Monthly Archives: November 2008

Posted on by

i hope they won’t be sore winners – washington times op/ed

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/25/not-another-sore-loser/

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

GRENELL: Not another sore loser
Richard Grenell

COMMENTARY:
Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States. Even though I was one of the 57 million people who voted for John McCain, I am an American first and I will give my support to President-elect Barack Obama. John McCain showed us he isn’t a sore loser and so his supporters shouldn’t be either.

In fact, Hillary Clinton led the way in showing us why America’s political process is the best in the world, as did Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee when they lost their party’s nomination.
After working as the Spokesman for the United States at the United Nations for eight years, I learned that America is not Zimbabwe and when we have hard-fought elections we don’t show our disappointment with the outcome by rioting or starting a war.

I want to give the newly elected Democratic president my support because I know what it is like to win an election and have the other side try and undercut you every step of the way immediately after the oath of office is administered. I know what it is like to feel the pain of friends who say that my guy is “ruining America” or “making the economy tank” or that I “hate black people” because of whom I voted for.

I know what it is like to see sore losers work to ensure defeat. I know what it is like when people complain and gossip instead of work to make our Union better. We are all Americans and regardless of who wins the White House, he is everyone’s president.
Of course we will face challenges ahead, but if only 52 percent of us work on solving those problems then we won’t accomplish much.

One of the reasons I voted for Mr. McCain is that I didn’t recognize Barack Obama’s America. Mr. Obama seems to see an America full of people dying in the streets with no place to go – where no one owns homes and everyone is bankrupt because the government is out to get them. His America is not the one I live in or see today.

I see an America where a black man has every opportunity to be president of the United States on Nov. 3, 2008, not just on Nov. 4, 2008. America did not go from terrible to great in one day of voting. I see an America that is and will always be the greatest place to live and work in the world. I am not just an optimist when I win elections.

Mr. Obama spoke of hope but described nonstop despair; he spoke of Red and Blue States as one, but worked to divide us economically; he says he will be everyone’s president but relentlessly ridiculed the current president.

I won’t act the way the partisan Democrats did toward President Bush. The way the liberals treated the 43rd president of the United States was sickening. The ugly comments, ridiculous innuendos and rumors that President Bush had to deal with during his two terms in office may have scored political points but it tore America apart. The all-accepting “liberal” party showed us they weren’t really all accepting and tolerant after all.

The last eight years were incredibly tough for this country: Sept. 11, 2001, two wars, natural disasters and a stock market crash. But there was President Bush in front of the White House after the election to welcome Barack Obama and promise a smooth transition.

As the current President stood in front of the cameras and committed to do everything he can to prepare Mr. Obama’s team, I wondered if Mr. Obama regretted spending $100 million in television commercials to ridicule and second-guess the current commander in chief. And I wonder how Rahm Emmanuel would react if the current White House staff stole the “o’s” from the computer keyboards the way his team stole the “w’s” from ours in 2000.

As we decide to not be sore losers, I hope the 65 million people who voted for Mr. Obama will not be sore winners.

Richard Grenell has just left the Bush administration after serving eight years as the spokesman for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Posted on by

a true conservative would….

http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/kralev-diplomacy/2008/Dec/19/gays-republicans-and-a-un-resolution/

Gays, Republicans and a UN Resolution

December 19 2008 7:15 PM BY NICHOLAS KRALEV

Gay Republicans are furious at the Bush administration for opposing a non-binding U.N. resolution calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality around the world, alongside such abusers of human rights as Syria and Saudi Arabia.
The document was introduced in the U.N. General Assembly by France and the Netherlands and so far has been backed by 66 of the 192 members of the United Nations. It urges countries “to take all the necessary measures, in particular legislative or administrative, to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests or detention.”

Homosexuality is illegal in 77 countries, seven of which punish it by death, according to the resolution’s sponsors. Some of those states offered a rival document that gathered about 60 signatures. It said the original text “delves into matters which fall essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of states” and could lead to “the social normalization, and possibly the legitimization, of many deplorable acts including pedophilia.”

The Bush administration, after intense lobbying by Catholics and hard-line conservatives, did not support France’s draft, which was backed by all 27 European Union members. The administration cited legal reason for its decision, saying that endorsing the resolution’s language is in conflict with U.S. laws, a reference to gay marriage.

But “that’s a huge stretch,” said Richard Grenell, a gay Republican who until recently was a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations. “Concerns about a remote possibility (marriage) ignores the purpose of the resolution, which is to make sure that people are not killed or oppressed just because they are gay.”

A true conservative, Mr. Grenell said, is “always interested in less government involvement and more personal responsibilities.”

“If being gay is a criminal act, then the State Department has granted hundreds of criminals like me top-secret security clearance,” he said. “Common sense says that we should be the leader in making sure other governments grant more freedoms to their people.”

U.S. diplomats said that supporting a non-binding resolution in defense of human rights should have been relatively easy for the administration and would have sent an important message a month before President Bush leaves office. But they also wondered why France did not wait another month to introduce the document, which most likely would have been endorsed by the incoming Obama administration.

“Perhaps the French wanted to embarrass the Bush administration,” one diplomat said.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Posted on by

sheryl gay stolberg is such a liberal democrat….

The New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg covers the White House. Anyone want to guess what her political persuasion is? i bet she voted for Obama. She has been letting her partisanship show for years but lately she is giddy with Obama-mania….is she really someone that is objective enough to cover President Bush and have an unbiased perspective on his 2 terms as he leaves the White House? here are just the 2 stories she did after Obama was elected.

November 9th’s story was titled: “White House Memo – Obama Will Visit Bush, Watching Out for Tacks …”. Does Sheryl really think President Bush is that bitter and class-less? i think he has been gracious and honorable. Wasn’t it Obama that spent more than $100 million to bash Bush during the Campaign? Why didn’t Sheryl point that out? Obama has been the one leaving “tacks” on the chairs…or maybe it’s been Sheryl??

November 11th’s story finished with this paragraph: “A sense of anticipation extended beyond 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As the Obamas’ limousine made its way to the White House, hundreds of people lined the streets, craning their necks to see. When the door opened and the couple stepped out to greet the Bushes, there was an unfamiliar sound: cheering outside the White House gates.”

How does Sheryl know that to be true? She doesn’t – from her office she can’t hear or see the front gates of the White House. This is her opinion. And since her story didn’t appear on the Editorial and Opinion Page, her views should stay inside the voting booth and not in a newsstory. This is what I emailed Sheryl yesterday:

“why did you write that snotty comment at the end of your story today about how there hasn’t been applause heard outside of the white house in a long time. it seems like a comment from someone with a partisan agenda, as well as just plain mean-spirited. weren’t you the reporter lamenting how politics has gotten nasty lately? i am certain you don’t know if it is actually true that there hasn’t been applause outside of the white house in a long time. have you stood out front of the white house to know? and if you did, how long did you stand out there?”

she hasn’t answered me…..

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Posted on by

washington post: oops…we were biased

now tell me why they waited to annouce this until after the election? seriously….this woman says she has been following the trend for a year! speak up, deb. i think she should be fired for knowing this and waiting to tell the world.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110702895.html?sub=AR

An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage
By Deborah Howell
Sunday, November 9, 2008;
B06

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

My assistant, Jean Hwang, and I have been examining Post coverage since Nov. 11 of last year on issues, voters, fundraising, the candidates’ backgrounds and horse-race stories on tactics, strategy and consultants. We also have looked at photos and Page 1 stories since Obama captured the nomination June 4.

The count was lopsided, with 1,295 horse-race stories and 594 issues stories. The Post was deficient in stories that reported more than the two candidates trading jabs; readers needed articles, going back to the primaries, comparing their positions with outside experts’ views. There were no broad stories on energy or science policy, and there were few on religion issues.
Bill Hamilton, assistant managing editor for politics, said, “There are a lot of things I wish we’d been able to do in covering this campaign, but we had to make choices about what we felt we were uniquely able to provide our audiences both in Washington and on the Web. I don’t at all discount the importance of issues, but we had a larger purpose, to convey and explain a campaign that our own David Broder described as the most exciting he has ever covered, a narrative that unfolded until the very end. I think our staff rose to the occasion.”

The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces about McCain, 58, than there were about Obama, 32, and Obama got the editorial board’s endorsement. The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain.

Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Reporters, photographers and editors found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.

The number of Obama stories since Nov. 11 was 946, compared with McCain’s 786. Both had hard-fought primary campaigns, but Obama’s battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton was longer, and the numbers reflect that.

McCain clinched the GOP nomination on March 4, three months before Obama won his. From June 4 to Election Day, the tally was Obama, 626 stories, and McCain, 584. Obama was on the front page 176 times, McCain, 144 times; 41 stories featured both.

Our survey results are comparable to figures for the national news media from a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that from June 9, when Clinton dropped out of the race, until Nov. 2, 66 percent of the campaign stories were about Obama compared with 53 percent for McCain; some stories featured both. The project also calculated that in that time, 57 percent of the stories were about the horse race and 13 percent were about issues.

Counting from June 4, Obama was in 311 Post photos and McCain in 282. Obama led in most categories. Obama led 133 to 121 in pictures more than three columns wide, 178 to 161 in smaller pictures, and 164 to 133 in color photos. In black and white photos, the nominees were about even, with McCain at 149 and Obama at 147. On Page 1, they were even at 26 each. Post photo and news editors were surprised by my first count on Aug. 3, which showed a much wider disparity, and made a more conscious effort at balance afterward.

Some readers complain that coverage is too poll-driven. They’re right, but it’s not going to change. The Post’s polling was on the mark, and in some cases ahead of the curve, in focusing on independent voters, racial attitudes, low-wage voters, the shift of African Americans’ support from Clinton to Obama and the rising importance of economic issues. The Post and its polling partner ABC News include 50 to 60 issues questions in every survey instead of just horse-race questions, so public attitudes were plumbed as well.

The Post had a hard-working team on the campaign. Special praise goes to Dan Balz, the best, most level-headed, incisive political reporter and analyst in newspapers. His stories and “Dan Balz’s Take” on washingtonpost.com were fair, penetrating and on the mark. His mentor, David S. Broder, was as sharp as ever.

Michael Dobbs, the Fact Checker, also deserves praise for parsing campaign rhetoric for the overblown or just flat wrong. Howard Kurtz’s Ad Watch was a sharp reality check.

The Post’s biographical pieces, especially the first ones — McCain by Michael Leahy and Obama by David Maraniss — were compelling. Maraniss demystified Obama’s growing-up years; the piece on his mother and grandparents was a great read. Leahy’s first piece on McCain’s father and grandfather, both admirals, told me where McCain got his maverick ways as a kid — right from the two old men.

But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama’s acknowledged drug use as a teenager.

The Post had good coverage of voters, mainly by Krissah Williams Thompson and Kevin Merida. Anne Hull’s stories from Florida, Michigan and Liberty University, and Wil Haygood’s story from central Montana brought readers into voters’ lives. Jose Antonio Vargas’s pieces about campaigns and the Internet were standouts.

One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission. However, I do not agree with those readers who thought The Post did only hatchet jobs on her. There were several good stories on her, the best on page 1 by Sally Jenkins on how Palin grew up in Alaska.

In early coverage, I wasn’t a big fan of the long-running series called “The Gurus” on consultants and important people in the campaigns. The Post has always prided itself on its political coverage, and profiles of the top dogs were probably well read by political junkies. But I thought the series was of no practical use to readers. While there were some interesting pieces in The Frontrunners series, none of them told me anything about where the candidates stood on any issue.

Deborah Howell can be reached at 202-334-7582 or ombudsman@washpost.com

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Posted on by

“Change” the media…..

Since “Change” won, can we start with the Media?

Seriously, now that Obama has won can we just admit that the Media were his running mate? Objective observers can’t disagree that the national Media were tripping over themselves to elect the first Black President.

I know hundreds of journalists and the overwhelming majority of them are Democrats. While some of them try and hide their bias, very few of them can. I have no problem with reporters being partisan but with their inability to admit that their partisanship directly effects their work – especially during emotional national campaigns – has ruined their credibility. With newspapers in decline and cable television becoming more opinionated, it is time for the public to demand a change in Who brings us the news.

If “Change” is good for the political process then it should hold true for all the pundits and journalists that feed us the “facts” during the political process. It is time to “change” the media.

CNN, which claims to be the only unbiased cable news station, is marketing and selling President Obama t-shirts (no joke). Jack Cafferty today read 4 emails on camera that he says he received from typical Americans and every one of them was an Obama supporter, Wolff Blitzer and Soledad O’brien were giddy last night every time Obama won a state, Jessica Yellin was assigned to cover Obama-Biden and she’s a total partisan Democrat, Ed Henry has been chided by CNN Executives for Bush-bashing and crossing the line while covering The White House beat for CNN.

The New York Times, ABC News, CBS News and of course NBC News are all filled with partisan Democrats i know well. While the Republicans have their supporters in the Media too, albeit in drastically fewer outlets, what is mostly offensive from the Liberal partisan Media is their assumption that their journalistic standard is unbiased and above reproach.

When Linda Douglas left ABC News where she covered the Bush Administration for many years to join the Obama campaign as the Spokeswoman it should have been a national Media story about journalistic standards and integrity. The fact that Linda’s new job was largely ignored by her peers is appalling and telling. When Charlie Gibson started his one on one interview with Obama, the week before the Presidential election on November 4th, with a giggle and the question “Have you thought about what decision you will make first on November 5th?” every American should have felt betrayed.

This year’s Presidential Election proved to be entirely too much for the national Media to contain their excitement. The historic nature of electing the first Black President was an emotional time for America, but Obama’s inexperience begged for a thorough review of his qualifications from the national Media not a coronation. Now that President-elect Obama has officially won the election, I will be very anxious to see Who the major news outlets select as the reporters to cover the Obama White House. The American people deserve new and unbiased political reporters covering Washington.

Richard Grenell has been a Spokesman for public officials at the local, state, national and international level for 15 years.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Posted on by

why obama will lose today…..

The mainstream media did everything they could to knock off Hillary Clinton in the Primary Election and John McCain in the General Election in order to help elect Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States. Fortunately, their attempt to convince the American people that the inexperienced and untested Junior Senator from Illinois was qualified to be President has backfired.

While the media try and weave a story of a unified Democratic Party and a Republican Party in turmoil, the facts point to a different outcome. While I may be one of the few pundits in America that think John McCain will win on Tuesday, I hold firm to the lessons learned in the Democratic Primary and Politics 101.

For anyone to win the Presidency, he/she must unify their base, split the Independent votes and steal one more vote from the other side. Although the media’s polls have unanimously concluded that Obama will sweep to victory on Tuesday, there remains fundamental problems for the Obama campaign with their base of Democratic voters. Since Obama’s problems from this summer’s Democratic Primary have not been resolved, nor reported by the national media, the Electoral College map signals trouble for the media’s main man.

Throughout the Democratic Primary election, Obama never garnered significant support from 4 of the major groups within the Democratic base. Union members, women, older voters and Jewish voters all were Hillary Clinton supporters in significant numbers. While the national media did focus on the disgruntled female supporters of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, they dropped the issue after Obama won the nomination at the Convention. However, the media’s short attention span has not solved the problem for the man whose Pastor of 20 years still gives many Americans pause. Additionally, there has been very little written or aired about the lack of support for Obama with older voters, Jewish voters and union members. The assumption that the 25 million people who voted for Hillary and the rest of the Democratic candidates now have Obama yard signs will prove to be a fatal misstake for the media and Howard Dean. Now I will admit that the majority of the members of these groups will ultimately end up voting for the Democratic nominee, but the slightest amount of slippage in the percentage of these voters means Obama will not have the support the media and the polls are assuming he will have. And this is no small problem. Since Obama has not united the Democratic Party the way Sarah Palin helped John McCain unite the Republican Party, the 44th President of the United States will be John S. McCain.

If this doesn’t make sense to you then your emotions have carried you away from reality. McCain doesn’t need the majority of supporters from these tradtional Democratic groups in order to win today. McCain needs to get only a small amount because these voters are not independents or swing voters, these people are traditional and frequent Democratic voters. None of the main media outlets have looked in to whether or not these groups, who did not support Obama in the Primary, have come back to the Democratic base. But they have not. How else does one explain the fact that Pennsylvania gave Hillary a huge win in the Primary and is still giving Obama trouble today. Pennsylvania is a tradionally Democratic State and yet in this anti-Republican year, Obama has failed to close the deal. A closer look at Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri and even Michigan suggests that union members and older Americans are not comfortable with Barack Obama.

The media, however, have all but called the race for Obama; but they have overplayed their hand. While CNN reports, as they did last week, that Obama is up in Missouri and NPR and the New York Times are trying to convince us that North Carolina and Virginia are really toss-up states, the American electorate quietly wait for the opening of the polls.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post