Larry O’Connor’s well-caught “sound bite for the day” yesterday deserves further elaboration.

Yesterday, on MSNBC, left-wing journalists Chris Hayes of The Nation and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post–no strangers to Democrat-media collusion–revealed that they had been part of an off-the-record White House briefing in which it was made clear that President Barack Obama planned all along to let the temporary payroll tax holiday expire, and then blame Republicans.

The meeting may have been the one first revealed on December 19, 2011 by ABC News’s senior White House correspondent, Jake Tapper, who tweeted that day that “a group of progressive media stars” had attended a private meeting at the White House with the President.

However, if Hayes is to be believed, the message of that meeting may have extended far beyond the “progressive” media niche at MSNBC, and reached a broader audience in Washington.

According to Hayes, “everyone in Washington” knew that Obama wanted the payroll tax extension to fail–and yet the same journalists eagerly covered the subsequent payroll tax debate as if Republicans were the only obstacle to an extension. The result of the media’s collusion was a year-end political victory for Obama and the Democrats at the expense of House leaders, the Tea Party, and Republicans in general.

Here is the exchange between Hayes and Klein (0:44 to 1:04), with MSNBC contributor Melissa Harris-Perry chiming in encouragingly (transcript follows):

Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes reveal on MSNBC that they were invited to a private, “off the record” briefing during the payroll tax cut debate a two weeks ago. According to Hayes, the White House let the liberal journalists know that the President was prepared to let the tax cut expire and blame Republicans. This threat ultimately led to what was seen as a Republican capitulation on the issue.
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From Jake Tapper’s Tweet:

Progressive talking heads and journolisters meeting the President?

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The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein is the founder of the infamous Journolist, a notorious online gathering place where 400 or so elite “journalists” got together to plot out their anti-Republican narratives in order to help Obama win the presidency. The fact that the Washington Post didn’t fire Klein immediately upon the discovery of this tells you how far that once storied institution has fallen. It’s also important to remember that Klein is presented by Wapo, not as the partisan leftist he is, but as…

“…the editor of Wonkblog and a columnist at the Washington Post, as well as a contributor to MSNBC and Bloomberg. His work focuses on domestic and economic policymaking, as well as the political system that’s constantly screwing it up.”

Well, last week Klein was apparently caught crossing another line:

From JournoList to activist, it appears that WaPo‘s liberal blogger Ezra Klein is once again blurring the lines between being a journalist and trying to sway politics. In what appears to be at a minimum a breach of journalism ethics, Klein spoke to a group of Senate Democratic Chiefs of Staff last Friday about the Supercommittee, just days before the Committee announced its failing. “It was kind of weird,” said a longtime Senate Democratic aide, explaining that while people “enjoyed it” and gave it “positive reviews” this sort of thing is far from typical.

A longtime Washington editor who deals with Capitol Hill regularly also said this is not the norm: “”I have never heard of a reporter briefing staffers. It’s supposed to be the other way around. This arrangement seems highly unusual.”

Klein’s speech to high-level Democratic aides was in the Capitol, closed door and off the record. It lasted 30 minutes. “I think they thought it was very helpful,” said the aide. “I think it’s unusual. What’s more common is to get someone like Paul Begala or a White House staffer. To get a journalist to talk is a little unusual.”

Today Klein responded with this non-denial denial:

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From Fishbowl DC:

From JournoList to activist, it appears that WaPo‘s liberal blogger Ezra Kleinis once again blurring the lines between being a journalist and trying to sway politics. In what appears to be at a minimum a breach of journalism ethics, Klein spoke to a group of Senate Democratic Chiefs of Staff last Friday about the Supercommittee, just days before the Committee announced its failing. “It was kind of weird,” said a longtime Senate Democratic aide, explaining that while people “enjoyed it” and gave it “positive reviews” this sort of thing is far from typical.

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Why is Ezra Klein considered one of the Left’s smartest bloggers / pundits? What criteria are they using? Does the ability to take the latest Center for American Progress’ talking point memo and rewording it make you “smart” among the Left? Or is it his ability to use some other Soros-funded think tank’s analysis in order to argue that up is down? It’s baffling. Naturally, MSNBC seems to be grooming him for TV — he guest hosts a few of their shows — but why?

This IQ-sapping post about the recent bankruptcy of solar-power technology developer, Solyndra, is a perfect example of Klein’s “smart” – read “not really very smart” – analysis. (via Washington Post)

I don’t know all the specifics behind Solyndra, the solar-power company that the White House touted as a successful renewable-energy investment but which went belly-up this week.

He should have stopped right there, but the failure is a very high profile one for progressives, the “green” agenda, and Obama, so Klein had to comment — and this is his problem. He takes it upon himself to be the guy who tries to explain to the peons out there why progressivism’s failures aren’t failures. For some inexplicable reason, editors and program managers out there keep paying him to do it, too. And then there are all the people who read his “analysis” and agree with it! It’s unreal.

To his credit, Klein did at least point to an article (also on Washington Post) which does a good job reporting how the $535 Million government-backed loan Solyndra received was sketchy. Chances regular Klein readers actually read the other article? Slim. They’re not there to read about the deal or if it was a wise investment. They’re on Klein’s blog to be told that a massive failure was okay. They want to hear that Obama made the right call and that Klein is going to give them a warm fuzzy feeling if it’s the last thing he does.

But as a general point, it’s entirely possible for the initial investment to have made sense and for the company to have eventually failed. If we’re going to try to support young companies doing risky things in sectors that we’re hoping to dominate, we’re going to have to be prepared for some of them to fail. In fact, we should be hoping some of them fail. If our success rate is too high, it means government is making bad investments.

There’s so much wrong-disguised-as-common-sense in this paragraph one could probably write a book about it. Klein seems incapable of asking himself if the Federal Government should be doing this at all. Should it be supporting young companies doing risky things? The question has probably never crossed his mind.

If “we” as a society are hoping to dominate the solar power sector, wouldn’t the private sector be all over it? The failure to ask these questions leads to the two ridiculous sentences at the end of the paragraph. No one hopes some of their investments fail. No one. And the government, particularly, shouldn’t hope their investments fail because they’re not investing their own money. They’re investing taxpayer money that is not being voluntarily given. They’d better have a really high success rate! If not, they shouldn’t be doing it!

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- Did CPI coordinate with Greenpeace for a Koch hit?

They made this polar bear facepalm.

- Joe Scarborough: “Dick Cheney wins foreign policy.”

- Big Journalism’s Dana Loesch answers whether Paul and Bachmann are ready for the presidency and the Paul/FEMA remarks

- RedState schools Ezra Klein on the definition of a ponzi scheme:

Ezra Klein thought he was embarrassing Rick Perry by ridiculing Perry’s comparison, but as usual he embarrassed himself.

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He has written about having sex with an underage girl, and claims he once threatened to kill a pregnant girlfriend unless she had an abortion. He claims to hate marijuana, but recommends heroin as the cure for suburban boredom. He mocks “Tea Baggers” and scorns “hippies.” His Russian newspaper was shuttered after a government crackdown, and he’s a regular on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Meet Mark Ames, the provocateur who created the Koch brothers conspiracy theory.

Long before John Podesta’s Center for American Progress began targeting the Koch brothers for their supposed role in the Tea Party, and two years before the Kochs were cast as the villains of public sector union protests in Wisconsin, Ames had already shaped the Koch brothers meme.

Ames and co-author Yasha Levine launched the conspiracy theory–and its twin themes of drug abuse and gay sex–with a blog post (now removed) at Playboy.com in February 2009, entitled: “Backstabber: Is Rick Santelli High on Koch?” They published almost exactly the same article at their own site, exiledonline.com, as “Exposing the Rightwing PR Machine: Is CNBC’s Rick Santelli Sucking Koch?”

Ames and Levine alleged that Santelli’s famous “rant heard around the world” that inspired the Tea Party movement “was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger” for an “anti-Obama campaign.” That campaign, they claimed, had been planned for months before the 2008 election, and funded by “the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups.”

Ames would later explain that he had been inspired to write about the Kochs by his experiences in post-Soviet Moscow, when he edited a sensational newspaper, the eXile–described last year by Vanity Fair as “arguably the most abusive, defamatory, un-evenhanded, and crassest publication in Russia” before it closed in 2008. (more…)

Don’t Worry, It’s Not Racist. He Just Wants Black Children To Die To Save Money.

What’s wrong with you, bitter clingers? Don’t you realize that a dead child is a cheap child? I mean, all dead babies cost is the funds to suck or cut them mercilessly from their mother’s womb. Presto! No more pesky expenses of a living child.

Ezra Klein, writing at the Washington Post, actually proffers that argument in favor of  taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood; that abortions are cheaper for the government than having an “unintended pregnancy”. (That’s their euphemism for unborn baby killed by abortion.) His article is filled with predictable talking points, all easily disproved – the SBA List has already done so here.  Setting the horrid spin aside, his concluding paragraph is truly vile:

The fight also isn’t about cutting spending. The services Planned Parenthood provides save the federal government a lot of money. It’s somewhat cold to put it in these terms, but taxpayers end up bearing a lot of the expense for unintended pregnancies among people without the means to care for their children. [my emphasis]

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Alternate headline: “Paul Krugman Will Not Read This Article”

Second alternate headline: “Paul Krugman: Lolcats > Conservatives”

Over the weekend a prominent figure in the art world, a liberal, came up to a group of us from Team Breitbart following a conversation that took place both on air and off, and told us we, particularly Big Journalism EIC Dana Loesch, are very respectable spokespeople for our side.  Needless to say, we were flattered, but while I certainly didn’t attempt to sway him off of his position that we’re super cool, I would contend we are merely representative of the quality people in our movement, as opposed to exceptions to the rule that conservatives are racist, bigoted, intolerant, etc.  Clearly the sweet accolade from the sweet man had a very powerful and illustrative subtext to it: he just doesn’t know many conservatives… if any.

One of the reasons for the existence of this very blog is because many of us contend that a substantial portion of the movers and shakers on the left, like the aforementioned gentleman, tend to live in bubbles.  This is a common theme across several of the Bigs.  Hollywood, the mainstream media, and academia, to name a few high profile arenas, are so overwhelming left-of center that it’s rare to find Republicans inhabiting them at all, much less outspoken Tea Partiers like the ones who make up the Bigs team.  On the other hand, those of us on the right are constantly forced to contend with the best thought the left has to offer, or else we’d be forgoing academics in one of the world’s most educated societies, we’d be abstaining from entertainment in the country that redefined it, and as good as the fantasy of doing away with what we call “the mainstream media” sounds, that’s a process that would take decades to complete, if it’s even possible (or beneficial).

So we’re forced to listen, whether we want to or not.  The schools, entertainers, and media outlets have us as a captive audience while these movers and shakers can comfortably build a career in the world of ideas without as much as consulting with those held by (at least) half of us.

Case in point, Nobel Prize-winning Princeton Economics Professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.  Last week, Krugman was asked which websites he reads frequently, and after providing a list of liberals and leftists like Greg Sargent, Josh Marshall, Digby, and Atrios, he copped to not reading any conservatives online on a regular basis: (more…)

Journolister and Washington Post writer Ezra Klein is another one of those liberals in the elite Old Media trying to pretend that there is no Islam in terrorism these days. He’s also another one of those who, in the face of reality, hyperbolically say that Christians are somehow just as prone to terrorism as Muslims. If only he could find any of that terrorism, he might have some veracity on the issue.

Oh, Klein is desperately trying to find that Christian terrorism no matter how wild a stretch it is, sure enough. Like President Obama and his Deputy National Security Advisor, Denis McDonough, Klein is trying to take criminal acts unconnected to religion perpetrated by Americans and morph them into “Christian terrorism.”

On MSNBCs Morning Joe for March 7, Klein tied himself into knots of illogic in order to absolve radical Islam for the thousands of acts of terrorism perpetrated over the last 50 or so years.

In his conversation with a perplexed Pat Buchannan on the MSNBC morning show, Klein insisted that “young Christians” are just as apt to perpetrate terrorism because they have been involved in “school shootings.”

In response to Buchanan’s point that the Muslim community in the US is “particularly vulnerable” to radicalization, Klein said, “there’s not a ton of evidence, though, that was a radicalization of American community. We’ve had spree shooters in America, Pat … We’ve had school shootings from young Christians.”

This is the left-wing apologia du jour, for sure. Every time radical Islamic-based terror is brought up, self-flagellating left-wingers like Obama and Klein try to assert that all religions are equally liable to be turned toward terrorism these days. But this is simply an absurd paean to PCism.

Have we had people that are ostensibly “Christians” involved in school shootings? Not really as they didn’t cite their faith as the reason compelling them to murder — in fact, their supposed religious affiliation is no more relevant than the fact that they all had hair, or they all wore clothes when they perpetrated their criminal mass shootings. Using Klein’s logic, I suppose we could say fashion designers are prone to terrorism because these shooters wore clothes while committing their crimes?

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I am waiting for Ezra Klein
to eat a copy of the Constitution
and tell us if it’s binding
and I am waiting
for 60 Minutes to wind down
and I am waiting
for a presidential debate moderator
to crack wise with Chris Christie
and I am waiting
for Old Media
to request end-of-life counseling
and I am really waiting
for the Associated Press
to screw up and forget to spin a story

I am waiting for Nova
to report a major extinction event
involving NPR and PBS
and I am waiting
for Charlie Gibson’s glasses
to fall off his nose
and I am waiting
for someone to interrupt Bill O’Reilly
and I am waiting for Saudi Arabia
to endow the “Al Jazeera Chair”
at Columbia University School of Journalism
and I am really waiting
for Katie Couric to connect the dots
on rising fuel costs

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Washington Post blogger and left-wing Journo-List founder Ezra Klein made a curious admission on MSNBC today:

Such an old document is impossible to understand? Forgetting the obvious slams that could be made at young Mr. Klein with regard to his youthful ignorance of any bit of important American culture that predates ‘N Sync, I’d instead like to thank Ezra for providing evidence of one of the basic, principled differences between the right and the left: Conservatives still look to our country’s founding documents to guide their political and legislative agendas and the left just does what they want and then tries to force it through because working within the confines of the Constitution is just “too hard.”
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You can’t make this stuff up. From the Washington Post, the employer of the most ethically challenged bunch of pundits and bloggers this side of Pravda:

This is a contest aimed at people who’ve read a column in a newspaper or watched a talking head on TV and thought: “Hey, I could do that.” It’s for people who may already regularly voice their opinions — but wouldn’t mind a bigger audience. It’s for people who want to influence the national debate.

If you’re one of those people, then this is your chance to put your opinions to the test — and win an opportunity to write for The Washington Post and launch your opinionating career.

Start making your case.

We’ll accept entries as soon as the online entry form goes live on Sept. 20, 2010 at 12:01 p.m. ET. Use the form to send us a short opinion essay (400-word limit) pegged to a topic in the news and an additional paragraph (100-word limit) on yourself and why you should win. Entry deadline: Oct. 1, 2010 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Post editors will pick the top 50 entries on the basis of style, intelligence and freshness of argument (but not on whether we agree or disagree with your point of view). And then we’ll be looking to readers to help us narrow the field to ten finalists.

How pathetic is this? (more…)

Enjoy:

For an example of Ackerman’s incredibly unsophisticated and embarrassingly juvenile “foreign correspondence” please go here, if you can stand it.

Big sites publisher Andrew Breitbart, on the continuing scandal of the JournoList:

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Before we begin, let us pause for a moment to thank our Almighty for the small pleasures of life, such as almost a full week passing without having to suffer through yet another high cry and desperate whine from JournoList founder and Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, as he dishonestly complains about his online cabal of left-wing “journalists” being taken out of context by the Daily Caller’s damning and ongoing drip-drip-drip of an expose’.

JournoList founder Ezra Klein

Yes, thank you Ezra, for finally realizing that you were embarrassing yourself with these complaints as those of us watching this story wondered why you didn’t just go ahead and prove the Daily Caller a liar with a fully contextual response of your own, using that unique WaPo perch combined with the magic of the Internet and your very own personal copy of the full JournoList archives.

While I never took seriously my challenge to Mr. Klein to go right on ahead and clear up all his contextual concerns, he might want to consider doing so now. On June 29th, weeks before the Daily Caller announced the glorious fact that they were in possession of all or part of the JournoList archives, Klein wrote the following:

What if I told you I ran a secret e-mail list that connected progressive writers with staffers for Democratic politicians so that those staffers could tell the progressives what, exactly, their bosses wanted them writing about that day?

Sadly, I don’t run such a list.

You have to love that last sentence. The use of the word ”sadly” is soooo sly. Especially when it appears, that at times, that’s exactly the type of list Klein was running. (more…)

ROBERT GIBBS:  The MSM are still holding the line, Mr. President, but the whole MSNBC crew has revolted.

DAVID AXELROD:  Schultz, Olbermann, Maddow, Matthews–tonight they begin their on-air nude marathon hunger strike, sir.  They’ll nibble on Brie and drink nothing but Perrier until you acknowledge your debt to them and restore the public option.

OBAMA:  Man!  Eighteen months ago those people thought I walked on water.  Now they crucify me because I can’t transmogrify private coverage into single payer.  Uh, Bob, who’s that sittin’ over there in the corner?

GIBBS:  His name’s Ezra Klein, sir, founder of the now defunct JournoList web clique I told you about.

OBAMA: What’s he doing here?

GIBBS:  You wanted our Latino media on the same page in the months before midterms, sir.  He’s reconstituted JournoList, only this time with 400 Hispanic journalists and bloggers.  They’ll communicate in coded Spanish–Ezra’s minor– to reduce the chance of exposure. Sort of like Codetalkers en Espanol.

OBAMA: Si, se puede!

AXELROD: We figured it would be helpful to have him attend our strategy sessions and hear firsthand the spin he’ll be disseminating.  He’s been instructed not to look you in the eye or speak unless he’s spoken to, sir. After all, he’s only 14… (more…)