The Suppression Of Bad Obama News By Our MSM

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If you hadn’t heard by now The LA Times is holding a video that shows Obama celebrating with a group of Palestinians who are completely and utterly hostile towards Israel. The tape apparently shows Obama giving a toast to former PLO operatives.

Some damning stuff right?

Well, the LA Times refuses to release the tape.

O’Reilly had a segment about this refusal by the LA Times:

Andrew McCarthy asks if there was a tape depicting McCain toasting terrorists, would the LA Times hold the tape?

Come on:

Let’s try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor … who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.

Now let’s say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.

Question: Is there any chance — any chance — the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the oped commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we’re pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media (y’know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?

Do we really have to ask?

Holy cow, they would be doing backflips at their good fortune on getting such a tape. It would be front page news from coast to coast.

But it involves Obama and we get a story about the tape, but no tape produced.

The blatant bias is unconscionable….

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Ummmm….that seems like a rhetorical question but only the MSM attempt to obfuscate the obvious. Question: Why don’t we have term limits? Answer: Because those who are directly and negatively affected by term limits will never put the matter on the ballot and allow the populace to vote on the matter. Thus the MSM will (and have) repressed every single negative fact about Obama as they have been able to do. The MSM is in the tank for Obama so why expect them to publish something that may cut into the Obama vote?

And also, since we now are informed this morning on Drudge that Michelle (My Belle) shops at J Crew and orders online, the mystery of that flowery piece of crap she wore to that debate and walked across stage doing her best Josephine Baker imitation is now put to rest.

**** ALERT ****

Please make this a main thread…

Ohio’s Head of Job and Family Services Approved a Child-Support Search on Joe Wurzelbacher Immediately After Third Debate;
Her Excuse? “Oh, We Always Do That”
Confirmed: Max Donor to Obama

Update: Yes, Helen Jones-Kelley (two e’s in Kelley) just happens to be a maximum $2300 contributor to Barack Obama.

http://minx.cc/?post=276707

According to Gateway Pundit earlier this month,

UPDATE: The LA Times may not release the video of Obama praising a good friend and former PLO operative but they did publish an attack on John McCain’s military service today.

Here’s the Times piece:

Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama
They consider him receptive despite his clear support of Israel.
By Peter Wallsten
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 10, 2008

CHICAGO — It was a celebration of Palestinian culture — a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.

A special tribute came from Khalidi’s friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi’s wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table,” but around “this entire world.”

Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.

And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor’s going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

Their belief is not drawn from Obama’s speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.

At Khalidi’s 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, “then you will never see a day of peace.”

One speaker likened “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been “blinded by ideology.”

Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House.

“I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a “moral imperative” in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions.

“That’s my personal opinion,” Ibish said, “and I think it for a very large number of circumstantial reasons, and what he’s said.”

Aides say that Obama’s friendships with Palestinian Americans reflect only his ability to interact with a wide diversity of people, and that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been consistent. Obama has called himself a “stalwart” supporter of the Jewish state and its security needs. He believes in an eventual two-state solution in which Jewish and Palestinian nations exist in peace, which is consistent with current U.S. policy.

Obama also calls for the U.S. to talk to such declared enemies as Iran, Syria and Cuba. But he argues that the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is an exception, calling it a terrorist group that should renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist before dialogue begins. That viewpoint, which also matches current U.S. policy, clashes with that of many Palestinian advocates who urge the United States and Israel to treat Hamas as a partner in negotiations.

“Barack’s belief is that it’s important to understand other points of view, even if you can’t agree with them,” said his longtime political strategist, David Axelrod.

Obama “can disagree without shunning or demonizing those with other views,” he said. “That’s far different than the suggestion that he somehow tailors his view.”

Looking for clues

But because Obama is relatively new on the national political scene, and new to foreign policy questions such as the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides have been looking closely for clues to what role he would play in that dispute.

And both sides, on certain issues, have interpreted Obama’s remarks as supporting their point of view.

Last year, for example, Obama was quoted saying that “nobody’s suffering more than the Palestinian people.” The candidate later said the remark had been taken out of context, and that he meant that the Palestinians were suffering “from the failure of the Palestinian leadership [in Gaza] to recognize Israel” and to renounce violence.

Jewish leaders were satisfied with Obama’s explanation, but some Palestinian leaders, including Ibish, took the original quotation as a sign of the candidate’s empathy for their plight.

Obama’s willingness to befriend Palestinian Americans and to hear their views also impressed, and even excited, a community that says it does not often have the ear of the political establishment.

Among other community events, Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign “against settlements, against Israeli apartheid.”

The use of such language to describe Israel’s policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel’s defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said’s keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University.

Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At one, a 2000 fundraiser at a private home, Obama called for the U.S. to take an “even-handed” approach toward Israel, Abunimah wrote in an article on the website last year. He did not cite Obama’s specific criticisms.

Abunimah, in a Times interview and on his website, said Obama seemed sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but more circumspect as he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. At a dinner gathering that year, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East.

Abunimah quoted Obama as saying that he was sorry he wasn’t talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say.

Obama, through his aide Axelrod, denied he ever said those words, and Abunimah’s account could not be independently verified.

“In no way did he take a position privately that he hasn’t taken publicly and consistently,” Axelrod said of Obama. “He always had expressed solicitude for the Palestinian people, who have been ill-served and have suffered greatly from the refusal of their leaders to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”

In Chicago, one of Obama’s friends was Khalidi, a highly visible figure in the Arab American community.

In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.

He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a “war crime” and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi’s opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians’ right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.

While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi and his wife lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the Obamas. The families became friends and dinner companions.

In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama’s unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund’s board of directors.

At Khalidi’s going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. “You will not have a better senator under any circumstances,” Khalidi said.

The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.

Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis’ daughter.

In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel — a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago’s large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.

Khalidi added that he strongly disagrees with Obama’s current views on Israel, and often disagreed with him during their talks over the years. But he added that Obama, because of his unusual background, with family ties to Kenya and Indonesia, would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians.

“He has family literally all over the world,” Khalidi said. “I feel a kindred spirit from that.”

Ties with Israel

Even as he won support in Chicago’s Palestinian community, Obama tried to forge ties with advocates for Israel.

In 2000, he submitted a policy paper to CityPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, that among other things supported a unified Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a position far out of step from that of his Palestinian friends. The PAC concluded that Obama’s position paper “suggests he is strongly pro-Israel on all of the major issues.”

In 2002, as a rash of suicide bombings struck Israel, Obama sought out a Jewish colleague in the state Senate and asked whether he could sign onto a measure calling on Palestinian leaders to denounce violence. “He came to me and said, ‘I want to have my name next to yours,’ ” said his former state Senate colleague Ira Silverstein, an observant Jew.

As a presidential candidate, Obama has won support from such prominent Chicago Jewish leaders as Penny Pritzker, a member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and who is now his campaign finance chair, and from Lee Rosenberg, a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas.

One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama’s outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright.

“In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that’s what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern,” said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League.

The LA Times doesn’t have a tape. Peter Wallsten may have a tape. It’s his call, not the LA Times, if it even exists…

@Fit fit:

Those darned facts keep getting in the way of your story:

At Khalidi’s going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. “You will not have a better senator under any circumstances,” Khalidi said.

The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.

Wouldn’t it be nice for FoxNews to state that they have discovered a video of McCain, but feel it would be misinterpreted and so are not releasing it? The uproar would be deafening ! Then FoxNews could ask ‘Your concern about this video seems valid, so why are you not concerned with the LA Times video???’

seriously, I bet fit fit would read that again and manage to look over those words. This is serious crap, why would you look something like this completely over, even if there wasn’t a tape? Oh yeah, 8 is enough. And John voted with bush 90% of the time. Good points. Talking points is all they have. Nothing in terms of real politics. Funny, my wife and I seriously considered getting our passports ready before the election.

I think it was Mike or Aye that posted some pics from zombietime.com. I had never seen the site before so I started to browse through. Very interesting. I stumbled upon the “The ‘Walk for Life’ March and Counter-Demonstration” link. Not sure if it will show up, but it is here:
http://www.zombietime.com/walk_for_life/
use caution if you are at work as the left nuts do not care who they offend with their signs and demonstrations.

Anyway, I found the following quote that sums up the complete liberal thought process in this country [expletives contained from quote]. It seems that even the ‘moderate’ liberals are more along the lines of ‘moderate’ islam… doesn’t exist.

Quote:

When one young anarchist expressed infuriated incomprehension that the Christians could be allowed to display their messages, a friendly but stern policeman patiently explained to him the definition of “free speech.” The anarchist retorted, “But who the hell do they think they are, saying that shit here?”

priceless…

Aye,

Yeah I read that part. Still doesn’t mean there’s a tape with anything interesting on it.

I asked him if he (Wallsten) was planning on releasing this video of Obama toasting the radical Khalidi at this Jew-bash. He told me he was not releasing the video. He also would not comment on his source for the video

In case you didn’t notice, Wallsten the guy who broke the story. If he produced such an incriminating story, I doubt he has any interest in protecting Obama. Probably another “Whitey tape”.

@Fit fit:

So now we’ve gone from “there is no tape” to “a tape with nothing interesting” on it.

Keep spinning.

Did anyone bother to read the LA Times article that Wordsmith diligently posted at #3? If Khalidi really is a “terror monger” and Jew basher,” there is enough to inculpate Barrack Obama in that article. What more do you expect to find in this videotape, the existence of which is suspect?

Khalidi a “terror monger? A “Jew basher”? Because someones supports Palestinians does not make him a supporter of terrorism. Just as criticizing Israel does not make one anti-Semitic. This is a canard and a calumny designed to smear and stifle those who take those positions.

The following is transcript of a discussion between Daniel Pipes and Mr. Khalidi on Scarborough Country. You’ll learn that Mr. Khalidi unequivocably renounces the killing of innocent civilians as an acceptable mode of struggle, either for the Palestinians or the Israelis.

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1234

Dave (not) Noble,

I read your link. What a farce! Khalidi spinning and lying just like Obama does all the time. But he sure didn’t fool Daniel Pipes who knows that Khalidi hates Israel. Dave, your are a joke and your ar not a bit “noble”. This interview was not a conversation between Pipes and Khalidi, it was one between Khalidi and Scarborough. Pipes only said one or two sentences, but he sure did defeat that antisemite.

Just for you Dave:

Tomorrow-Oct- 5-Daniel Pipes on Khalidi and Obama…what they don’t want you to know…
http://thesilentmajority.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/tomorrow-oct-5-daniel-pipes-on-khalidi-and-obamawhat-they-dont-want-you-to-know/

N.B.: Note that the article you have linked, Dave, was done in August, 2003… mine is in October, 2008.

I find it very interesting that the righties complain about MSM bias as often as you do.

Yet, when the fairness doctrine is brought up to re-enact you complain and whine about it…
What do you really want? you want to have it your way in both cases.

I suppose you could always just watch Fox Noise and be satisfied.

It would take one of your mentality to go from the 4th branch of power behaving badly to government mandates, Sky55110/RAP.

Is the media behaving badly? Yes. Hear from a multi-generational journalist who eloquently states his embarrassment of today’s “dumbed down American” journalist grads.

Does that mean when we decry the media – who is charged with educating American’s with the facts in order to place a wise vote – that we advocate the fairness doctrine?

Absolutely not.

Are you new here? Or just that unbelievably clueless?

Nice try, Craig. The difference between my article and yours is that mine contains Khailidi’s own words and yours is what Daniel Pipes says Khalidi believes. In a court of law that’s called hearsay testimony. In this case from a biased witness. Daniel Pipes is a man of strong opinions. He had his chance to confront Khalidi in the Scarborough interview. Instead he smears Khalidi behind his back.

Give me an example of an anti-Semitic remark by Rashid Khalidi.

By the way you win the weakest rhetorical move award:

YOU: He supports terrorism.

ME: Know he doesn’t. Here’s what he actually thinks about terrorism.

YOU: Yeah, but he’s lying.