posted October 29, 2011 10:28 AM            

If you said...attack the member of the press who asked Joe "Plugs" a question...then give yourself a gold star!

Vice President Biden complains after dust-up with conservative reporter
By Alexander Bolton
10/25/11 0

Joe Biden’s office has complained to the Senate press gallery about a confrontation the vice president had with a conservative journalist last week on Capitol Hill.

Biden aides asked whether Senate rules were broken in the wake of the contentious exchange between the vice president and the reporter.

Jason Mattera, who works for Human Events, a conservative magazine, used a pretext to catch Biden off guard in a Senate hallway and grill him on claims the vice president has made about jobs legislation.

Biden’s office has also contacted the standing committee of correspondents, which oversees the gallery, regarding whether Mattera broke the rules by ambushing him.

Heather Rothman, the chairwoman of the gallery’s standing committee, said the matter is under review.

“We’re aware this occurred and the vice president’s office [has made] contact,” she added, noting the standing committee itself hasn’t met to deliberate the issue.

The video of Wednesday’s exchange went viral, as news outlets and the Drudge Report highlighted Biden’s comment to Mattera: “Don’t screw around with me.”

CNN aired a segment — including footage of the incident — the same afternoon, and a YouTube clip of the interview has already attracted more than 380,000 views.

Biden had just left a rousing rally where Democratic leaders said Republican opposition to federal funding for police and firefighters threatened public safety. But the cable news coverage focused on the dust-up between Biden and Mattera.

Biden’s visible irritation might be explained by how he was lured into the short interview.

As the vice president left the Russell caucus room, Mattera weaved his way through the entourage, shook Biden’s hand and asked him to pose for a photo. While shaking Biden’s hand, Mattera asked him if he felt “regret using a rape reference to describe Republican opposition to the president’s bill.”

Biden looked momentarily frozen as what he thought was a friendly gesture turned into a pointed line of tough questions from a conservative interlocutor. Biden had just signed an autograph for an admirer and still had the pen in his hand, according to a source familiar with the incident.

“I didn’t use — no, no, no,” Biden said, furrowing his brow and shaking his finger at the reporter. “What I said — let’s get it straight, guy, don’t screw around with me. Let’s get it straight.

“I said rape was up three times in Flint, [Mich.]. There are the numbers. Go look at the numbers. Murder’s up, rape is up and burglary’s up. That’s exactly what I said,” Biden added.

After initially balking at the questions, Biden stood by his argument that if Republicans continue to block the Democratic jobs bill, “murder will continue to rise, rape will continue to rise, all crimes will continue to rise.”

The Washington Post’s fact-checker ripped Biden’s claims over the weekend, giving the vice president “four Pinocchios” and writing that he “should know better than to spout off half-baked facts in service of a dubious argument.”

The Senate periodical press gallery and a spokeswoman for Biden declined to comment for this article.

Mattera admits to using a pretext to momentarily disarm Biden, but argues his methods were justified.

“ABC and CBS have done undercover sting operations and have done them for decades. The fact that a conservative publication goes after a public official who was misrepresenting himself and a Senate bill to the public and tries to get an answer from him, that’s great,” he said in an interview Monday.

“The media should take notice that this is how you ask a question. If I had said, ‘Hey, Mr. Vice President, a question regarding your rape comments,’ he would shrug it off.

“He’s not going to take questions hostile to his agenda. I want to get him in that honest moment when he doesn’t have his talking points and isn’t prepared to spin,” Mattera added.

Mattera said his technique is “premised on looking to get the most honest reaction from politicians used to conning the media daily — and even their constituents.”

“You shouldn’t play patty-cake with politicians to gain access,” he said.

He said his request for a photo wasn’t a fabrication because someone had volunteered to snap his picture with the vice president, and noted in a follow-up email that he was wearing his press credentials.

This is not the first time Mattera has confronted a high-profile politician.

Mattera approached Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) in the Dirksen Senate Office Building last year after an event and told him, “I appreciate your remarks in there. You were awesome.”

Then he started peppering Franken over $7 billion in the 2010 healthcare reform bill for creating healthier school environments and repeatedly cut off his replies with follow-up questions, even referring to him as “Senator Smalley,” a reference to a character Franken once played on “Saturday Night Live.”

Franken snapped: “You have to shut up right now and listen to me instead of interrupting me every time I say something.”

Jill Geisler, an expert in journalistic ethics at the Poynter Institute, said pretexts can be used to report stories, but only as a last resort.

“Critics and ethicists who have criticized ambush interviews have said it should be a last resort done not for drama but because other means for obtaining information have been unsuccessful,” Geisler said. “The whole question of honesty is something journalists should take quite seriously, including how they represent themselves.”

posted October 29, 2011 10:40 AM            

If I were a liberal, I would have spent the last week in shock that a Democratic audience in Flint, Mich., cheered Vice President Joe Biden's description of a policeman being killed. (And if I were a liberal desperately striving to keep my job on MSNBC, I'd say the Democrats looked "hot and horny" for dead cops -- as Chris Matthews said of a Republican audience that cheered for the death penalty.)

Biden's audience whooped and applauded last week in Flint when he said that without Obama's jobs bill, police will be "outgunned and outmanned." (Wild applause!)

I suppose liberals would claim they were applauding because they believe Obama's jobs bill will prevent these murders. Which reminds me: Republicans believe the death penalty prevents murders!

Which belief bears more relationship to reality?

In a case I have previously mentioned, Kenneth McDuff was released from death row soon after the Supreme Court overturned the death penalty in 1972 and went on to murder more than a dozen people.

William Jordan and Anthony Prevatte were sentenced to death in 1974 for abducting a teacher, murdering him and stealing his car. They came under suspicion when they were caught throwing the murder weapon from the stolen vehicle in a high-speed car chase with the cops and because they were in possession of the dead man's wallet, briefcase and watch.

The Georgia Supreme Court overturned their capital sentences in an opinion by Robert H. Hall, who was appointed by Gov. Jimmy Carter.

Hall said that the death sentences had to be set aside on the idiotic grounds that the jurors had overheard the prosecutor say that the judge and state supreme court would have the opportunity to review a death sentence, which might have caused them to take their sentencing role less seriously.

(If the facts had been the reverse, the court would have overturned the death sentences on the grounds that the jurors did not take their sentencing decision seriously, under the misapprehension that no judge or court would second-guess them.)

Prevatte was later released from "life in prison" and proceeded to murder his girlfriend. Jordan escaped and has never been found.

As president, Carter appointed Hall to a federal district court.

Darryl Kemp was sentenced to death in California in 1960 for the rape and murder of Marjorie Hipperson and also convicted for raping two other women. But he sat on death row long enough -- 12 years -- for the death penalty to be declared unconstitutional. He was paroled five years later and, within four months, had raped and murdered Armida Wiltsey, a 40-year-old wife and mother.

Kemp wasn't caught at the time, so he spent the next quarter-century raping (and probably murdering) a string of women. In 2002, his DNA was matched to blood found on the fingernails of Wiltsey's dead body. Although Kemp was serving a "life sentence" for rape in a Texas prison, he was months away from being paroled when he was brought back to California for the murder of Wiltsey.

His attorney argued that he was too old for the death penalty. He lost that argument, and in 2009, Kemp was again given a capital sentence. He now sits on death row, perhaps long enough for the death penalty to be declared unconstitutional again, so he can be released to commit more rapes and murders.

Dozens and dozens of prisoners released from death row have gone on to murder again. No one knows exactly how many, but it's a lot more than the number of innocent men who have been executed in America, which, at least since 1950, is zero.

What is liberals' evidence that there will be more rapes and murders if Obama's jobs bill doesn't pass? Biden claims that, without it, there won't be enough cops to interrupt a woman being raped in her own home -- which would be an amazing bit of police work/psychic talent, if it had ever happened. (That's why Americans like guns, liberals.)

Obama's jobs bill tackles the problem of rape and murder by giving the states $30 billion ... for public school teachers.

Only $5 billion is even allotted to the police, but all we keep hearing about are the rapes and murders that Democrats are suddenly against (as long as being "against" rape and murder means funding public school teachers and not imprisoning or executing rapists and murderers).

Finally, did Flint use any money from Obama's last trillion-dollar stimulus bill to hire more police in order to prevent rape and murder? No, Flint spent its $2.2 million from the first stimulus bill on buying two electric buses.

Even if what Flint really needed was buses and not cops, for $2.2 million, the city could have bought seven brand-new diesel buses and had $100,000 left over for streetlights.

Rather than reducing the rate of rape and murder, blowing money on "green" buses is likely to increase crime, since people will be forced to spend a lot more time waiting at bus stops for those two buses.

It's going to be a long wait: The "green" buses were never delivered because the company went out of business -- despite a $1.6 million loan from the American taxpayer.

posted October 29, 2011 02:54 PM            

don't look now, jwhop, but even FOX can't slant the polls enough to make it look like people don't like the jobs bill. including all parties.

posted October 29, 2011 05:09 PM            

This thread is about the lying demoscats and especially about the lying Joe "Plugs" O'Biden attempting to hype the O'Bomber bill...which isn't a jobs bill in the first place.

posted November 01, 2011 11:19 PM            

What's that you say katatonic? People like O'Bomber's so called jobs bill...in spite of the fact they despise it's individual parts...like bailing out states...like throwing money down the rat hole of so called "green energy" producers like Solyndra, like SunPower and other money pits.

Only 22% Support Giving States $35 Billion to Prevent Teacher, First Responder Layoffs

Most Still Think Government Workers Better Off Than Those in Private Sector

Most Voters Oppose Letting States Declare Bankruptcy

54% Still See Bailouts As Bad for the Country

54% Say States Should Be Able To Opt Out of Federal Programs

President Obama is pushing Congress to pass his plan to give $35 billion to state and local governments to prevent layoffs of teachers and first responders such as firemen, policemen and rescue squad workers. But most Americans think state and local governments should tighten their financial belts instead.