Happy Hour Roundup: GOP Pushing Obama To Take Position On AIG Bill
Updated below with Jake Tapper’s response to Twittergate.
* Senate Republicans are upset because they’re taking hits for failing to show enthusiastic support for the bill to tax back those AIG bonuses — even though the White House hasn’t yet declared its backing for the measure.
Don Stewart, a spokesperson for Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, argues to me:
“Neither the White House nor the Treasury has taken a public position on a bill that Dems have criticized Republicans for failing to support. Democrats have complained about the Republicans not supporting it, but the White House hasn’t yet, either.”
* A question: The NRSC is hammering Dems who voted for the stimulus package as responsible for creating the AIG mess, since Dems nixed from the stim a measure to tax the bonuses. Does that mean the NRSC thinks stim-backer Arlen Specter is also responsible for the AIG fiasco?
I posed the question to NRSC spokesperson Amber Wilkerson, who emailed in response:
“Absolutely not — the issue is not that they voted for the stimulus bill, it’s that Democrat leaders negotiated amongst themselves behind closed doors, changed the bill language without telling Republicans, and rammed through a bill that was thousands of pages long less than 24 hours before it was even made public. This debacle is the result of the Democrats’ lack of transparency and accountability.
* Check out our new profile of Larry Kudlow.
* Glenn Thrush catches Senator Jim DeMint raising cash — on Twitter. Cue up the new coinages: Twitterbucks? Tweeting for dollars? Tweetraiser?
* Glenn Greenwald wondered this morning how long it would take before Obama’s video address to Iran gets him compared to History’s Arch Appeaser Neville Chamberlain. Turns out Greenwald didn’t have to wait too long.
* Iran reacts to Obama’s vid. No mention of Chamberlain.
* Jake Tapper Tweets his way into a Twitterwar. And then sues for Twitterpeace.
Update: Jake Tapper sends over a statement on Twittergate. In brief, what happened is that Tapper, who has aggressively pushed the Obama White House on transparency, blocked several critics from following his Twitterfeed (though he subsequently unblocked TPM’s David Kurtz). Tapper’s throwing down of the Twittergauntlet sparked a bunch of criticism.
Here’s Tapper’s response:
“I’m trying to use Twitter as a way to communicate with all sorts of people from all over the political spectrum, as a place for feedback, polite argument, and dialogue. I learned that the AP was taking Coach K’s quote out of context from a Tweet; it ended up on Good Morning America this morning. I want this way to talk to people. I don’t want it to turn into what the comment section of my blog has become. The only people who have been blocked are people who make ad hominem attacks. They’re still fully able to read my Tweets — I just don’t care to read theirs.”
Update: Tapper’s Twitterflap keeps raging. One of his blocked critics, The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer, gets in touch to argue that his Tweets weren’t ad hominem at all. “Nothing I said was out of line,” he emails. Check out his Tapper Tweets here and here.
Update for insane Twitterwar fiends only: Serwer did Tweet that Tapper’s behavior was “dickish,” but in fairness, that was after he’d been blocked. And now I’m really, really, really off to Happy Hour.
* And for the near term, I won’t be posting on weekends. So please consider this an open thread. See you all first thing Monday morning.
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Uhmm Greg, perhaps you could ask the NRSC person why they are complaining since they opposed Dodd’s amendment anyway and don’t think the government should be telling businesses how much to pay their employees. Better yet just ask them, in theory, do they believe the government should be capping the salaries of people in private business. They are talking out of both sides of their mouth on this one.
tapper is full of crapper. he has thinner skin than a 100 year old
woman. he took his twitterball and went home. then when he realized
how stupid it was, he decided to recant of sorts.
“took his twitterball and went home” — heh. yeah, sg, agreed, that contradiction is the central point here.
I’m beginning to think that when the blabberheads wonder whether Obama’s doing too much, what they’re really saying is “Hold on! There’s WAY too much stuff happening for me to keep up with!”
The AIG bonuses, the tax bill, the vote on the tax bill, the appearance on Leno, the video to Iran, the meeting with Ahnoooold, Eddie and Mike, the garden…lots of things to get all exercised and angry about, right?
As for McConnell, last time I checked, neither the White House nor the Treasury could actually vote on a bill in the House of Representatives.
Uhmm I just got on twitter awhile back but when you block someone from following you they can not in fact read your tweets. Or at least they won’t have them show up when you make them. I suppose they could keep checking his twitter feed but who wants to do that. Its funny that people who themselves give ad hominem attacks can’t even take READING the same from others. How hard is it to delete the ones he doesn’t like? What a wuss.
By the way, isn’t Tapper supposed to be a, you know, REPORTER? Why does he need some one to tweet him to learn that coach K’s words about Pres Obama were taken out of context? Hasn’t he ever heard of teh u toobs?
Hey Greg~
Jake blocked me too. After CNN did the Cheney interview, I sent over about 5 tweets with suggestion questions for Cheney, just to make a point about John King not doing ANY follow with Cheney and he blocked me…I guess he can dish it out but can’t take it – how typical!
Interesting, Jenn — note latest update, Prospect’s adam serwer responds to tapper
Well you know Greg…I am just a “nobody”. Just a regular, moderate, middle-class, married, mom of 3 boys in her mid 30’s, so somebody like Tapper certainly doesn’t care about me, I was following him because of his WH coverage, and I thought his tweets were interesting, but I guess he didn’t like the feedback coming to him from outside the “bubble”. Funny thing is, he regularly asks on Twitter what someone’s opinion, he will tweet something like (hypothetical) – Prez not attending Gridiron affair, what do u think? – and then people following him tweet, I thought that was the idea, but I guess little ol’ me with my six suggestion question tweets in response to King’s interview – such as -@jaketapper Bubble blames Prez & Co. for Cheney reaction, but most Amer blame Cheney & r disgusted that CNN did no follow up ?’s…like – @jaketapper Note to John King at CNN-if the war on terror has been so successful, then why haven’t we captured Osama Bin Laden? – @jaketapper Note to John King at CNN-How is it that if the Cheney/Bush frgn plcy has been so fab, Taliban is stronger now in Afghanistan? – @jaketapper Note to John King at CNN-How long should the US hold the detainees at Gitmo; 5 years, 10 years, 25 years, 50 years, a lifetime? – @jaketapper Note to John King at CNN-How about the defense contracts signed with Hallib, your former employer, this a conflict of interest? – @jaketapperNote to John King at CNN-did Cheney/Bush foreign policy strengthen Iran’s hold on Mid East, since they removed Saddam Hussein? – I was just giving some perspective, but obviously the “Tapp” was having none of it…too funny!
Absolutely nothing I have said has been ad hominem, rude or personal. The tweets and follow up posts that got me blocked are here: http://kroydblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/zomg-pork.html
The post that got David Kurtz blocked was a little snarky, but certainly well within Tapper’s snark zone when he is writing. He’s simply lying here.
Sorry, but Jake Tapper is a total dick. I cannot imagine his career going too far now that Netroots exists. I mean, look at that idiot David Gregory… every sane, sentient creature, who isn’t a neocon, HATES him and his ****** MTP show.
Jenn, no, he doesn’t really care what you think. Nor should he.
Sorry, no offense intended, but if you Tweeted those comments to me, I would’ve blocked you too. And I don’t have anything better to do with my time. He does.
The Web makes people empowered to feel they have the right to an opinion. That’s true. But no one, even those who ask, has to care what you have to say, and therefore you have no right to be offended when they don’t.
Well Sarah, I hear ya and frankly, I don’t really care that Tapper blocked me, I was just letting Greg know that he blocked me too, and here’s the thing…Tapper repeatedly asks for feedback in his tweets…he will make a statement and then say “what do you think?”…so if he is asking for feeback, then why does he block people that give it to him?
And the really interesting question would be, does he block the people that give him the feedback that he wants to hear? Or, does he just block the people that say things he doesn’t want to hear when he puts the question out there…again, I am not the one blocking people that differ with my ideas…Tapper is the one going around blocking multiple people that happen to be giving him the feedback that he doesn’t want to hear…it’s even landed him on Huffington…none the less, it’s no biggy to me, I just followed him so that I could get his perspective, now, since I am blocked, I will just get the perspective from the others that haven’t blocked me…luckily, there is no shortage of reporters these days, they are a dime a dozen…
I think it’s time for a Jake Tapper blocked my Tweets page on Facebook.
I used to read him at Salon and liked him. Now I think he’s insufferable. He’s trying so hard to prove he’s not co-opted by Team Obama that he’s like Eddie Haskell flipped on his head. Overly eager to displease. Yuck.
Here’s what I think:
There are times when anger is cathartic. There are other times when anger makes a bad situation worse. “We need to stop committing economic arson,” Bert Ely, a banking consultant, said to me this week. That is what Congress committed: economic arson. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/business/21nocera.html?em
And the MSM is holding the gas can to blow this thing sky high. Quit ginning up anger – we need cool heads and a methodical approach to this – not mob mentality and Greg, that’s what y’all have stirred up.
And the rule of law, which respects contracts that are valid even if the terms suck, is taking yet more hits and from the left. Stop this.
Mob mentality and so called populist backlash is just not helpful.
Did I miss something? In what way is Jack Tapper important for news consumers such as I? I have never learned anything important or meaninful from him. My impression is that he is an empty t-shirt. No?
Talking about who voted on the stimulus bill as it pertains to the AIG bonuses is completely bogus. The bonus loophole was in TARP legislation, not the Stimulus bill. This a ploy by Republicans to somehow turn a winning card on voting against the stimulus to appease the base when the majority of Americans supported it.