Is the “worm” turning?

When liberal journalists go into attack mode at an Obama admin white house press briefing, you know…

things

are

going

south.

“White House Reporters Grill Gibbs Over ‘Prepackaged’ Questions for Obama”

See for yourself. This exchange is simultaneously sickening and amazing. The pathetic excuse for a WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (Obama’s Minister of PropOganda) evading questions  his typical  contemptuous trade mark style, while Reid and Thomas dig in not wanting to let up.  You could of cut the friction with a knife.

_{Embedded video}

Link @YouTube

I never thought I would live to see the day I cheered on Helen Thomas. But that day has arrived.

HELEN THOMAS: We have never had that in the White House. We have had some control [inaudible]. I’m amazed that you people who call for openness and transparency…

ROBERT GIBBS: You haven’t even heard the questions.

CHIP REID: It doesn’t matter. It’s the process.  Even if there’s a tough question, it’s a question coming from somebody who was invited and who was screened or the question was screened.

GIBBS: Chip, Chip, lets have this discussion at the conclusion of the town hall meetings.

THOMAS: No, no, no, we’re having it now.

GIBBS: Well, I’d be happy to have it now.

THOMAS: It’s a pattern.

GIBBS: Which questions do you object to at the town hall meeting?

THOMAS: It’s a pattern.

GIBBS: What’s a pattern?

THOMAS: It’s a pattern of controlling the press.

GIBBS: How so? Is there any evidence going on that I’m currently controlling the press? Poorly, I might add.

THOMAS: Your formal engagements are prepackaged.

GIBBS: How so?

REID: Well, and controlling the public.

THOMAS: How so? By calling reporters the night before to tell them they’re going to be called on. That is shocking.

GIBBS: We’ve had this discussion ad nauseum, and uh…

THOMAS: Of course you would, because you don’t have any answers.

GIBBS: Uh, well, because I didn’t know you were going to ask a question, Helen.

THOMAS: Well you should have.

GIBBS: Have you emailed your question today?

THOMAS: I don’t have to email. I can tell you right now what I want to say.

GIBBS: I don’t doubt that at all, Helen.

REID: Actually, could you pass along a question from all of us to the president: Is he going to support a tax increase on the middle class?

When Gibbs is speaking to the press he is speaking to the American people. When he replies in such a patronizing condescending tone, that is how he is speaking to all of us.

Helen Thomas had more to say after the fact. And she does not hold back.

BAM!

(CNSNews.com)

[...] “What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.

“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.

“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well–for the town halls, for theor the press conferences,” she said. “It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.” [...]

Update:

Well…well…well…what do we have here? Reid and Thomas have been vindicated. Robert Gibbs has some ’splaining to do.

America’s Right

[...] the White House micromanaging everything just the way Helen Thomas and Chip Reid knew they would do. Consider the similarity of the March 27 report with this one, published today by the Washington Post:

In the highly stage-managed event, questions for Obama came from a live audience selected by the White House and the college, and from Internet questions chosen by the administration’s own new-media team.

Of the seven questions the president answered, four were selected by his own staff from people who submitted videos on the White House Web site or who responded to a request for “tweets” from the administration.

The president called randomly on three audience members. Each turned out to be members of groups with close ties to his administration: the SEIU union, Health Care for America Now, and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee. White House officials said that was a coincidence.
Read it all!>>>

Coincidence??? My sweet potato! No, don’t even go there. That is NOT good enough. I am so sick of being treated like a fool by the Obama Mis-Administration.

Wake up America your intelligence is being insulted on a constant basis. You should be livid.

Kate at Small Dead Animals links…thanks!

Far from it…

As I previously posted, Barack Obama prefers a Social justice SCOTUS

Constitution? What Constitution?

Or rather…whose?

“I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind, and a record of excellence and integrity,” he said. “I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book, it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives, whether they can make a living, and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes, and welcome in their own nation. I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with peoples hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.” – Barack Obama May 1 2009

Then there is this enlightening quote, also by Obama.

“Sometimes we’re only looking at academics or people who’ve been in the [lower courts]. If we can find people who have life experience and they understand what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them, that’s the kind of person I want on the Supreme Court.” -Barack Obama on the campaign trail 2007

Obama follows through with his threats in his Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor…

Judicial Confirmation Network (JCN) Statement on nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court

May 26, 2009
Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, on nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court:
“Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written. She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.

“She reads racial preferences and quotas into the Constitution, even to the point of dishonoring those who preserve our public safety. On September 11, America saw firsthand the vital role of America’s firefighters in protecting our citizens. They put their lives on the line for her and the other citizens of New York and the nation. But Judge Sotomayor would sacrifice their claims to fair treatment in employment promotions to racial preferences and quotas. The Supreme Court is now reviewing that decision.

“She has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court.”

National Journal

The judge’s thinking is representative of the Democratic Party’s powerful identity-politics wing.

So accustomed have we become to identity politics that it barely causes a ripple when a highly touted Supreme Court candidate, who sits on the federal Appeals Court in New York, has seriously suggested that Latina women like her make better judges than white males.

Indeed, unless Sotomayor believes that Latina women also make better judges than Latino men, and also better than African-American men and women, her basic proposition seems to be that white males (with some exceptions, she noted) are inferior to all other groups in the qualities that make for a good jurist.

Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.

A match made in leftie heaven.

Judge Sotomayor is the perfect pick for leftists seeking a high court policy maker. She passes every leftist ideological litmus test under the sun. She is…
[...]
[A review of some past judicial decisions can be read here - http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/judge-sotomayors-appellate-opinions-in-civil-cases/]

NY Times: Lecture: ‘A Latina Judge’s Voice’

Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture in 2002, delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, by appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor. It was published in the Spring 2002 issue of Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, a symposium issue entitled “Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation”

Excerpts:
Sotomayor’s racially-charged statement

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Sotomayor on the probability of her making  “wise Latina woman’s …better [judicial] conclusions”  based on gender and race.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

From Sonia Sotomayor’s profile at Discover the Networks

She [Sotomayor] reminisces: “The Puerto Rican group on campus, Acción Puertorriqueña, and the Third World Center provided me with an anchor I needed to ground myself in that new and different world.”

Acción Puertorriqueña, which remains active to this day, lobbied against Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative designed to deny social-welfare benefits to illegal aliens in California; sponsored a 2003 event focusing on the alleged “inequality” that suppressed Latinos’ “access to higher education … throughout our nation”; and currently supports increased rights and privileges for illegal immigrants.

In 1980 Sotomayor became a Board of Directors member of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, a post she would hold for 12 years [1980-1992]

Princeton educated Sotomayor harbors a “pre-occupation with victimhood” Gee who does that remind me of? Heh

On both a personal and professional level, Sotomayor has long placed a great emphasis on ethnic identity (and on the presumed victim status of nonwhite minorities). By her own telling, she has never fully shed her personal sense of being an outsider looking in on American society:

• “The differences from the larger society and the problems I faced as a Latina woman didn’t disappear when I left Princeton. I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of any of the worlds I inhabit.”
• “As accomplished as I have been in my professional settings, I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up and am always concerned that I have to work harder to succeed.”

To learn more of Sotomayor let’s take a look at one her  longtime close associations (PRLDEF), as mentioned above.

Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund

# Supports bilingual education
# Supports racial gerrymandering of voting districts
# Supports expanded rights for illegal aliens

One could assume since Sotomayor served on Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund’s (PRLDEF) Board of Directors for a lengthy 12 years . It would be hard to distinguish between the two. Sotomayor must of course be sympathetic with PRLDEF’s views.

PRLDEF’s identity politics –outright discrimination against a conservative Hispanic.
Case in point:

PRLDEF passionately opposed President George W. Bush’s 2003 nomination of conservative Republican Miguel Estrada, a Honduran-born immigrant, to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.

Who is Miguel Estrada?
_{Linda Chavez – 9/26/2002}

Sen. Leahy is not acting alone — he’s simply carrying water for the left-wing groups that oppose Estrada’s nomination, such as the National Organization for Women and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. So what is it about Estrada that has provoked such hostility? Despite an 18-month-long search through the minutiae of Estrada’s life, these groups can’t point to any ethical or legal transgressions. And even the liberal American Bar Association gave him the highest judicial fitness rating by unanimous vote. Nonetheless, his critics accuse Estrada of being — hold your breath — a conservative. And everyone knows that conservatives, especially those who happen also to be Hispanic or black, are dangerous.
[snip]
Estrada proved he could succeed on his own, without racial or ethnic double standards or the patronage of leftist advocacy groups. That makes him automatically suspect. In the words of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, Estrada “has lived a very different life from that of most Latinos — a life isolated from their experience and concerns.“ Oh really? Let’s see, he came here as an immigrant, like about one out of every two adult Hispanics. He worked hard, as do most Hispanics, who have among the highest labor force participation rates of any group. And he succeeded, brilliantly. I have a feeling that it’s this part of Estrada’s life story that these groups have a problem with. After all, according to liberal victimology, aren’t Hispanics typically supposed to be dropouts, needing a never-ending series of government programs in order to eke out even a meager existence? Their racism is the most pernicious kind, wrapped in phony compassion. Estrada proves the lie to much of the Left’s stereotyping of Hispanics, and they can’t stand it. Worse, they worry that if Estrada makes it onto the D.C. Circuit, he will likely become the first Hispanic nominated to the Supreme Court. This is a plum slot the Democrats hoped to reserve for one of their own, [...]

Present day -Year 2009 PRLDEF throws it’s full support behind one of it’s own, Judge Sonia Sotomayor (pdf)

Update:

American Spectator – Matthew Vadum

According to the group’s (PRLDEF) website, it gets some of its funding from George Soros’ Open Society Institute.  (scroll down left sidebar)

Open Society Institute George Soros

End update

The myopic vision of the left. Regardless of the tolerant views they espouse.  Will support you, sing your praises and fight for your rights as long as you are one of them.  Dig deeper and you will see they only stand behind those who share their ideology or are a perceived victim. Miguel Estrada fell short of their criteria.

Published on: May 26, 2009 @ 11:48

…Frolics in the Forrest Amongst Unicorns, Antelopes and Mountain Lions

Oh my!

Obama worship homage cover shot.

LA CITY BEAT

That One.

Yes, Barack Obama is a magnificent human being. He is smarter, prettier, and better-dressed than you, and he can shoot threes from way downtown. When he went to Europe and the Middle East, they treated him like he was King of the World. The king of Jordan drove him to the airport – physically drove him, like, behind the wheel of his kingmobile – himself. People could not get enough of the Good Time Happy Face Reunion World Tour. This is, in fact, a good thing. See, there used to be a time when people loved us – people besides Pinochet and Yakov Smirnoff. That could happen again. What a country!

The Obama phenomenon has risen to the extreme level of Idolatry.

Such adulation is disturbing.

He is but a man of flesh and bones.