Below is video from the portion of today’s White House briefing where the press corps brought up the lavish Hollywood-themed Halloween party the West Wing threw in October of 2009. Some in the media are reporting that the White House, fearing a political backlash so close to a crucial ObamaCare vote, covered up the party from the media. In response, the White House is publicly stating that simply isn’t true and that the media knew all about the party and just didn’t bother to report it. 

Watch the clip and then ask yourself if the press sounds like they would if the White House was throwing them under the bus with a lie. 

If I were in the media and the White House was lying about me to get out of a political jam, I’d be raising holy hell. And what we’re seeing in that clip is nothing close to holy or hell.

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The Obamas threw an epic Halloween bash in 2009 and we’re only just now discovering how over-the-top the bash was — and how complicit media was in keeping the White House’s secret. After all, White House staff was “concerned” that the extravagant bash would appear tone-deaf to unemployed Americans, hundreds of thousands of whom are leaving the workforce entirely as new jobs are scarce and businesses are stretched thin. But is the story what it seems?

The White House has thrown so many over-the top parties and the First Lady has come under fire from the President’s advisers for her expensive tastes, so the initial reaction to hearing of yet another extravagant White House party is anger. But was the Halloween bash like the other White House parties? Was it like the party with Paul McCartney that the Obamas enjoyed while the Gulf struggled with an oil spill? Or the party the White House threw when America had its credit rating downgraded? If media reports are to be believed, the Halloween bash was “staged“/thrown by Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Security for the event would cost the public, but (I assume) comparatively no more than the cost of the annual Easter egg roll or other observances.

The point of the question isn’t to excuse the Obamas’ past irresponsibility in presentation; they lead one of the most tone-deaf administrations (Camelot style in a Carter economy, after all). The point is that this event, from my understanding, was for, and attended predominately by, military members and their families. This party is easier to justify, and features a better guest list, than the previous devil-may-care variety. I don’t want to discourage Hollywood from doing something nice for our soldiers when 99% of the movies they make about them portray them as monsters. The last time Johnny Depp dabbled in politics he called the country a “big dumb puppy.” A good deed like footing the bill (assumedly sans Secret Service, other security) for a bash thrown in honor of military families deserves some positive reinforcement by way of kudos, if this report is true.

There is still the pesky question of why the White House and media in attendance kept all of this quiet.

The White House press corps was allowed to report on more modest festivities earlier that day for Washington-area school children, but did not release details of the more glamorous festivities that occurred later for what was the Obamas’ first Halloween in office in 2009.

Why? One could beg the question that the White House and media didn’t disclose this because they knew it was wrong. Why would it be wrong? Because of public reaction? This is where it gets sneaky. It’s a set up: The narrative will be that details weren’t released because the White House didn’t want folks freaking out over extravagances for military families provided by a Hollywood director and his actor/muse. The narrative will progress into a notion that conservatives are tight-fisted when it comes to providing military families with a nice Halloween, one that wasn’t even at the conservatives’s expense. It will reinforce the stereotype that conservatives and Hollywood will always be at odds, and can’t a film director throw a party for the military if he wants? GOSH.

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More MSM Palace Guarding as documented by RCP’s Richard Benedetto:

Over the past five months, the Republican presidential candidates participated in 13 debates where they fielded dozens of penetrating questions on every major issue facing the nation, and some not so major.

The nationally televised and/or Internet-streamed forums each drew an average of 5 million to 6 million viewers, along with breathless wall-to-wall coverage, commentary and criticism from the news media, radio and TV talk shows, Internet blogs and partisan websites.

Indeed, the GOP hopefuls have been thoroughly queried on a laundry list of issues ranging from immigration problems to the faltering economy, Iran’s nuclear program to trade deficits with China, the intricacies of climate change to strategies to combat terrorism, exploding government regulations to skyrocketing public debt, plus some uncomfortable questions about their pasts and their personal lives.

Yet, during all that time, the man they hope to defeat next November has rarely been asked by news reporters about many of these issues. Since August, President Obama has held only one formal White House news conference. That came on Oct. 6, nearly three months ago. It lasted 74 minutes, shorter than any single Republican debate, and the president was asked 17 questions, most of them softballs on the economy and his latest legislative proposals to create jobs.

No questions on immigration, no questions on Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan or Israel or North Korea — global trouble spots the GOP candidates have been queried about repeatedly. Moreover, he was not asked about what spending cuts he would make to reduce the deficit, nothing about Medicare and Social Security reform or his health care law, all familiar questions for the Republicans seeking his job.

Full story here.

WaPo:

The White House’s relationship with the reporters who cover it has blown hot and cold throughout history. And this year, some reporters say, things have taken a decidedly frosty turn.

When a reporter gets something wrong or is perceived as being too aggressive, the response is often swift and sometimes at top volume, reporters say. …

Glenn Thrush, who is a reporter for a Web site and Capitol Hill newspaper, Politico, said his encounters have been far more mild than what he experienced as a reporter covering New York City politics for Newsday.

“Coming from a New York tabloid background, having a flack speak to me in an elevated tone does not make me crawl under my desk,” he said. “It does not terrify me to have someone raise their voice occasionally. The expectation in covering the White House is that it’s always going to be about using the good china. Sometimes this is about paper plates.”

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“I think we should have a moment of silence in solidarity for the person that they said was from the Washington DC Occupy, that maybe why did he feel the need to shoot the White House window today.”

Currently the MSM is working overtime to make sure no narrative is created from the suspected White House shooter’s connection to #OccupyDC.

First, those who would leap all over a single sign to smear the entire Tea Party movement kept the White House shooting story quiet.

And now those who eagerly spread the Tea Party N-word lie are hiding the possible connection below six paragraphs and a few hundred words.

According to some reports, this shooter is accused of having a fixation on the White House and having targeted the residence where the President and his family live. That means we could have an attempted assassination of the President of the United States on our hands, and these oh-so precious Occupiers are gathering to show some “solidarity,” reverence and understanding of the man’s actions.

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Suspected Shooter Ortega-Hernandez

In a nearly thousand-word article written about the arrest and capture of 21-year-old Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, a man suspected of shooting at the White House, you’ll have to read through at least six paragraphs before you get to what should be the most explosive part:

Late on Friday, the police had searched the Occupy DC protest camp, on McPherson Square just blocks from the White House, after reports that the suspect might have spent time there. Protesters there said on Wednesday that the police had been through their encampment several times since then, showing around a photograph of Mr. Ortega.

Yes, that’s right, our suspected shooter apparently spent time with Occupy.

But the memo has obviously gone out throughout the entire journOlist community that this connection must be played down to where it hardly registers at all.

Ace of Spades:

Jared Loughner never once attended a Tea Party, nor did he read Tea Party literature, or subscribe to Tea Party ideas.

Nevertheless, within 24 hours the media elected him to be Chairman Emeritus of the Tea Party movement.

A guy shoots at the White House, and guess what? He’s with the Occupy movement.

And let’s not forgot how Sarah Palin was figuratively lynched by the media for the crimes Loughner’s been charged with after it was discovered her campaign put targets on a map that, uhm, Loughner had never seen.

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***UPDATED: Ace of Spades has much more here.

***SECOND UPDATE: Suspect has been caught.

Oscar Ramiro Ortega

The story of a shooting involving the White House is just breaking wide open this morning. Drudge is all over it as is Twitter. But the shooting occurred last Friday night, and a full two days ago the media quietly reported the following [emphasis mine]:

Police in the nation’s capital searched the Occupy D.C. encampment in McPherson Square on Monday for a 21-year-old man wanted in Friday night’s incident where gunfire was reported near the White House.

As the Washington Examiner reported, U.S. Park Police officers conducted a “sweep” of the park and were seen pulling an Occupy protester out of a tent and questioning him.

That search was unsuccessful, The Associated Press reported. Park Police Sgt. David Schlosser told the AP that callers informed police that a man matching the description of Oscar Ramiro Ortega was seen in the park, located two blocks north of the White House.

Yes, that’s right, a man suspected of firing a shot that hit the White House might be associated with the MSM’s precious Occupy Wall Street movement.

But check out the headline of that article as well as this AP headline. The disconnect is obvious. The AP headline doesn’t connect the shooter to the Occupy movement, and the Huffington Post headline doesn’t connect the Occupy camp search to the White House shooting.

Is that intentional?

Does an Occupier poop on the sidewalk?

And now I need you to stand back while I ask the most rhetorical question in history: What if this was the Tea Party?

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- I wouldn’t have pegged Steve Jobs as quasi-besties with Rupert Murdoch, but I didn’t think he was anti-union, either.

- When the White House isn’t investigating reporters for asking questions the Vice-President doesn’t like, it’s pushing around the Washington Post for daring to write an objective, not adulatory, piece on Obama.

- Any press not hand-selected by the White House is shut out of Obama’s fancy fundraiser in San Francisco:

President Obama is scheduled to appear before hundreds of donors at a $7,500-a-plate noontime fundraiser today at San Francisco’s W Hotel – but not a single local reporter will be allowed inside to cover his only stop in the area, the White House said Monday.

Coverage instead is being restricted to a small pool of Washington-based reporters – a move that is a sharp departure from the practices of past administrations, political observers said.

Three former top White House press aides called the move insular and politically short-sighted. And some press watchers said it is hypocritical for an administration that Obama promised would be “the most transparent in history.”

- Romney attempts to recreate the MyMitt version of MyBarackObama:

Called MyMitt, the platform is tucked away on MittRomney.com, accessible only if you choose to register on the Action page and unadvertised in any proactive way. There’s no button pointing to it from the homepage, and the MyMitt Action Center looks like it’s only partially finished.

Nevertheless, close to 100,000 Romney supporters have created an account on MyMitt, a substantial number at this stage in the race. Here’s why this could be a big deal.

In 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign built its own social network at My.BarackObama.com. Known as myBO for short, the platform made it easy for Obama supporters to create their own profiles on the campaign website, to write their own blog posts, start or join interest groups, organize their own house parties and, most important, initiate and track their own fundraisers.

Two million people eventually joined, and 35,000 generated more than $70 million in campaign contributions from their own personal networks. Enabling your supporters to visible share their enthusiasm with each other is a powerful way to grow a political network. Even more useful: The myBO platform also allowed the campaign to figure out which supporters were the most passionate activists and to concentrate attention on these “super-volunteers” for a variety of vital tasks.

While Obama’s re-election campaign brags about getting its millionth individual donor, basks in its 23 million-strong Facebook following and spends millions on building a sophisticated online campaign operation, it might be tempting to write off the Republican presidential candidates as hopelessly behind in the chase for support on the Web.

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Falling to your own media malpractice makes you irresponsible, not a “victim.” It doesn’t make you a “target” when other people publicly note the absence of your journalistic integrity. Politico missed this bit of logic recently when it attempted to blame conservatives for the misdeeds of various members of the media, most recently NYT’s Natasha Lennard.

… these critiques may just muddy the waters enough to do some damage to both the media and the fledgling anti-Wall Street movement.

- There was never any serious proof that tea party members spat upon a black Democrat Congressman. There is, however,official confirmation of Occupy protest participants spitting upon a female member of our armed forces. There was a time in American media when facts seemed to matter. That time is long gone.

Timothy A. Clary photo

The problem with the media coverage, obviously, is that the MSM sees this movement as something that can turn out the vote for Obama in 2012 and offset the impact of the Tea Party. Regardless of the ongoing lawlessness, the hundreds of arrests, and what we’re seeing unfold today, Occupy Wall Street is useful to the MSM’s gameplan to ensure another term for President FailureTeleprompter. The Occupy movement also gives Obama’s Media Palace Guards reason to ignore the brewing Fast and Furious and Solyndra scandals.

- A case in point.

Wednesday marked the six week anniversary of solar company Solyndra declaring bankruptcy. Despite this, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell, Ed Schultz, and Al Sharpton have yet to report one single word about this growing scandal on their respective prime time programs.

- Why would Marxists want to take over DC’s Freedom Plaza? My God, comrades, isn’t the White House enough? Apparently not.

The “October 2011” movement organizer Dennis Trainor tells me that he believes capitalism is “homicidal” and that the U.S. needs a revolution. “This is not a reform movement,” he said. He is part of the illegal occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. The “October 2011” movement is not part of, but endorses the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that began several weeks ago.

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President Thin Skin once again creates his own distraction and Henry makes an excellent point about Obama choosing not to engage Romney on this issue after doing so yesterday over taxes.

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Along with their White House pals, the MSM is currently freaking out over the prospect of Obama losing his bid for reelection and nowhere is that more apparent than on the “Today Show” where, out of whole cloth (or not — more on this below), they’ve decided to float a narrative that says Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might be replacing Vice President Joe Biden on the Democrat’s 2012 ticket.

Like the rest of America, the “Today Show” is looking at President Obama’s lousy poll numbers, brewing White House scandals, and one lousy jobs report after another. But unlike, oh, 62% of Americans, the MSM is panicked at the thought of Obama not winning a second term. And since the President has already failed and is unlikely to un-fail over the next 13 months, the MSM is looking for what’s known in the political business as a game-changer.

And so, the charlatans disguised as journalists over at NBC are trying to craft one:

The White House is getting irked about persistent speculation in the media that President Obama might dump Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running mate in 2012 in favor of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

After hosts of NBC’s “Today” show questioned both Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton on consecutive days about a possible switch, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer posted this on his Twitter account Tuesday morning:

“I have noticed a weird @todayshow obsession with faux story of Sec. Clinton replacing @VP…Have asked both about it last 2 days on the show.”

This is also a welcome distraction for NBC. This kind of ginned-up speculation allows the “Today Show” to pretend the biggest political story of the day is anything but Fast and Furious, Solyndra, and another lousy jobs report issued just this morning. MSM-created distractions are a very large part of the MSM’s 2012 gameplan.

But is this really just the desperate MSM acting desperate and is the White House really as put-out over this as they seem?

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Barack Obama, the sitting president of these here United States, is a man who …

… spent 20 years in a racially divisive church.

… called the racial demagogue Jeremiah Wright his mentor.

…shared a stage with the openly racist New Black Panther Party as a presidential candidate.

… also shared that stage with Malik Shabazz, the head of the New Black Panther Party.

… has yet to tell us if the Malik Shabazz who signed the White House guest book in 2009 is the same Malik Shabazz who heads the New Black Panther Party.

… appointed an Attorney General who all but dropped slam-dunk charges of voter intimidation against this very same New Black Panther Party.

Obama’s racially divisive past and present and his associations with the some of the worst racial demagogues in our nation right now is appalling and indefensible. And yet, over the past three-plus years we’ve only watched the corrupt MSM cover this stuff up, excuse and dissemble it — the same MSM that declares opposition to ObamaCare or attending a tea party as racist.

The MSM has us living in an upside down world where everything’s racism except, you know, racism.

A perfect example of this is the latest anti-Perry hit-piece from the New York Times that takes guilt-by-association to a whole new level:

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who often waxes nostalgic about his small-town roots, grew up in an almost all-white rural area where many referred to slingshots as “niggershooters.” One elderly black resident recalls being introduced by her boss at a party decades back as “my maid, Nigger Mae Lou,” while just four years ago, a black high school student found a noose in his locker.

In 1968, Mr. Perry left home for Texas A&M, a deeply conservative university whose yearbooks early in the century included Ku Klux Klan-robed students and a dairy group called the Kream and Kow Klub. The school, having just graduated its first two black undergraduates, was in the early throes of desegregation; at the end of Mr. Perry’s four years there, blacks still made up less than 1 percent of the student body.

By the time he inherited the governorship from George W. Bush in 2000, Mr. Perry appeared to have moved well beyond his racially sheltered background.

One of his early acts was to appoint the first black justice to the Texas Supreme Court. A few months later, flanked by the parents of a black man who had been dragged to death behind a pickup truck, he signed a hate crimes bill that Mr. Bush had blocked. Over his three terms as governor, he has nurtured relationships with black leaders, including the head of the Texas N.A.A.C.P., who extols the governor’s open-mindedness.

The worst that the Times can come up with is that Perry defends keeping the history of the Confederacy alive. But laced like a poison in-between examples of how Perry isn’t racist, we’re beat over the head with scary stories about how everything around him is. Which boils down to the following:

Even his fiercest critics in Texas say that racism is not on their short, or even long, list of Mr. Perry’s sins. But Mr. Perry, whose advocacy of states’ rights sounds to some like a yearning for the Old South, has now been forced to show that he has overcome his early surroundings.

Perry’s been governor for a decade now. So who exactly is forcing him to suddenly prove he’s not racist?

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From Tuesday’s Laura Ingraham Show:

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This is all that remains of the very popular Ford commercial that went viral on the internet and was featured on cable news channels over the past three weeks:

According to the Detroit News, Ford has pulled the ad due to pressure from the Obama White House:

Ford pulled the ad after individuals inside the White House questioned whether the copy was publicly denigrating the controversial bailout policy CEO Alan Mulally repeatedly supported in the dark days of late 2008, in early ‘09 and again when the ad flap arose. And more.

With President Barack Obama tuning his re-election campaign amid dismal economic conditions and simmering antipathy toward his stimulus spending and associated bailouts, the Ford ad carried the makings of a political liability when Team Obama can least afford yet another one. Can’t have that.

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart.com, the “star” of the popular ad, Chris McDaniel told me he was “a little bit flustered’ by Ford’s decision. He found out about it during a live radio interview this morning. “I had no idea. As soon as I got off the interview, I sent an e-mail to Ford’s VP of Marketing.” He told me, “I put myself out there on the line. You either stand behind it or you don’t.”

Ford has not yet returned Mr. McDaniel’s e-mail.

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Kudos to Jake Tapper for showing his fellow White House press members, save for Ed Henry, how journalism is done.

Media is supposed to be antagonistic towards the government; they are its check and balance. When media doesn’t do its job, government runs amuck, and the citizenry suffers. When media dropped the ball decades ago, the citizenry revolted, and, aided by new technologies, took up the mantle of watching the government.

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There was an interesting exchange between Jake Tapper and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney earlier this week. Just a short while after Carney proclaimed that the President would “not rest until everyone in America who wants a job has a job,” the White House announced that the President will be taking a nine-day August rest in Cape Cod.  This means that Obama plans to have unemployment fixed within the next two weeks or his “not to rest” promise dropped very quickly even for this President.

Tapper decided to ask Carney about the contradiction.

Jake Tapper from ABC News asked Carney if the vacation was appropriate.

Jake Tapper, ABC News: “You said the President will not rest until the joblessness and the economy are worked out, but the President is obviously going on vacation…. Is there any concern about the impression that the President going to Martha’s Vineyard for 9 or 10 days might leave on the American people? And also, if this is such an important issue for Speaker Boehner, for Harry Reid, for President Obama, why the R&R?”

Jay Carney, WH press secretary:... I don’t think Americans out there would begrudge that notion that the President would spend some time with his family. It is also, as I think anyone who has covered in the past, either in this administration or others, there is no such thing as a presidential vacation. The Presidency travels with you. He will be in constant communication and get regular briefings from his national security team as well as his economic team. And he will of course be fully capable, if necessary, of traveling back if that were required. It is not very far.”

I don’t begrudge the President from taking a vacation either, except the timing does seem to be a bit inappropriate. Also the man who defended the President’s vacation, Jay Carney, bashed President Bush for taking one ten years ago. (more…)

The Obama administration’s distaste for Fox News has been on display from the outset of the Obama presidency. But it reached a whole new level when reports appeared in the press that the White House attempted to boycott the network from a round of interviews organized by the Treasury Department with “Executive Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg on October 22, 2009.

The scandal ultimately led to a backlash from the other networks and a reversal by the Obama White House. Of course, the White House denied the charge that Fox was singled out for exclusion repeatedly, blaming the issue on a miscommunication. That’s when we got involved, filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Treasury Department.

Well recently, we obtained some documents in response to our request. And we once again caught the Obama gang in big fat lie.

Contrary to the administration’s repeated denials, these documents do, in fact, demonstrate that the Obama White House attempted to exclude Fox News Channel. But it gets worse than that. The documents, which include email exchanges within the Department of the Treasury and between Treasury and White House staff, also provide colorful evidence of a pervasive anti-Fox News bias within the Obama White House.

And when I say colorful, I mean colorful.

Now, when this scandal first erupted in the press back in 2009, it seemed everyone had an issue with the Obama administration’s handling of the interviews (except the Obama administration). Even the ultra-liberal New York Times: “Fox’s television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Thursday [October 22, 2009] to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a ‘pool’ camera crew,” the Times reported. (more…)

“Show us the plan. It’s not a talking point, that’s not fair.”

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