Readers of the New York Times had a shock this morning: A full-page ad on page A9 from the Emergency Committee for Israel documenting the anti-Israel views of the Center for American Progress and Media Matters--and then asking why various Jewish communal philanthropies and business groups are funding those organizations. It should cause quite a stir.
With the Center for American Progress’s Think Progress blog under scrutiny for publishing what some would consider borderline anti-Semitic content, it would seem likely that bloggers over there might be careful about the content. (Even Think Progress’s editor Faiz Shakir admitted that some of the language used by employees of the liberal institution is anti-Semitic, according to an email obtained by the Jerusalem Post.) At least, one would think, the higher ups are presumably now being more careful, considering they backed away from the controversial content last week, as the Washington Post reported at the time.
Last December, a top anti-Semitism watchdog group accused the Center for American Progress, a prominent Washington think tank, of peddling anti-Israel and borderline anti-Semitic material on its Web site and Twitter feeds. Six days later, President Obama met for coffee with the man who oversaw the offending content — Faiz Shakir, the site’s editor-in-chief.
The Center for American Progress, the party’s key hub of ideas and strategy, and Media Matters, a central messaging organization, have emerged as vocal critics of their party’s staunchly pro-Israel congressional leadership and have been at odds, at times, with Barack Obama’s White House, which has acted as a reluctant ally to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government.
The Los Angeles Timesopened up a new front in the Solyndra scandal on Friday (and there are too many fronts to count at this point), reporting that Steve Spinner, another prominent Obama donor, served as a top official in the Energy Department program that made the half-billion dollar loan to the now bankrupt solar panel maker. In Spinner's defense, he did recuse himself from the decision to grant the loan—because his wife works at a law firm that represented Solyndra.
At 9:20 p.m., the White House press office sent out a statement of support for the president’s proposal from ... the Center for American Progress (see below). That’s newsworthy!
The Senate has voted, along party lines, to table the Cut, Cap, and Balance debt ceiling legislation passed by the House. Is that the end of the story?
President Obama repeatedly insists that the debt ceiling must be raised by at least $2.4 trillion. Why this particular amount, rather than, say, an even $1 trillion or $2 trillion? Because $2.4 trillion is Obama’s estimate for what it would take to get him through the next election without needing to deal with another debt ceiling battle. In other words, $2.4 trillion is a politically generated figure.
Guess who’s holding a super secret, ill-intentioned meeting this weekend in Palm Springs, California? The nefarious Koch brothers – nefarious because they donate to conservative causes, of course.
Already, leftist groups are beginning to fulminate (against what, it’s not quite clear), insisting that there’s something inherently corrupt in the free assembly of the Koch brothers and their cohorts.
I don’t actually have proof that John Podesta’s Center for American Progress is funded by foreign interests and corporations, but does anyone have proof that it isn’t? This is the new standard set by the Obama administration for organizations engaged in political activity it dislikes – guilty until proven otherwise.
...let the rest of us understand this: The debate over the Ground Zero Mosque is, in fact, a debate over American values. Those who oppose it don’t have them.
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