Woodward’s Basic Point Still Holds: The Woodward, Sperling emails revealed
You can read all of it via the Politico link below. I don’t care how the media seeks to spin this in the WH’s best interests, the simple point Woodward made holds. Sperling went to some length to intimidate Woodward and influence the coverage and it’s reasonable to assume he does likewise with greater effect to the many DC media upstarts now passing themselves off as journalists.
And judging from the reactions from the mostly boy toys that comprise today’s liberal DC media boy choir, this WH plays them just like the wannabe stars boy band members they look and act like. The bulk of these clowns are more qualified and experienced at writing a fanzine, than anything one could honestly called doing journalism. It’s little wonder more and more Americans have little regard, let alone respect, for our news media.
Just because it’s dressed up in DC cocktail circuit niceties doesn’t change the dynamic of what was taking place in the exchange. The problem is, the boy choir is such a part of it, they lack an independent perspective in judging it. My assumption is that it’s Woodward’s experience and maturity that allows him to retain some of his own perspective apart from the choir’s.
From Gene Sperling to Bob Woodward on Feb. 22, 2013
Bob:
I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. My bad. I do understand your problems with a couple of our statements in the fall — but feel on the other hand that you focus on a few specific trees that gives a very wrong perception of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here.
But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)
I agree there are more than one side to our first disagreement, but again think this latter issue is diffferent. Not out to argue and argue on this latter point. Just my sincere advice. Your call obviously.
My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.
Gene
From Woodward to Sperling on Feb. 23, 2013
Gene: You do not ever have to apologize to me. You get wound up because you are making your points and you believe them. This is all part of a serious discussion. I for one welcome a little heat; there should more given the importance. I also welcome your personal advice. I am listening. I know you lived all this. My partial advantage is that I talked extensively with all involved. I am traveling and will try to reach you after 3 pm today. Best, Bob
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/02/obama-white-house-denies-staffer-threatened-journalist-bob-woodward-emails-released/
And, again, reflexively, the Obami lie as a first reaction.
And…of course…Obama is welching on his own sequester plan.
The “balanced approach” was never “raise taxes”.
Where’s his budget? It is almost a month overdue, according to law, and nowhere in sight.
[…] Woodward’s Basic Point Still Holds: The Woodward, Sperling emails revealed – Riehl World… […]
Boy’s choir? More like castrati.
[…] Via Dan Riehl, and the Politico, here’s the entire email from Gene Sperling, economic adviser to the president, and Bob Woodward’s cordial response: […]
You morons stuck your asses out again – and got kicked. Again. Grown ups admit when they get played.
Lessee…
Did a guy who directly interacts with your Child-God spend a half-hour yelling at a journalist?
Yes, he DID!
Is your Child-God doing what Woodward says?
Yes, he IS!
Is what Mr. Sperling wrote in this email a veiled threat?
Sure could be taken that way.
As to sticking your ass out…
You do it for your punk-meisters every day.
“Please sir…? I want some more.”
Haha, whatever you say, you totally heterosexual, rugged individualist.
Woody:
“You do not ever have to apologize to me. You get wound up because you are making your points and you believe them. This is all part of a serious discussion. I for one welcome a little heat; there should more given the importance. I also welcome your personal advice. I am listening. I know you lived all this. My partial advantage is that I talked extensively with all involved. I am traveling and will try to reach you after 3 pm today. Best, Bob.”
This speaks for itself. You are too mentally ill to recognize it. You are also too deranged and bubble-drunk to recognize that you morons are perpetual laughing stocks for ALWAYS running with claims that you believe validate your prejudices, without actually checking the facts. See also, Friends of Hamas.
Quite a week for you idiots.
See below, moron.
This is a feature, not a bug.
And Woodward LIVES via access. He was just being the self-interested adult.
Are there Iranian friends of Hamas, you lying POS?
Haha, brilliant. In the wingnut-o-bubble, the plain context of a cordial email exchange is proof of “threats”. Must be delicious to never be deterred by the facts staring you in the dopy face.
And after preserving his “access,” Woody then runs to the wingnut-o-sphere screaming “help I’m being oppressed!!” knowing that you would dutifully, and eagerly lick up his story without checking fact-1.
“Are there Iranian friends of Hamas, you lying POS?”
Is there a group CALLED “Friends of Hamas,” that you, Virgin Ben, and Senate Wingnuts accused Hagel of taking money from, liar?
Is there a group CALLED “Friends of Hamas,” that you, Virgin Ben, and Senate Wingnuts accused Hagel of taking money from, liar?
That is three lies, liar.
Quote from Shapiro, me, and whoever-the-fluck you are raving about here, please.
In the wingnut-o-bubble, the plain context of a cordial email exchange is proof of “threats”. Must be delicious to never be deterred by the facts staring you in the dopy face.
—UnSanity, lying Collectivist punk
Your prefer to lie about the 1/2 of yelling BEFORE the exchange, which starts with an apology, then moves to a slick threat.
OK. Woodward says he felt it was a threat.
And you are ignoring that, too.
Because you cannot deal with reality.
Yeah, because yelling among colleagues never happens. Yeah, Woody SAID he *felt* threatened. The email exchange renders that *feeling* implausible.
But you lick it up.
Because it’s what you do.
These are not “colleagues”, you lying moron. Get a flucking dictionary.
The only person who has any business depicting Woodward’s feeling about being threatened is Woodward. Not you, who’s so far up Obama’s butt you can see his molars.
And it is you who is “licking it up”.
As people reading this can see.
Woody then runs to the wingnut-o-sphere screaming “help I’m being oppressed!!”
—UnSanity, lying Collectivist punk
You mean bsNBC…!?!?
Boy, are confused! And stupid.
The stupidity passing as *whatever* bouncing around in the wingnut bubble is getting more ridiculous by the day.
“Does Woodward recount that Obama was the source of the sequester?”
Yep. Falsely. As was demonstrated last week.
—UnSanity
“Demonstrated” where, and by who? One of your punk-meisters from the moonbattery?
——————————-
You dodged that the other day.
Care to provide your support now?
Gee, do you think the fact that the GOP was threatening not to raise the debt limit?
Gee, could you more completely NOT address the question?
Lemme give you a chance to show your ass here, too…
Remember UnSanity’s “Jimmie” the other day?
Meanwhile, Crazy “Blast Through The Door” Biden…point man on gun-grab…
keeps the hate alive…
http://washingtonexaminer.com/new-biden-brag-he-desegregated-movie-theaters/article/2522823
See what you take exception to about Bidens remarks on race there, moron.
RON FOURNIER: Why Bob Woodward’s Fight With The White House Matters to You. “As editor-in-chief of National Journal, I received several e-mails and telephone calls from this White House official filled with vulgarity, abusive language, and virtually the same phrase that Woodward called a veiled threat. . . . I changed the rules of our relationship, first, because it was a waste of my time (and the official’s government-funded salary) to engage in abusive conversations. Second, I didn’t want to condone behavior that might intimidate less-experienced reporters, a reaction I personally witnessed in journalists covering the Obama administration.”
I have to say, though, that Fournier’s “this can’t be what Obama wants” take, like Woodward’s similar line, has a sort of if the Tsar only knew flavor to it. Me, I think that political organizations, like most other organizations, get their flavor from the top.
—InstaPundit
There is a culture in every organization.
This regime is “thug”, top to bottom.
[…] Oh, and the White House told him he’d regret it. See the email here. […]
Let’s get this out of the way right now: the only opinion that matters as to whether Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward was threatened by the White House or not is Bob Woodward’s. When he was told you’re “going to regret doing this” by a senior White House official, he interpreted it as a threat. President Barack Obama’s allies, in the administration and the press, are now attempting to argue that Woodward is mistaken – that the inherently subjective condition of feeling threatened is debatable. One presumes that a journalist responsible for forcing one of the most Machiavellian presidents in American history to resign (a distinction Woodward himself shuns) is accustomed to threats. Having said that, the White House is right: Woodward will probably regret making himself the martyr for journalistic integrity in his battle with the globe’s most powerful executive office. When the White House decided to go to war with another reporting outlet – Fox News – few fellow journalists vocally objected. The nation’s ethicists were silent. If Woodward thinks his own stature will force the media to abstain from indulging in their reflexive instinct to protect the White House, he will find he has miscalculated.
Woodward has been fact checking the president’s statements about the sequester since last year. The battle between the presidency and Woodward went nuclear recently, however, when the reporter insisted that the White House was the source of the intentionally terrible idea known as the sequester. A minor point, but one that directly contradicted the White House’s messaging at the time.
The backlash from the administration came swiftly. Woodward said that he was on the receiving end of a 30 minute phone call with a screaming presidential aide – a condition familiar to reporters pursuing stories that are seen as politically inconvenient for the administration. Woodward added that he received a threatening email over the his claim that the White House was the source of the idea for the sequester. POLITICO published the emails in which Woodward was warned he would “regret” the position he’s taken on this issue.
Woodward than escalated his battle with the White House. He went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe were he called Obama’s decision to insist that a carrier cannot be deployed to the Persian gulf unless the sequester is averted “a kind of madness that I haven’t seen in a long time.” He went on CNN’s The Situation Room where he revealed that he was threatened. Woodward will do the cable news equivalent of the Full Ginsberg tonight when he sits down with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity.
What Woodward is alleging is an outrage, but his journalistic colleagues will be able to find false equivalencies in which to take shelter and avoid confronting the White House over this inexcusable behavior. Who came up with the sequester and when does not enjoy quite the scandalous magnitude that the Watergate break in did. Secondly, Woodward will need powerful and influential allies in traditional media to speak up for his integrity. He will not find them.
Read the rest at Mediaite
(And, no, UnSanity, I won’t provide you a link, you lazy moron.)
Wow, spin from your perspective. That’s hard-hitting, Clownselor.
It’s fully supported by recited facts.
Refute it any way you can.
“Hand-wave” isn’t persuasive.
Especially from a Collectivist troll who posts pure hate and lies here constantly.
Wingnuts fail yet again.
Fail at what?
Lying like the Collective? Yeah.
Thank gawd.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/02/28/every-single-bit-of-gun-advice-biden-gives-will-get-you-arrested/
From the mental deficient who the stupid voted to be “one heart-beat away from the nuclear button”.
Way to go, morons…!!!
U.S. consumer spending rose in January as Americans spent more on services, with savings providing a cushion after income recorded its biggest drop in 20 years.
Income tumbled 3.6 percent, the largest drop since January 1993. Part of the decline was payback for a 2.6 percent surge in December as businesses, anxious about higher taxes, rushed to pay dividends and bonuses before the new year.
A portion of the drop in January also reflected the tax hikes. The income at the disposal of households after inflation and taxes plunged a 4.0 percent in January after advancing 2.7 percent in December.
The Commerce Department said on Friday consumer spending increased 0.2 percent in January after a revised 0.1 percent rise the prior month. Spending had previously been estimated to have increased 0.2 percent in December.
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And THAT is from the Chicago Trib.
Obama made it worse.