is giving Woodward prime coverage of the book on Monday night in a intervew with Sawyer during “World News Tonight” and “Nightline.” Woodward will sit down with George Stephanopolous live on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, September 11, the day the book is release.
Monmouth University Polling Institute Director Patrick Murray is a “go to guy” for journalists looking for expert opinions and analysis on New Jersey politics.
Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Matt Katz called Murray to ask him why Christie’s approval numbers are so high when many voters used the pejoratives “bully” and “arrogant” when asked to use one word to describe the Governor and when Jersey mainstream media pundits so frequently criticise Christie’s manners. Katz mentioned The Star Ledger’s Tom Moran, Inquirer opinion writers, and the Courier-Post editorial board. He could have included most of the Statehouse press corp, save Gannett’s Bob Ingle and the Capitol Quckies crew.
Murray’s answer was Christieesque in its refreshing honesty: “Part of the issue is, voters of New Jersey are probably a little more savvy than reporters.”
Who talks to more reporters and voters in New Jersey than Murray? His is an expert opinion.
“Ouch,” wrote Katz, who often writes critically of Christie.
Credit Katz for including Murray’s quote in his article. If you start seeing Ben Dworkin’s name in The Star Ledger more than Murray’s, you’ll know Chrisite was right when he called famously called Moran, the editorial page editor, “the thinnest skinned guy and America.”
Monmouth County’s Court is likely to get a great deal of media attention this week…and not because of the contaminants that forced the closure of the Courthouse.
The New York Postpicked up the story of Rachel Alintoff’s complaints about the way Judge Paul Escandon is handling her divorce that MMM first reported on May 9. Nine other women have come forward for the Post’s story, including one woman who fears losing any contact with her children after Escandon altered a custody agreement that had been in place for five years, thereby granting custodial rights to her mobster ex-husband who she fears will end up in the witness protection program or worse.
Alintoff told MMM that national television media outlets are calling her and the other women about their stories. She expects the women’s story to be featured on at least one network morning show this week.
Traffic rankings for APP.com, the Asbury Park Press’s website are down 25% in the month since the Gannett owned media outlet started charging for reading content on its website, according to the web information company, Alexa.
By Ernesto Cullari
