Courtesy of Pam Martens.
The sine qua non of image handlers dealing with negative revelations in the media is to infuse the happy faces of children and puppies into the equation.
Did you hear that the Obamas have a new puppy? Her name is Sunny and like her big brother, Bo, she’s a Portuguese Water Dog. There’s photos and even a video at WhiteHouse.gov showing the adorable pair frolicking on the White House lawn.
As former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, has continued to leak documents to newspapers showing that President Obama has overseen a surveillance dragnet on innocent Americans and U.S. allies, raising serious questions about this former constitutional law professor’s respect for democratic ideals, the President took to the road in a bus during the month of August to promote a new agenda to help the middle class. This past weekend the emphasis was on making college affordable to middle class kids, followed by more photos of kids and the President.
Yesterday, around the same time the White House was highlighting a photo of the President kicking a soccer ball with kids in Tully, New York, the media was abuzz with new revelations from the German newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, citing documents leaked by Snowden, that the National Security Agency (NSA) had hacked into video conferences at the United Nations as well as into diplomatic missions around the world, including those of our allies, under a secret NSA program known as “Special Collection Service.”
There has been another glitch in the President’s charm offensive with the middle class – his name is Larry Summers. After loading the Securities and Exchange Commission with Wall Street’s lawyers, putting a man of dubious financial dealings, Jack Lew, in charge of the U.S. Treasury, the President finally (finally) outraged his fellow Democrats with the leaked rumor that he was considering Larry Summers for the most important monetary position in the world – the Chairmanship of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
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