The man is in just about every way possible a Democrat clone but the brand name does him in. The American media don’t even pretend anymore.
The Big Three networks, in a frenzy over New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s traffic headache dubbed ‘Bridgegate,’ have devoted a whopping 34 minutes and 28 seconds of coverage to the affair in just the last 24 hours.
By comparison, that’s 17 times the two minutes, eight seconds devoted to President Obama’s IRS scandal in the last six months, according to an analysis by the Media Research Center.
‘While routinely burying new stories on the IRS scandal, the media practically fell over themselves to start taking shots at the potential 2016 Republican presidential nominee,’ said the conservative media watchdog.
Since Wednesday night, NBC News included six reports over 14 minutes and 14 seconds. CBS devoted five reports over 12 minutes and 27 seconds. ABC managed 4 stories over seven minutes and 47 seconds, said MRC.
As a comparison over the last six months, NBC featured five seconds on updating the IRS story. CBS responded with a minute and 41 seconds. ABC produced a meager 22 seconds.
To which may be added, 24 Underreported Democrat Scandals That Make News Media’s ‘Bridgegate Mania’ Look Like a Joke The first ten:
1. Fast and furious
2. Benghazi
3. IRS Scandal
4. AP/Fox News Tracking
5. ObamaCare’s No-Bid Website
6. NSA Scandal
7. Weinergate
8. Spitzer Prostitution Scandal
9. Jon Edwards’ Infidelity
10. Chris Dodd – Countrywide Scandal
Don’t know about these or the others then you should read the post. But compared to these, what Christie has done is about as serious as a speeding ticket. Americans at the Federal level now almost live in what is for all practical purposes a one-party state. It will come back to haunt them in a big way and unfortunately will affect us in the long run here as well.
The mainstream US media are the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party machine.
Fox is largely the propaganda arm of the RINO establishment.
Both are focused on, and primarily operate in the interests of, the Washington political class and their cronies in the private sector.
Name which of these supposed scandals involved political retribution?
IRS – no, plenty of liberal groups were targeted as well. There was no link to anyone in the IRS outside of the local offices giving approval for the kind of targeting they were doing. Also comparing the 6 months of coverage of a “scandal” that broke to the national media in May 2013, 9 months ago, to one that has just broke is sloppy at best and misleading at worst.
The Obamacare website was a cock up, but the contract went through the same process as any other Govt IT contract. It’s a stupid process, there was incompetence and it should be fixed, but it wasn’t vindictive.
Edwards was a huge story when it broke – but he also wasn’t a sitting governor, whose office used a public good (a bridge) to attack a town where a political rival lived. (either the mayor or the head of the New Jersey Democratic senate majority)
NSA is a scandal and is regularly getting press across some of your favorite papers like the Guardian and the Washington Post. But again, nothing in the NSA points to political retribution, but huge government overreach.
Bengahzi was a cock up, but even Darrell Issa, the Republican head of the house judiciary committee can’t find anything there to continue with his investigation. And who had the supposed biggest breaks in that story – the NY times and CBS’ 60 minutes – both of which fizzled.
Christie’s team purposefully ruined an entire town’s traffic for 4 days to get back at a political rival. This action came from the Governor’s office. Which of the above were in the President’s office? Which deputy chief of staff of the president sent emails authorizing the action? It’s a big deal, and it would be a big deal if it was a democratic or Republican Governor.
This is a pretty clear case of corruption and political bullying gone public. If it gets to Christie he’s toast, even Drudge is linking to the scandal. So to say it’s equivalent to the other topics and it’s only the “evil liberal media” running the story is bunk.
Ummm you got us there. Let me think really hard on this one and I’ll get back to you.
I’m back. How about unleashing the IRS onto conservative groups and individuals
Kates – agreed that the MSM give Obama a pass, but there’s nothing secret about Christie’s bullying character, he really turns it on for the cameras, and the bridge scandal is consistent with his vindictiveness. And never forget the man hug and tongue bath he gave Obama on the eve of the election.
http://www.dickmorris.com/christies-revenge-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/
So JC if what an attack on Tea Partiers, why were liberal groups targetted as well? Was it the centrist IRS officials having a go at both extremes?
Which liberal groups? You sure Slate or the Daily Kos isn’t misleading you?
Are we losing sight of the media aspect of all this? Agree JC, though, wade needs to give examples not just do a troll number and say it was across the board. First I’ve heard of that.
Media perfidy is a daily event, and the balance is way off the scale favouring leftist politicians, activists (aka troublemakers) and assorted bleeding heart causes.
Tim Blair’s current example of the Guardian doing a number on Morrison for a decision made by the previous Labor government is a prime example of misleading media – something that should be punishable.
No, you are regurgitating a weak leftist attempt to neutralise the issue by claiming equivalence. However, the numbers don’t lie; “the Treasury Department’s inspector general revealed that 292 – which is 100 percent – of Tea Party groups seeking special tax status were put under IRS review, while just 6 progressive groups were targeted.“
That sounds similar to what is happening on that disgraceful, brown-nosed Labor (sic) joke radio station, 3AW.
3AW, which was once respected but is now owned by Fauxfacts, is leading their half-hourly Labor (sic) Propaganda Bulletins with an item saying: “There are fears that Australia may be in breach of ‘international law’ by turning back ‘asylum seeker’ boats.”
In other words, the sycophantic brown-tongued Labor toady who writes this bigoted, anti-Australian crap that 3AW routinely airs instead of news, believes that our Border Protection and Immigration policies should be run by Labor’s crooked people-smuggler mates, rather than by Federal Government.
These border-hopping, welfare-shopping ‘anabolic Arabs’ and ‘Saudi’s on steroids’ are criminals and are NOT asylum seekers.’
Maybe a distinction needs to be made between media outlets and/or journalists whose content is predominately propaganda, and those whose content is the dissemination of news.
The bigoted, racist, anti-Australian tripe that 3AW and other fact-phobic Fauxfacts outfits air, is not news and the public should be informed of that fact as a requirement of law, before every half-hourly propaganda bulletin.
The messages should be similar to those carried on cigarette packets, and be something along the lines of:
“As 3AW is owned by Fauxfacts, what you are about to hear is 5 minutes of unmitigated Labor propaganda and hogwash, and is not to be misinterpreted as news. If you want to listen to news, you need to tune your radio to (a non-Fauxfacts station) now.”
Who knows…maybe Stephen Conjob and the plastic Professor Juliar Gillard of the Department of Race Riots at the University of Adelaide, might even agree with the approach.
Wade, come back here and apologise for your misleading statements and/or ignorance of the facts of the matter.
From the same link:
“which of these supposed scandals involved political retribution”
Fast and Furious was an attempt to discredit the 2nd Amendment via the “availability” of longarms in Texas, does that count?
Make up a pretend crisis, use your political dogma to pretend solve the pretend crisis, get more power…same ol, same ol.
Don’t let Australia’s left wing media off the hook.
For the first time that I can remember for some time, their ABC run a story on a badly behaving US political leader. Guess what! It wasn’t Obama. It was Christie.
I remember back to the glory days under George Bush when their ABC went to town on Bush for a mispronounced word. Today, Obama could get caught in bed with a dead woman or a live man and their ABC would ignore the story.
Never forget johno, the ABC is the only balanced and independent news outlet free of evil corporate influence in our land.
Thank god for such impartiality. Without them we would be lost amongst a tide of hating right wing media fools like that fascist Charlie Pickering.
Ignore it? Are you kidding? In the second instance, they’d be adoring Obama for having the courage to live as a proud gay black man. In the first, they’d dig and dig until they finally found something heinous against the dead woman – her grandfather once owned a gun, or she was rumoured to have expressed ‘traditional’ views about marriage, or some such.
WadeJ please provide the evidence of the groups which assisted the Democrats raise money which had their right to collect fumds stalled & members audited?
No, no, no, no, no.
The problem is that Republicans are useless at selling their message. As we’ve been told endlessly the problem is the communication skills of the Republicans.
PS: Look at how the “reasonable” Republican Chritie has been rewarded by the MSM for the Obama tongue bath.
:sarc off;
OCO
BOLO lists included terms such as Israel, Tea Party and progressive. The lists were used at regional offices. The tea party groups were more heavily targeted than the progressives, but they were also applying for a different status tax exempt status, which meant they were meant to have no political actions, only social welfare or issue awareness.
Again, no connection has been made to anyone in the Obama political administration. The republican’s in congress had free range to research and dig into this supposed scandal and came up bupkis. It’s not like the Right is an endangered species valiantly fighting for it’s life. The power of the congressional oversight committee was behind their investigation and they couldn’t find anything that linked it beyond non-political appointee’s.
And to conflate the targeting of a few hundred groups by the IRS with the right missing out on 8 million votes is a joke. Tea Party fever, which was stoked by big monied republican interests (ie Freedomworks), was huge in 2009 at the height of the Right’s obamacare scare campaign. By 2012 Obamacare was passed (though not implemented), and the next crop of Tea Party candidates started to show how truly nutty some of these guys were (Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock).
Snap quiz WadeJ.
Who outed Valerie Plame?
Yes they were by 292 to 6 as shown above by OCO.
You don’t see this as bias? Seriously?
Is Steve Kates really being serious?
Deliberate and indiscriminate retaliation against citizens for political revenge is somehow ‘better’ than that petty list in the OP? We know of at least one delayed ambulance where the patient later died – how many more deaths will come out as a result of this deliberate retaliation on American citizens.
The key difference is this was both planned, intended and deliberate. None of the other examples even come close.
Dead serious. And don’t call him Shirley.
The facts are that nothing of interest has happened in the IRS story for six months – after dominating all sides of the media through May and June last year – which is why TV doesn’t report it any more. It’s the silly season, there’s nothing else happening, so the current Christie story gets wall to wall coverage for a couple of days.
Simple media analysis, but such schoolboy stuff is beyond the ken of Prof Kates. He is the worst political analyst in Christendom.
A US Attorney is investigating this affair; how many US Attorneys were or are investigating Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS scandal and so on?
BTW, I have no love for Christie.
RE Valerie Plame – Scooter Libby went to jail over it, but since you asked I’m assuming it wasn’t someone in the republican party (I haven’t done a web search).
I’m waiting with baited breath the true answer.
WadeJ
So no evidence right?
Steiner
You got the worst kicking out of any leftwinger who’s stupid enough to show up there last evening… and you’re back for more?
An idler from the Bolt blog steiner is practising his doublethink at Catallaxy
Why of course not.
In fact it shows a remarkable level of even handedness by the IRS and the Kenyan administration.
JC
Tea Party groups were targeted, but the word progressive was also used on the BOLO lists. And I’ll grant you that there was a bias towards targetting Tea Party groups but it doesn’t take away from the key point of my original reply. Kate’s contends that the media didn’t look at these “scandals” like they are with the Bridge closing. Also as someone who lives through the US press, there were hundreds of article about the IRS scandal while it was hot.
Also the IRS scandal had no connection to the Chief Executive office. The bridge closing was ordered by a deputy chief of staff of Chris Christie. THAT’S the difference.
And to answer you question directly Progress Texas was subjected to a similar level of rigor as the tea party groups.
Lol.
And not forgetting Clinton’s perjury
So where’s the connection JC?
Or is the incompetent Kenyan so much better at covering his tracks from the Republican oversight committee and the right wing media machine?
You don’t need a direct connection, WadeJ. American progressives hate the right with a level of hatred that ought to shock. Hire enough progressives throughout the administration and you eventually end up with this.
Yeah, about that IRS thing…
http://www.lifenews.com/2013/05/30/irs-agent-who-wrote-threatening-letters-gets-promotion-now-a-supervisor/
Through 2012, then Exempt Organization Specialist Stephen Seok signed many of the intimidating letters sent to conservative non-profits. For example, this January 2012 letter sent to the Richmond Tea Party demanded the date, time, and location of all group events, as well as copies of all handouts provided at the event, and the names and credentials of all organizers. Seok also demanded the names of all speakers and the contents of the speeches they made.
According to FOX 19 in Cincinnati, Seok is no longer a Exempt Organization Specialist. He has since been promoted to a “supervisor IRS agent.”
Contacted for comment on when and why Seok was promoted, the Cincinnati IRS office had no comment and referred all inquiries to the Washington office. The Washington office, when contacted, also refused comment on Seok’s promotion, citing the Privacy Act of 1974.
Nothing could possibly go wrong here right?
Manager of office in IRS scandal now heads Obamacare unit
http://www.examiner.com/article/manager-of-irs-scandal-office-now-heads-obamacare-unit
In reality, the IRS confirmed Friday to ABC News that Ingram, rather than being fired or demoted, now heads up the IRS Affordable Care Office. The Affordable Care Act dramatically expands the size and power of the IRS by putting the IRS in charge of enforcing the individual and employer mandates. The IRS also controls and regulates the Affordable Care Act’s federal subsidies for health insurance.
At some stage, surely even the most obtuse lib has to admit if it was the Repubs doing this theyd be just a teensy weency bit concerned..
Precisely.
Obama ought to be impeached, tried, and if found guilty by the Senate, punished severely and removed from office.
No. It didn’t. It was given to CGI where Michelle’s Princeton roommate just happens to be an executive vie an ““expedited bidding system” that limited the choices to just a select few”
as “CMS did not accept bids from all comers to build the HealthCare.gov website.”
No, he was a Democrat Presidential candidate. A North Carolina grand jury indicted Edwards in 2011 on six felony charges of violating multiple federal campaign contribution laws to cover up an extramarital affair to which he admitted following his 2008 campaign.
Yes, because everyone knows the Dems wouldn’t do anything like that.
Benghazi? Wait until Hillary starts running in earnest. Or we can talk about Solyndra, ACORN, the Black Panthers, Nick Holden, Holder perjury, Sebelius perjury, Pigford, Sebelius and the Hatch Act, violation of the War Powers Act (Libya), I could go on all day but here is a fairly complete list. Some of which you will never have heard of.
And that’s just the point.
The primary target for the IRS initiative were Conservative groups. Anyone who can potentially threaten the long term Left-wing controlled American culture.
The website was a direct result of the “buddy system”. There was NO BIDDING for the contract.
Think about it, the company in question is known for repeated failure in Canada. Why would you even consider someone for a Govt contract when they have a history of failed Govt contracts in another country?
As of 7 hours ago, the State Department has named the group who conducted the attack: Ansar al-Sharia…This officially kills the recent NY Times story.
But as Hillary would say: “What difference does it make?!”
She needs to whitewash this matter, as it threatens her Presidential chances in 2016.
m0nty, WadeJ and steiner’s position in the latter half of this thread can be summarised by Lt Frank Drebin’s prudent actions after a brainwashed quack unsuccessfully tried to snuff OJ Simpson:
Please disperse!
They missed a couple of scandals, but these have been well covered-up (you can’t find these on virtually any mainstream media sites):
1. Lisa Jackson and other EPA officials using fake personal email accounts to aviod FOIA laws:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/epa_corruption_and_scandal.html
2. EPA global warming department head didn’t turn up to work for months on end claiming he was working for the CIA:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/12/18/unbelievably-egregious-epa-official-who-faked-being-a-cia-agent-to-get-out-work-sentenced-to-32-months-prison/
oh, btw, Catallaxy readers will LOVE the last sentence in the second link I provided… It’s a treat. Enjoy.