Obama to Dance on "The Ellen Show" While America Burns?

As I stated in prior blog entries (for example: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2014/03/thomas-friedman-from-putin-blessing-in.html), Obama is caught in Putin's pincers, given Obama's dependence upon Russian goodwill involving the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal and Iran's nuclear weapons development program. Well, blatant evidence of Obama's self-imposed dilemma surfaced yesterday when, according to an AP article entitled "Russia warns West it may change its stance on Iran" (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/russia-warns-west-it-may-change-its-stance-iran), Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov declared according to the Interfax news agency:

"Russia didn't want to use the Iranian nuclear talks to 'raise the stakes,' but may have to do so in response to the actions by the United States and the European Union."

Or stated more succinctly, Putin has Obama by the short and curlies.

Of course, the Ukraine is not Obama's only problem. The number of Affordable Care Act enrollments is far short of Obama administration March 31 goals, and the absence of enthusiasm of healthy young people for this program could blow it all asunder.

And so, the Obama administration is in damage control mode, attempting to inflate enrollment figures by ignoring persons who have signed up but not paid their premiums. As reported by Kyle Cheney in a Politico article entitled "So how many have paid ACA premiums?" (http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/obamacare-affordable-care-act-health-insurance-premiums-104602.html):

"The latest administration figures show that 4.2 million people have selected health plans in the new insurance markets. Insurance industry officials at four of the big national health plans tell POLITICO that about 15 to 20 percent people who have signed up have not yet paid their first monthly premium — the final step to get coverage.

And they’ve told the White House the same, insurance industry officials say."

Note the consistent refusal of Kathleen Sebelius and Jay Carney to address the number of persons not paying their premiums. Transparency? Even the Washington Post's Erik Wemple is today acknowledging the problem in an opinion piece entitled "HHS, playing selective with Obamacare enrollment numbers" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/03/19/hhs-playing-selective-with-obamacare-enrollment-numbers/?hpid=z3).

So what does Obama do as the flames swirl around him? Simple. As reported in a Huffington Post piece by Paige Lavender entitled "Obama To Appear On The Ellen Show To Talk Obamacare, Maybe Dance" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/19/obama-ellen_n_4993819.html?utm_hp_ref=politics), he has booked another date on Ellen DeGeneres's show, where he is sure to be lobbed softball questions while promoting Obamacare.

Can it possibly get any worse?

Frank Bruni, "Who Needs Reporters?": Ask Reporters Who Attended Eric Holder's Off-the-Record Discussion

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Who Needs Reporters?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/bruni-who-needs-reporters.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), Frank Bruni tells us that with regard to politicians, journalists "must be able to poke and meddle." Bruni writes:

"Lately we journalists have been agitated, justifiably, by the Obama administration’s prosecution of leakers and spying on the reporters and news organizations who set up or sop up those leaks. It’s an overzealous overreach and a serious threat to our ability to police government, which has shown time and again that it needs policing.

But our role and relevance are arguably even more imperiled by politicians’ ability, in this newly wired world of ours, to go around us and present themselves in packages that we can’t simultaneously unwrap. To get a message out, they don’t have to beseech a network’s indulgence. They don’t have to rely on a newspaper’s attention. The Bachmann, Weiner and Clinton videos are especially vivid examples of that, reflections and harbingers of an era in which YouTube is the public square, and the fourth estate is a borderline obsolescent one.

. . . .

If there’s a trend line at work, it’s of politicians’ being ever more orchestrated and anxious about the establishment of their own narratives (and they were plenty orchestrated from the get-go). President Obama rose to national prominence literally on the power of his own storytelling, with an electrifying convention speech and a best-selling memoir, and has since been emphatic about the polish of his public appearances and the distance at which reporters are kept. He prefers teleprompters and the soft focus of 'The View,' Letterman and 'Entertainment Tonight' to potentially messy interactions with political reporters."

Frank, are you really so surprised by this trend? There is a saying that "a fish rots from the head down." Listen to Obama adviser Anita Dunn at an event focusing on the president’s tactics, hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development, in which Dunn discusses how Obama controlled the media during the 2008 election (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGNhAnwp_Y):

"One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe [Obama’s chief campaign manager] videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters. We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it. . . . very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control."

More recently, consider how many news organizations were willing to attend Eric Holder's "off-the-record" meeting on Thursday, concerning the scandals involving AP and Fox News.

By the way, at least this once The New York Times got it right - they refused to participate in this discussion, intended to win back media sympathy, but not intended for public consumption (see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-calderone/whos-attending-holders-off-the-record-meeting_b_3359562.html?utm_hp_ref=media).

AP, "Warm reception expected as Romney lands in Israel": Note Bald Faced Lie in Article

In an AP article entitled "Warm reception expected as Romney lands in Israel" (http://news.yahoo.com/warm-reception-expected-romney-lands-israel-183504295.html), it is asserted:

"Obama, who tried to persuade the Arab world that he was an honest broker, lost the Palestinians' trust by refusing to follow up tough talk with action when Israel defied his call to halt settlement construction on occupied land Palestinians seek for a future state.

The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank has refused to resume negotiations without a settlement construction freeze and went ahead with a statehood campaign at the United Nations, over the president's objections."

In fact, as observed by Rick Richman in Commentary (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2010/12/30/re-palestinians-un-gambit-puts-both-israel-and-obama-on-the-spot/), the opposite is true:

"In 2009, Israel declared a 10-month West Bank construction moratorium (more than enough time to negotiate still another offer of a state, since Abbas asserted it would take only six months); George Mitchell repeatedly warned the Palestinians that the moratorium would not be extended, yet they had to be dragged to the table in the ninth month, and then left it at the end of the tenth."

The Israeli construction freeze was of course in accordance with the demands of Obama, but why should facts stand in the way of the AP story.

The AP story also observes:

"Romney — like most politicians who make the trek to Israel — is likely to face questions such as whether he would endorse calls by some fellow Republicans to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and his stance on Israeli calls for Washington to release convicted spy Jonathan Pollard."

Personally, I will be delighted if Romney is merely asked which city is the capital of Israel. Earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney refused to answer this question.