Jay Carney: “We Would Deplore Acts of Violence at Union Protests”

Well, we finally have a condemnation of union violence from the White House! Sort of!

The Hill reports:

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Thursday responded to reports of violence at union rallies in Michigan earlier this week, as labor groups protested the passage of a “right-to-work” law.

Carney said he hadn’t discussed the reports with President Obama. “I haven’t discussed reports like that with him, so I’m not sure if he’s aware of it, but we would deplore violence in any case,” Carney said Thursday.

Michigan State Police vowed to investigate all reported acts of violence during the protests, including one in which Fox News contributor Steven Crowder was attacked by labor protesters, according to the Lansing State Journal.

Note his use of the conditional – “we would deplore violence,” he stated, as if to say – not that anything “like that” has been proven (we sure haven’t seen verification of these reports on MSNBC or John Stewart,) in any case – as if to say – “hey,  we may yet be able to pin the blame on the tea partiers…”

And really. Does he really expect people to believe that the President, (who had just traveled to Michigan the day before to support the unionistas protesting the bill) isn’t “aware” of what’s going on there with his union allies?

His good pal,Richard Trumka claims he visits the White House 2-3 times a week, and has “conversations everyday with someone in the White House or in the administration.”

EVERYDAY.

But no, Obama’s just too busy with the extraordinary demands of his office to countenance such small, piddling things as AFP’s destroyed tent, or Steven Crowder’s chipped tooth and gashed forehead…

Puh-leeze.

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers

A “Saddened” Susan Rice Drops Out of Running for Secretary of State

She’s bowing out,  “saddened by the partisan politics surrounding her prospects”, NBC News reports:

Embattled U.N. envoy Susan Rice is dropping out of the running to be the next secretary of state after months of criticism over her Benghazi comments, she told NBC News on Thursday.

“If nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly – to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities,” Rice wrote in a letter to President Obama, saying she’s saddened by the partisan politics surrounding her prospects.

“That trade-off is simply not worth it to our country…Therefore, I respectfully request that you no longer consider my candidacy at this time,” she wrote in the letter obtained by NBC News.

Brian Williams will have an exclusive interview with Rice on tonight’s “Rock Center With Brian Williams” at 10p/9c.

Rice had been viewed as one of the front-runners to replace Hillary Clinton as the nation’s top foreign policy official.

She has been under intense fire from Republicans for initially characterizing the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, as a spur-of-the-moment response to a crude anti-Muslim film.

“What happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video,” Rice said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” five days after the attack.

You know what’s really sad? That it’s considered “partisan politics” to call someone out for blatantly lying to the American people. It was, of course, well known by the time she went on the Sunday talk shows, on Sept 16, that there was no “copycat” demonstration in Benghazi on 9/11 and that it was an al Qaeda affiliated terrorist group that had  attacked  the compound.

And any anger she feels toward Republicans for her misfortune is misdirected. There is only one person she should be mad at for losing her the plum position of Sec. of State, and that’s the guy who sent her out there to lie on the Sunday talk shows like a ridiculous hack, making her ineligible for the job.

UPDATE:

3-2-1–Race-card!!!!

Who did not see this coming?

Dem Rep. Barbara Lee Plays Race Card On Susan Rice’s Withdrawal From Secretary Of State Nomination…

MSNBC Hack Andrea Mitchell First To Play The Race Card: Will Hurt GOP Because They “Forced A Woman Of Color Out”…

UPDATE II:

 Jonah Goldberg swings the mighty cluebat at race-hustling Dems:

And, because Rice is a black woman, well, bla, bla, bla. Racism! Sexism!

Never mind that Republicans haven’t had a white secretary of state since Lawrence Eagleburger concluded his term two decades ago. Never mind that Republicans appointed the first black secretary of state ever (Colin Powell) and the first black female secretary of state ever (Condoleezza Rice, arguably the star of the GOP convention in August). Also, never mind that Rice’s handling of Benghazi — and several other matters — can quite defensibly be dubbed incompetent

That doesn’t stop Democrats or liberal pundits from crying racism.

Linked by Michelle Malkin, thanks!

MSM: Go Away Conservative Media – We Have it Covered

Well they WOULD have it covered if conservatives weren’t constantly jumping in, politicizing stuff, making mountains out of molehills, and generally mucking things up with their silly, obnoxious conservative spin.

 Washington Post blogger, Erik Wemple explains why the media was justified in embargoing the Steven Crowder story:

… if folks are truly scandalized by the lack of generalized media outrage about Crowder’s treatment, they should take a second look at Crowder’s actions. Though he appears to have carried himself nobly while under attack, he’s gone buffoonish since then. He said on Twitter yesterday that this is “getting fun.” He challenged his assailant to a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fight. And he has generally sounded as if he’s enjoying this boost to his career prospects, in a way that his Halloween-candy-exposes-the-fraud-of-income-redistribution stunt did not.Given how Crowder has carried on, I, too, may well pass on the story of his beating, were I a network executive producer.

Of course, this is a standard applied only to conservatives – as Ace notes, Sandra Fluke also “engaged in a great deal of partisan political agitation with a strong component of self-promotion (hiring a PR firm, for example!)”

The media offered the same excuse for not covering Benghazi– Oh, we wanted to cover Benghazi, and would have covered it, but then Mitt Romney tried to raise it as an issue for us to cover, so we couldn’t of course cover it.

It’s important to note, here, that the conservative media did jump in right away and vigorously covered the Benghazi story, which had all the earmarks of a scandal, right from the beginning. The MSM used to be good at sniffing out scandals. But when there’s a hotly contested presidential race to win, and their Precious could be hurt by their reportage – not so much…

Ace continues…

Liberal sort of logic here, eh? If a conservative wants a genuinely newsworthy story covered (as Wemple admits this is, before these defend-the-media paragraphs), then the liberal media is required to shut that conservative out. The story becomes non-coverable simply because an important actor in it — a conservative — wishes it to be covered.

What liberals really want is for us to go back to the days before talk radio, and cable news, when their monopoly on the news business was complete. The  choice for conservatives apparently is to either shut up and wait for them to cover important stories (like Benghazi, or Fast and Furious) on their own (which presumably they’d do with the conservative media out of the way) – or we continue to shine a light on the stories we know they would embargo no matter what we did.

Because it’s not about us, at all. It’s about THEM and their need to spin stories that are helpful to their side, and ignore the ones that aren’t.

So cut the crap, Wemple.

Linked by Doug Ross, thanks!

Video: Hannity Guest Tells Steven Crowder: ‘You Deserved What You Got’

On his Fox show, Wednesday night, Hannity pit Steven Crowder against a union supporter who said Crowder deserved what he got when he was sucker punched several times in the face by an enraged union thug.  His guest, Andy Sullivan of Blue Collar Corner, charged that Crowder incited the violence by pushing the thug down, which is a narrative that I’m guessing the left has latched on to, since the thug had gone down right before he lunged at Crowder, throwing punches.

As should be obvious, however, Crowder wasn’t there for a physical fight – one guy against a crowd of hundreds. His arms were up in the air most of the time, to show that he was peaceful.

“He did go down, he was attacking a tent!” Crowder exclaimed.

“It was a melee!”, he explained, “everyone was grabbing and pulling, and trying to keep the tent from being torn down….”

The guy was either pushed to the ground – or lost balance and fell – during the scuffle between the Right to Work supporters defending the tent, and the union goons trying to knock it down. In other words – defensive actions vs offensive actions….It’s unclear to me whether or not Crowder had a hand in knocking him off balance, while he trying to keep a tent with women and children inside from being knocked down. Crowder doesn’t seem to know, himself – like he said, “it was a melee.”