For evidence that no one looking for objective reporting should seriously consider reading output from the Politico, look no further than the 5,900-word puff piece propagated by Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein on Sunday.
Their "Special Report: The Obama Paradox" told readers what that President Obama supposedly "recognizes that he is less in control of the Washington agenda than ever in his presidency — a reality that has left him deeply frustrated at times." Meanwhile, the EPA is going wild with carbon regs in the name of the "climate change" hoax, federal regulators are harassing banks and their customers who operating legal businesses in Operation Choke Point, and immigration policy has been unilaterally hijacked. And in a final irony, as the Politico pair were putting their handiwork to bed, Obama was conducting a prisoner swap — one soldier whose loyalties are questionable for five hardened terrorists — while violating a law requiring him to notify Congress of what he was going. "Less in control" my foot. Instead, we are seeing ever-expanding usurpation of authority by Obama and his executive branch.
Oh, there's more.
Budoff Brown and Epstein managed to compose their 5,900 words of puff without mentioning the IRS targeting scandal, Benghazi, the NSA's privacy invasions, Edward Snowden, the Justice Department's eavesdropping on reporters and its attempts to criminalize their newsgathering efforts, or even Obama's false "keep your plan-doctor-provider-prescriptions" Affordable Care Act guarantees to the American people. No rational attempt to assess where Obama stands in his presidency can be done without at least an attempt to gauge the impact of these very real negative events.
Instead, Politico pair acted as if the only debacle of the past 18 months has been the HeathCare.gov rollout disaster (bolds are mine):
The ritual started in earnest last fall in the midst of the biggest humiliation of Barack Obama’s presidency, the failure of the health care website. Anytime he heard a sliver of good news, the president reacted the same way: He knocked on the polished cherry wood table in the Roosevelt Room.
It’s a small thing, almost a nervous tic, but Obama’s habit of knocking on wood during Obamacare meetings had become notable, something that close advisers talked and even joked about among themselves.
Obama had always projected the aura of a deeply confident man, someone who on the basis of past experience was justified in assuming that good luck just naturally happened to him. But in the second term, confronted by recurring setbacks and regular reminders of the limits of his power, he began to convey a sense that even hopeful news might be ephemeral, a mirage.
When Obamacare fixer Jeffrey Zients told the president for the first time that the website would finally hold up under a rush of visitors, Obama joined his senior aides in a round of knocking. When the insurance marketplace finally functioned as it should, they knocked. When enrollment numbers picked up in March, they knocked.
This really is too much to bear.
The insurance marketplace still does not function as it should, because insurers in the market are not geting the back-end information they need to track enrollees, the plans they have chosen, or their government subsidies. Whether those systems will be built and work properly by the next enrollment period is an open question.
We still have no idea how clean Obamacare's enrollment numbers are, and the administration, which has suspended monthly reporting of enrollment results, seems bound and determined to never tell us. The press, including Politico and others, is completely incurious. If anything ever comes out, it will only be very late and due to the efforts of good-government outfits like Judicial Watch, who routinely have to go to court to get information they request under the Freedom of Information Act because the administration won't comply with the law and respond to legitimate requests.
Sorry, Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein. This isn't the "less in control" presidency. It's the "We do what we want; bleeeeeeep you" presidency. Shame on both of you for ignoring the obvious, and continuing to serve as enablers.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
