NY Times Rewriting History on Van Jones Debacle; Jones Lands at Center for American Progress

The New York Times devotes ample space today to the resignation of Van Jones, Barack Obama's Communist Truther in the White House. Of course, they mention neither of the words Communist or Truther, but we've come to expect that of them. What I find most disingenuous about this is their version of the timeline that brought Jones down.

The Jones story reached a tipping point Sept. 3 when the conservative blog "Gateway Pundit" reported that the best-selling author of "The Green Collar Economy" signed a 2004 petition that called for congressional hearings and other investigations into whether the Bush administration allowed the Sept. 11 attacks to occur as a pretext for war in the oil-rich Middle East.

Mainstream media began asking questions of their own.

Oh really, the mainstream media began asking questions? OK, maybe ABC's Jake Tapper brought it up at a White House briefing, but Jones was not even mentioned by New York Times itself until Monday, four days after Gateway Pundit had the news, and well after Jones already resigned. So nice of them to not even link Gateway Pundit in their story, by the way. I guess this means the Times is no longer mainstream.

Meanwhile, in a stunning development, Jones today lands at the George Soros-funded, John Podesta run Center for American Progress.

For fallen White House aides, the rallying cry apparently is John Podesta to the rescue! The Obama administration’s former green jobs czar Van Jones is headed back to Podesta’s Center for American Progress after stepping down from his White House post four days ago amid controversy over his leftist affiliations, the Daily News has learned.

Dubbed a radical environmentalist by his right-wing critics, Jones was linked to a group that had insisted the Bush administration was aware the 9/11 attacks had been planned, but did nothing to stop the terrorist plot. His supporters counter that Jones is one of the foremost experts in the emerging area of environmentally sustainable jobs.

Jones chose to quit rather than cost Obama the political capital it would have taken to save his job, saying now was not the time for the President to turn his attention from his agenda.

He returns to his job as senior fellow at the center-left think tank founded by Podesta, who served as chairman of Obama’s presidential transition team.

Again, another "mainstream media" outfit dares not to mention the dreaded words Communist Truther. And please, calling CAP center-left is just misrepresenting this far-left outfit.

Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.

Could somone, anyone, please point me to some evidence that either George Soros or Barack Obama are center-left?

These people wonder why they have no credibility.

Instapundit links. Thanks!

Update: Absolutely laughable.

It's good that Abramson quickly owns up to missing the story, but hard to talk about being short-staffed when the Times still has a newsroom of about 1,300 people.

Face it, it was a story damaging to Obama and the Times did not want to mention it.

Speaking of laughable, media relics preetend they're relevant and Matt Drudge is not.

Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, concurred.

“Your email is the first time anyone—staff, reader, anyone—has mentioned Drudge to me in ages,” he replied via email. “During the campaign it sometimes served to stir the embers of right-wing indignation against The Times, usually by printing a cockeyed version of something we were supposedly about to publish,” he said.

“It’s probably been a year since I looked at the Drudge report, or felt its impact in any way,” Mr. Keller added.

Sure.

Change Comes Full Circle: Betty Currie Volunteering for Obama

The more things change, the more it looks like 1998. Now all we need is a blue, semen-stained dress.

Well, it’s official. The old Clinton gang really is back together again. Answering the phones these days for President-elect Barack Obama’s transition co-chairman, John D. Podesta, is none other than Betty Currie.

Ms. Currie, the famously devoted personal secretary to President Bill Clinton who got caught up in the independent counsel investigation into his trysts with Monica S. Lewinsky, has emerged from retirement in southern Maryland to volunteer her time at Obama headquarters.

Since leaving the White House, Ms. Currie has kept a relatively low profile in Hollywood, Md., where she lives with her husband, Bob, and Socks, the presidential cat she took after Mr. Clinton left office. Ms. Currie, 69, works with local nonprofit organizations and serves on the Alcohol Beverage Board of St. Mary’s County.

Ms. Currie declined to discuss her work for Mr. Obama or her recent life, citing a transition office policy against volunteers giving interviews. For someone who spent so many years at the proximity of power, she has long shied from publicity, finding its glare uncomfortable — never more so than when she was forced to testify to a grand jury five times about Mr. Clinton’s relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. But she is widely admired in Clinton circles for her loyalty and effectiveness.

Hey, what is Monica Lewinsky up to these days? Last I heard, about 250.

Boot-Licking WaPo Hack: John Podesta Is a Rock Star

Rock Star?

Obamamania has reached comical proportions now when a Clinton retread and George Soros henchman is referred to as a rock star. These Washington Post morons really need to get out of the Beltway and familiarize themselves with the real world.

You know Obamania has reached a new level when even John Podesta is a rock star.

Some of the best reporters in the business lined up for more than an hour on 6th Street NW this afternoon for a chance to hear Podesta, the Obama transition chief, give an operational update. When the transition team announced the press briefing last night, it promptly received 207 RSVPs -- far more than the 84 chairs that could fit into the conference room in the government offices serving as transition headquarters.

Secret Service agents and transition officials served as bouncers, consulting their lists as reporters begged their way in: "I RSVP'd! Last night!" About 100 people back in the line was no less a personality than Karen Tumulty, a veteran political writer for Time magazine. Inside, the lucky holders of White House "hard passes" -- the first to be admitted -- threw jackets over chairs to save seats for their colleagues outside. Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker had to sit on a step in the back of the room. CNN's Ed Henry was buried in the fifth row. The event was delayed 20 minutes until all the Podesta groupies could get through security. The Washington Post alone sent six reporters.

That's six reporters too many, obviously. This boob Milbank is even gushing over the absurd Karen Tumulty, who when last heard from was busy decoding hidden racial bias in John McCain commercials.

At least we get some comic relief from this drivel when you read the comments accompanying the idiocy.

Milbank should be embarrassed churning out such dreck.

What a pathetic gaggle of sycophants.

Our press corps has degenerated into a mindless cadre of adoring Obama groupies.

What underwear is Obama wearing today? Please, another loving photo of the Obama family. Did that get that cat? Or was it a dog?

Please remember, God has a sense of humor. Plenty of jokes just over the horizon.

Posted by: Texasdav | November 11, 2008 9:58 PM

Hey Dana..fawning over George Soros' hand picked guy in the White House is a bit on the sick side.. Yep ...this is Soros' guy...Time for the Post....if you have any gonnads to do an investigation into this vermine. He was totally funded by Soros. Not a word about that...only that he is a Rock Star....Trying to get an invite from Podesta by sucking up Dana?. I'm sure if McCains folks were funded by Melenscaffe you would be interested. But I guess the end ...in the Posts management... justifies the means... This rag is really pathetic.

Posted by: rich_oas | November 11, 2008 10:05 PM

Podesta, a Rock Star? Oh please! I am so sick of the media and the messiah hasn't even been sworn in yet. I hope you and CNN, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, ABC and all the other kool aid drinkers go down in flames. True justice. GO PALIN 2012!!!

Posted by: grumets | November 11, 2008 10:09 PM

Podesta is a rock star to those who watch paint dry for recreation. Obamaniac reporters, GET A LIFE.

Posted by: clintwest1 | November 11, 2008 10:23 PM

You WPost, and other media weenies who bought into the Bush third term propaganda are about to experience Jimmy Carter's second term. Obama was elected to "fix" the economy, not create a Soviet style socialist paradise, a la George Soros.

Posted by: aalex11 | November 12, 2008 12:32 AM

Who Cares About the Election? Obama Already Working on Transition

Start measuring the drapes, Michelle, since Barry O is already moving in. Maybe if we're fortunate, he can just move in on election night.

With less than six months to go before he would be sworn in as the nation’s 44th president, Sen. Barack Obama has directed his aides to begin planning for the transition.

"Barack is well aware of the complexity and the organizational challenge involved in the transition process and he has tasked s small group to begin thinking through the process,” a senior campaign adviser said. “Barack has made his expectations clear about what he wants from such a process, how he wants it to move forward, and the establishment and execution of his timeline is proceeding apace.”

Last month, the Post’s Chris Cillizza reported that campaign advisers were sounding out John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and currently the president of the Center for American Progress, for his advice.

An aide confirms that Podesta will probably be asked to head the transition team, which would take over from the campaign if Obama wins in November, and would be tasked with ensuring a smooth handover of power.

Podesta’s Center for American Progress is working with the Third Way think tank on a Homeland Security Presidential Transition Initiative; its director is Michael Signer, a former senior policy aide to Ex-Sen. John Edwards.

Cassandra Butts, a longtime Obama friend who is a CAP executive vice president, is working closely with Podesta.

Butts, via e-mail, would not confirm her participation in the project.

Podesta remains a close friend of both Clintons and his participation will help assuage the concerns of Clinton-era Democratic policy and political appointees who might have felt abandoned in an Obama administration.

Wonderful. It'll be great having that asshole Podesta back in the news.

Can you just imagine the howls if John McCain was said to be planning his transition four months out from the election?

'Democrat-Leaning Outside Group' Funded by John Podesta and George Soros Air McCain Attack Ads

A textbook case of absurd liberal media bias from the Associated Press.

Breathtakingly dishonest.

A Democratic-leaning group financed by a major labor union and wealthy liberal activists is running ads against Sen. John McCain in Ohio and Pennsylvania, the beginning of a media campaign against the GOP nominee-in-waiting.

What's the deal with Democratic-leaning?

Are we not allowed to call it a Democrat group, sans the leaning? Amazing how the L word slipped through.

The ad is the work of the Campaign to Defend America, a nonprofit organization that is among anti-war and left-of-center groups that have pledged a multimillion-dollar effort to target McCain and congressional Republicans on the consequences of the Iraq war on the U.S. economy.

Here's part of their cheesy ad.

"A trillion dollars in Iraq over the next ten years, McSame as Bush," an announcer in the ad says. "A millionaire who's for tax cuts for millionaires. McSame as Bush. Oil companies? They get tax breaks while we pay at the pump. McSame as Bush. Absolutely no plan for universal health care. McSame as Bush. Tell John McCain we need a new direction. Not the McSame old thing."

Really McLame.

According to FEC reports and filings with the Internal Revenue Service, the Campaign to Defend America has received at least $1.4 million from the Fund for America, a nonprofit group set up last year by John Podesta, a former chief of staff for President Clinton; Anna Burger, the secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union; and Rob McKay, a California philanthropist. The Campaign to Defend America is headed by Tom Matzzie, the former Washington director of the liberal activist group MoveOn.org.

Among Fund for America donors are multimillionaire financier George Soros, who gave it $2.5 million last year and was a major contributor to an effort to defeat Bush in 2004. Burger's union also contributed $2.5 million last year, according to Fund for America's IRS records.

"These groups spent tens of millions of dollars in 2004 against President Bush and he won re-election," McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said. "It didn't work then and it won't work now."

Seems this crew is an offshoot of this amalgam of leftist freakazoids, also funded by Soros, that we noted less than two weeks ago.

Gee, I Hope We Don't Offend Anyone...

Why the Washington Post has to put quotes around the word terrorist is known only to them, but this action has only been 28 years in the making.

Iranian Unit to Be Labeled 'Terrorist'

The United States has decided to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business operations and finances.

The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran's nuclear program, officials said.

Naturally, some nitwit thinks this is a bad idea.

The administration's move could hurt diplomatic efforts, some analysts said. "It would greatly complicate our efforts to solve the nuclear issue," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Center for American Progress. "It would tie an end to Iran's nuclear program to an end to its support of allies in Hezbollah and Hamas. The only way you could get a nuclear deal is as part of a grand bargain, which at this point is completely out of reach."

Such sanctions can work only alongside diplomatic efforts, Cirincione added.

Naturally, the WaPo neglects to point out the Center for American Progress is a Clinton front group headed by Media Matters hack John Podesta and funded by George Soros.

What a convenient omission of fact.

Esteemed journalist Jeff Spicoli was again unavailable for comment.