Fourth Estate: July 2008 Archives

There's no such thing as seemlessly returning from a week's vacation overseas and transitioning seemlessly back into your old routine.  It's kind of like a miniature version of moving - you have stuff to remove from your baggage, and that stuff AND the baggage to put away.  And usually you're tired, have jet lag, and just want to collapse on the couch and veg, and the unpacking gets put off.

Speaking as one for whom collapsing on the couch and vegging is a national pasttime, and does not travel, period, I thought I would make a magnanimous bipartisan gesture and help Senator Barack Hussein Obama (D-Nirvana) unpack his vast quantity of baggage, and particularly go through the soveniers he brought home.

***Here's a nice history revision:

QUESTIONER: "A year ago in South Carolina you said you would meet, in your first year as president, with President Ahmadinejad without preconditions. Is there anything you have heard today here in discussions with Israeli leaders that has made you rethink that pledge or are you still standing by that?"

OBAMA: "Dan, I think you have to take a look at what the question was in South Carolina and how I responded. The question is would I meet with leaders without preconditions in pursuit ... But I think what I said in response was that I would, at my time and choosing, be willing to meet with any leader if I thought it would promote the national security interests of the United States of America. , And that continues to be my position, that if I think that I can get a deal that is going to advance our cause, then I would consider that opportunity. But what I also said was that there is a difference between meeting without preconditions and meeting without preparation." (Barack Obama, Press Conference, Sderot, Israel, 7/23/08)

Here's the transcript of BO's answer in that South Carolina primary debate a year ago, and my take on it at the time as a gratuity.  Nowhere within it will you find any qualifiers from Ebony JFK.  Indeed, he was so enthusiastic in his glib appeasenikism that he misportrayed Original JFK (who faced down Nikita Khruschev over Cuba) and Ronald Reagan (who clinched victory in the Cold War at Reykavik, Iceland in 1985 when he walked out of his first summit with Mikhail Gorbachev rather than cave on SDI) as rowing in the same bottom-bound boat.  It's not an exaggration to say that he called anything less than a perpetuitous determination to pump the air full of meaningless words to the immense amusement of our enemies - without pre-conditions - as "ridiculous".

This isn't his first crack at this totalitarianistic re-write.  The thing that his debate answer then and hand-waving attempts to "disappear" it now have in common is his impenetrable belief that he can talk anybody into anything.  The same sociopathologic narcissism that characterized the Clintons in their day, and obviously a character defect on which they do not, after all, have the liberal market cornered.

The Golden Child's Bushesque remark about "A nuclear Iran [being] a game-changing situation" and "all options being on the table" is a new one, though.  And the public utterance it is intended to erase from existence isn't even two months old:

When in St. Barry's mind did Iran go from "tiny, non-threatening country" to mortal bane of the Republic?  And why is the Bush Administration moving towards his (original?) position at the exact same time that Bright & Morning Star is (pretending to) move towards Bush's and McCain's on Iraq?  Might the latter be because victory in the latter is so incontrivertible that even the Enemy Media is running up the white flag on running up the white flag?

***Speaking of which, is the bloom falling off the rose of the literal love affair between False Messiah and the Tingle Brigades?

Of course not.  At least not in the practical sense of their doing everything within their power to ensure that their god ascends Hillary's throne.  The marriage will remain in place for at least "eight to ten years".

But the giddy, butterflies-in-the-stomach, sweaty-palmed, dry-mouthed romantic phase of it may indeed be at an end:

Ensign Ed eventually gets to the money point:

[T]he larger point [Andrea] Mitchell makes is that Obama is being “handled” to a high degree, and that the campaign is keeping him as far away from the press as possible.  They’re only allowing for controlled events and images to appear, which goes against the entire idea of “New Politics” and transparency — and it also strongly suggests that the campaign can’t trust Obama to handle himself.

Beats me what they're afraid of.  In the old days, if a Democrat was a lush (LBJ) or a gigolo (JFK), the press would protect their privacy.  Perhaps their motivation for doing so wasn't quite as partisan as it would be today, but that was definitely a major factor.  I find it moderately astonishing that Obamanation poobahs don't realize just how deep runs the "journalistic" devotion to their supreme being - and that if there is a way to squander that tsunami of good will, it is by paranoiacally stiffing reporters whose only lust is to bow down and worship him.

Rubber, meet road:

Reporters who cover Obama these days grouse that Obama’s flacks shroud the campaign in secrecy and provide little to no access. “They’re more disciplined than the Bush people,” a reporter on the Obama trail gripes. “There was this idea of being transparent, but they’re not. They’re total tightwads with information.”

In June, there was something of a revolt after Obama ditched the press corps on his campaign plane for a secret meeting with Clinton at Senator Dianne Feinstein’s house in Washington, leaving the reporters trapped on the flight to Chicago. The D.C. bureau chiefs of half a dozen news organizations, including the late Tim Russert, sent an angry letter to Obama aides Robert Gibbs and David Plouffe and threatened not to reimburse the campaign for the cost of the flight. “The decision to mislead reporters is a troubling one,” they wrote. “We hope this does not presage a relationship with the Obama campaign that is not based on a mutual respect for the truth.” After the incident, the press corps decided that one pool reporter would keep Obama in sight at all times. “It’s a body watch,” one reporter jokes.

Meanwhile, there have been widespread complaints over the shortage of spots to accompany Obama on his tour of the Middle East and Europe. A few days before the tour departed, Time magazine was told it couldn’t send a photographer along, and, on July 22, NBC foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell complained on-air that the only images the press had received of Obama meeting with the troops was released by the U.S. military. (To be fair, congressional delegations to Iraq are kept secret for security purposes). And there’s been widespread grumbling that the campaign revoked New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza’s spot on the trip as retribution for the magazine’s recent satirical cover. These may or may not be legitimate complaints – the evidence is mixed – but the press is hardly inclined to give the campaign the benefit of the doubt.

You can take it to the bank that Lucifer is "arrogant" and beset by a "sense of entitlement" when his own media base is starting to publicly declare it.

Of course, that was once John Sith McCain's base.  But as daunting a task as he has trying to dupe conservatives into backing him, 'tis doubtful that Lord Queeg will be able to spare the woo-time.  Though it's obvious his jealousy is raging just beneath the surface.

***AP produces two clips of two different Obama alibis for why he skipped visiting the U.S. military hospitals at Rammstein and Landstuhl, Germany.  Watch them both and then tell me if you're not at least as confused trying to reconcile the two as Ba-ROCK comes across delivering them:

The best Allah can do is this:

[W]ith Fox he’s stressing that he didn’t want to distract from the troops and in the presser he’s stressing that he didn’t want it to be perceived as political.

The distinction without a difference is that both are big, steaming piles of chicken [salad].  Nothing with Barack Hussein Obama is ever about anything but him.  He doesn't give a rat's ass about the troops apart from those he can use or bamboozle.  The military wouldn't let him use the wounded soldiers in Germany, so he had no reason to go see them.  Even the latter explanation, which is supposed to be a high-minded and sympathetic, is still centered on how HE would be perceived.  If his priority had truly been the troops, he'd have gone with as small an entourage as possible and simply spent private time with them, listening and giving an encouraging word, free of ideological pontificating or partisan calculation.  I imagine they'd have appreciated that, and he might even have picked up some new supporters for his selfless effort.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Joe Repya phrased it this way:

The most solemn duty of a commander in chief is to fulfill his responsibility to the men and women who serve this country in uniform. Barack Obama had scheduled a visit with wounded American troops who have served with honor and distinction in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he broke that commitment, instead flitting from one European capital to the next. Several explanations were offered, none was convincing and each was at odds with the statements of American military leaders in Germany and Washington. For a young man so apt at playing president, Barack Obama badly misjudged the important demands of the office he seeks. Visits with world leaders and speeches to cheering Europeans shouldn’t be a substitute for comforting injured American heroes

The lesson the Not-President has yet to learn?  If you're explaining, you're (1) off-message, (2) on the defensive, and (3) losing.  If you're explaining badly, increase all three factors logarithmically.

Largely because it makes your opponent's PR job of ripping you from rectum to belly button that much easier:

I don't buy much of what Maverick says as a general rule - Once a RINO, always a RINO - but when he says that if confronted with one of Obama's "Why I didn't visit the troops" alibis, there'd have been a "seismic event," I believe him.  Just as I think most people not zonked on Barry's Kool-Aid don't believe that he wanted to play tourist more than practice a role that ALL presidents have to fulfill at one time or another.

***And, whaddaya know, this conclusion appears to be reflected in a couple of polls that have emerged since Ego Trip 2008 came to a merciful close.

A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics survey indicates that four-fifths of the public perceived Obama's "fact-finding junket" as either entirely or partially a week-long political stunt, and two-thirds believe that the cable and broadcast networks and major news services are extensions of Obamanation in everything but name.

And look where USA Today/Gallup found BO's "bounce":

A surprising poll released Monday confirms Senator Barack Obama's worst nightmare: he actually lost ground to Senator John McCain after a global trip meant to buck up his sagging credentials in foreign and military policy.

The USA Today/Gallup poll has McCain leading Obama by four points, 49% to Obama's 45%, among likely voters.

Just last month, the same poll had McCain trailing by six points to the neophyte U.S. senator....

The polls suggest that Obama's efforts to act like a president abroad - even though he has yet to be elected -- may have backfired among American voters.

In Berlin, Obama spoke to 200,000 cheering Germans. The Democratic candidate used the foreign platform to express the view that he was a "fellow citizen of the world" and apologized for America's imperfections.

In other words, Europe's redeemer has become John Kerry with a tan to the folks - the voters - back home.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."  Because of his stupendous conceit and solipsism, his breaking the Rammstein/Landstuhl date is the only lasting public memory of his "coming out" world globetrot.  Now maybe this poll swoon is an aberration and he'll rebound back to the underwhelming lead he enjoyed before it.  But - maybe he won't.

If Barack Hussein Obama wants to win this election, he is going to have to first admit to himself that yes, it is possible for him to lose it.  Then he has to figure out how to fake humility in the next three months.  Because it is day-glo clear that he possesses none of that virtue for real.

Can this really be considered a McCain campaign video, given that it effectively puts over his opponent as well or better than BO's own ads have managed to do? (via HA)

This spot is targeted squarely at the Enemy Media, who, as this Daily Show clip lampoons, can't pry their lips off of Barry's schlong long enough to even notice that their former favorite Republican is still alive, much less still in the presidential race:

I find the McCain video more amusing, actually, in that it seems to indicate that Darth Queeg is actually surprised that Chris Matthews doesn't have any tingle left over for him.  For years the Sith Master has cultivated the press, sold his party down the river repeatedly to ingratiate himself with them, built up his reputation as an iconoclastic "maverick" with an eye toward an eventual presidential run in which all that self-promotion to people who rank Republicans somewhere between gonorrhea and pond scum on their favorites lists was going to pay off in the first ever election in the modern era in which the Enemy Media was actually a GOP candidate's friend.

And now, lo and behold, all Sailor's new friends, his media pals, his press buddies, have disappeared, packed up and moved out, gone to chase after a younger, better looking, more charismatic, more liberal, and, uh, less pigmentationally challenged beau.  Or, as AP put it:

I’d say the[ Enemy Media is] more like an ex-wife: They still love [McCain], they’re just not in love with him. They still wave from their doorway and say hi when he drives over to their house on Friday night to pick up the kids — and of course you-know-who’s always there, his arm draped around their shoulder, thousand-watt smile and bad-ass shades glinting audaciously in the sunlight. The bastard.

And McCain is, evidently, actually shocked.  It is justice most poetic.

And just so there's no misunderstanding: I, for one, ain't taking him back.

If, for whatever unfathomable reason(s), this presidential race remains close, and Barack Hussein Obama fades down the home stretch like he did in the (still to be decided) Donk primaries, have no fear, Obamanation, for your Anointed One has a fully stocked arsenal of public relations weapons of mass destruction, and plenty of surrogates to press the red button:

[New York] Governor Paterson, delivering a speech [last Thurs]day at the NAACP’s 99th annual convention at Cincinnati, suggested that the defeat of Senator Obama in the presidential election would be a victory for racism in America…

“Can America reject the crucible of race that has dictated and pervaded all of our history to embrace an African American man who has the right polices for the next decade in this country? Can America overlook its past practices that were so grave that in 1820 the great Scottish Whig, Sydney Smith, writing in the Edinburgh Review, said of America: ‘How can they protest the tyrannies of Europe when they torture and brutalize one-sixth of its population?’ How can America get past this and elect an African-American president of the United States?” Mr. Paterson said.

He continued: “Can America go past the crippling way that we’ve shot ourselves in the foot over and over, denying opportunity to people who are bright, to people who are qualified, to people who are able because they didn’t look like us, or they didn’t come from where we came from, or they are from a different gender, or they are from the African continent? Can America push that away and find new leadership? We’ll find out in the next few months what America can do.”

Never mind that Obama has the wrong policies, isn't bright, isn't qualified, isn't able, and isn't from the African continent - none of which has a blessed thing to do with his half-blackness.  If the American people don't commit several different shades of national suicide and make him the forty-fourth president of the United States, David Paterson says it'll be proof that the Confederacy won the Civil War.

Frankly, I thought his accusing George W. Bush of "starving children" and "decimating whole regions," like he was the American Mugabe or something, to be insulting enough without the man pissing the "racism" smear in our collective face.  But Paterson, too, is black, which automatically gives him Absolute Moral Authority on any matter pertaining to race - a kind of James Bond-like "license to demogogue" with impunity.  Unless he were to become a Republican, of course.

Chris "Tingle" Matthews is whiter than a, um, sheet, and his campaigning for Lucifer on the Tonight Show last night showed just how ashamed of it he has become:

It is written, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure."  We're not supposed to think with our hearts, we're supposed to think with our heads.  Our hearts - or at least Matthews', since his brain atrophied from lack of use years ago - conjure up noodleheaded nonsense like the notion that putting a black man in the Oval Office is somehow inherently virtuous, that that is what Americans have to do to "prove" they're not individually and collectively racist.  Even though NAACP president (and black Absolute Moral Authority) Julian Bond recently declared even that to be insufficient white penance.  One wonders just how stratospheric that alleged threshold is.  Rhodesia has been paying for its past race sins for nearly thirty years under a black communist dictator who has laid absolute waste to that formerly economically vibrant jewel of southern Africa.  MUST history repeat itself?

No, kids generally don't think about race.  Neither do American adults who aren't Democrats.  Those are also the adults who think with their heads and are immune from guilt manipulation for "racial oppression" of decades and centuries past with which they had no more to do than False Messiah has even an ancestral claim to slavery victimizaton.  Thinking with one's head will lead one to conclude that Obama has the wrong policies, isn't bright, isn't qualified, isn't able, isn't from the African continent, is also ignorant, dishonest, and arrogant, and, far from being allowed to take over the country, should be removed from the Senate and sent home to resume hustling votes in Chicago.  Call it the political Peter Principle.

But if you think with your head, Chris Matthews says you're a racist.  At least if you're retired, I guess.  Which is kind of a convoluted blessing, because if the elderly - most of whom vote Democrat in any case - think the way their (middle-aged) kids are thinking - those that think with their heads - the ranks of Kool-Aid recruits of the Obamessiah Cult will steadily dwindle.

And if they dwindle small enough, perhaps America might be saved from the neoMugabe that menaces its near future.  The Left will howl racism, but the sane portion of the country will move on.  If the Unholy One does win, this political "black"mail will have only just begun.

Even though it's completely to be expected and should come as no surprise, I must admit the fawning media coverage of Barack Obama's trip to Europe has me aghast. There is no pretense at objectivity whatsoever. It is absolutely wall-to-wall. What's amazing is I'm seeing no comments whatsoever on Obama's confidence that the surge would not work in 2007, on his steadfast opposition to it, of his continual demeaning of their mission there. No, now we're supposed to take it on his authority that we need more troops in Afghanistan. Well, the Lord Obama said it, therefore it must be done! His press puppies will do an immediate about-face if Lord Obama says so. Here's how Rush puts it:

Okay, I've been watching -- as I'm sure many of you have, I have been watching and I have been listening -- to this trip that Barry has been taking for about two days now, the little summer camp trip, the interview all the heads of various colleges he wants to get into.  This trip, which is nothing more than pimping George Bush's ride, nauseates me.  I'll tell you why.  Obama drops into Afghanistan for two days, and then issues pronouncements about the need for more forces there.  Now, this is a guy who spent a total of 143 working days in the Senate.  This is a guy who had absolutely nothing useful to say (and even less to do with) our successes in Afghanistan; and now he presumes to lecture our nation and the world after a 48-hour visit about what needs to be done in Afghanistan!  More troops?  Wonder how his peeps on the left are gonna react to that.  Everybody knows we need more troops in Afghanistan.  The foot-dragging hasn't been us.

The absolute lack of investigative journalism, the ignoring of Obama's past statements, and the absolute butt-kissing adoration Obama is receiving from the media right now is nauseating, Rush certainly picked the right word. Can you remember the last time McCain went over there? Of course not. That wasn't newsworthy.

Read the rest of Rush's narrative. He spells it out like no one else can.

JASmius adds: McCain has been to Afghanistan.  And Iraq.  Many times.  Until this week, Lucifer had been to Iraq once, two and a half years ago, and had NEVER been to Afghanistan.  At least the REAL Messiah lived His whole life in the Holy Land before throwing the money-changers out of the Temple.

I've never felt an overpowering urge to write about press bias because it's like the weatherman forecasting darkness at night and widespread light in the morning.  But this....Barack Obama, did Bill Clinton even get this level of crazed worship from these people?  And could it perhaps be backfiring when recent polls are showing fully half of respondents recognizing the blatant propaganda and being increasingly turned off by it?

It's as I've been saying of late: most people do not like arrogance in general, and especially from their presidents.  Populism and elitism simply do not mix.  Obama's orwellianism about his endless gaffes the reveal how ignorant he really is in stark contrast to the absolute moral and intellectual authority he claims for anything that comes out of his mouth, the titanic conceit of booking a football stadium for his convention acceptance speech, the offhand "let them eat cake" assumption that he'll be in the White House "for the next eight to ten years," the sense of entitlement that swirls around his entire campaign like electrons whizzing around an atomic nucleus when he has not, in fact, clinched anything - it's turning off "adults," it's turning off voters, it's even turning off Democrat superdelegates.  The haughty insularity of Obamanation may be the harbinger of its own doom.

Ken Patera used to say, "It's not bragging if you can back it up."  More and more Americans are starting to ask the question of what in the blue hell Barack Hussein Obama has ever done to back up even the very notion that he should be considered for the highest office in the land, much less demand that it be handed to him on a silver platter with a bow and curtsey.

But....if this election turns out to be a "done deal," and BO gets elected anyway, won't all his pride and hauteur and elitism, and the attendent contempt for the unwashed masses, be completely vindicated?

UPDATE: It just continues.  Flimsy excuses from a former Clinton speechwriter denying Darth Queeg a rebuttal column to the Unholy One's Iraq manifesto in the New York Bathroom Tissue a week ago (Fairness Doctrine???  Yeah, I know, that's broadcasting, but still....), and since her deity is out of the country, the l'il missus had to stand in for him with a pledge to "save the children".

How many of them?  ALL of them:

“We have one candidate who essentially is telling us every day that the world as it is just fine. That what we’ve been doing for the last eight years is fine,” [Michelle] Obama said. “Stay the course. Don’t make too many changes.

“And then we have this other candidate — Barack Obama — who is saying every day that the world as it is [is] not right. It’s not good enough,” she said. …

“I wish we had time to be divided. I wish we had time to be upset. To be angry. To be disappointed. I wish we did,” Obama said. “Because if we had time for that, then things wouldn’t be so bad right now. Instead, we’re in a place where another four or eight years of the world as it is will devastate the life of some child.”

When I had vestibular neuronitis seventeen months ago, I might have come within long range sensor distance of the level of dizziness Scheherezade displays in this quote.  How do I count the ways?

Since when has McCain EVER said that "everything is just fine"?  McCain can't pander to panicked public pessimism enough - so much so that he sacrificed the only supply-side economic advisor in his inner circle.

If she was ludicrously overstating Sailor's status-quo-anteism, she pegged hubby's Marxian utopianism smack center of the bullseye.  The ENTIRE WORLD "isn't right"?  The ENTIRE WORLD "isn't good enough"?  What does that mean to her and her lord and savior?  I'll go way out on a limb and speculate that it doesn't mean the same thing to them that it does to me - and that my solutions are the antithesis of theirs.

Not just in content, but in the idea that I would never presume to be so stupendously arrogant as to believe myself capable of singlehandedly "saving the world" or even so minimalist a task as rescuing ALL of its "children" from what I imagine she believes George W. Bush to represent.  Whatever that is.

What's so "bad," Michelle?  The war on terror?  We got that inflicted on us because the Clintonoids did nothing to prevent al Qaeda from becoming a national security threat.  Iranian nukes?  Dubya has followed your party's "diplomacy now, diplomacy forever!" prescription on that to a "t," with predictable results.  Runaway gas prices?  It's your party's environmental extremism that has locked up our domestic energy resources tighter than a drum.

Some would argue that the tax-cut fueled five year economic boom out of the ashes of 9/11 and in the midst of the '05 hurricanes, the housing bubble, and the aforementioned is, to quote President Thomas Whitmore in Independence Day (who was in turn quoting President Ronald Reagan in his farewell address), "not bad...not too bad at all".

How many children have died around the world at the hands of Islamic radicals, Michelle?  How many Jewish children will die if the Iranians are allowed to gain possession of nuclear weapons?  Why don't you limit your maternalistic busybodying to your OWN children and stop threatening to "devastate" the rest of ours?

Or is it from whom you want to "save the children"?  Not just George Bush, but all of us parents across the fruited plain who reject your rancid, discredited, malevolent ideology for the hateful Oba...{ahem} abomination that it is?

Arrogant?  Off the charts.  And judging by Mrs. O's "I wish we had the time to be democratic about this" rhetorical undercurrent, it sounds like she and Avatar Barack intend to "save" us whether we like it or not.  And the oceans too!  But then, the Avatar is master of waterbending as well.

Funny how moral conceit and utopianism always seem to go together.  Not so funny how the combustible mix usually turns out.  We can know how egregiously insufferable it's gotten when even some lib columnists start calling him out on it:

Barack Obama always was a larger-than-life candidate with a healthy ego. Now he’s turning into the A-Rod of politics. It’s all about him.

He’s giving his opponent something other than issues to attack him on: narcissism.

A convention hall isn’t good enough for the presumptive Democratic nominee. He plans to deliver his acceptance speech in the 75,000 seat stadium where the Denver Broncos play. Before a vote is cast, he’s embarking on a foreign policy tour that will use cheering Europeans - and America’s top news anchors - as extras in his campaign. What do you expect from a candidate who already auditioned a quasi-presidential seal with the Latin inscription, “Vero possumus” - “Yes, we can”?

What else?  The mentality that he already considers himself to be president.

More on that later....

Here's a reminder of the difference between Republicans and Democrats.  Pay particular attention to the first two sentences of President Bush's reply (via HA):

Thank you, Mr. President, for having the faith in the American people to be able to read a gas station tote board and understand what the little squiggles mean.  That puts you and us light years ahead of the people who'll be running the country a year from now. 

You can bet that when Comrade Hussein is standing behind that podium six months from now, he'll match and surpass Mark Smith's Carteresque idiocy.  Though I doubt he'll don a Mr. Rogers-like sweater to bludgeon the paternalstic point home.

Another tribute to the late Tony Snow that shouldn't have to have been made:

Link: sevenload.com

The FCC Chairman who claims to adamantly oppose reinstatement of the so-called Fairness Doctrine (via Newsmax Insider):

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin has sent a letter to House Minority Leader John Boehner expressing his strenuous opposition to the reinstatement of the so-called Fairness Doctrine.

The Fairness Doctrine, first implemented in 1949, stipulated that radio stations — and later TV stations as well — must give equal time to opposing viewpoints on controversial subjects. The FCC repealed the Doctrine in 1987.

In his letter, Martin stated, “I have always been, and remain strongly, opposed to the Fairness Doctrine. I am on record as supporting legislation that would have prohibited the FCC from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.”

Martin referred to a letter he sent to several members of Congress last year that read in part, “I see no compelling reason to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine in today’s broadcast environment, and believe that such a step would inhibit the robust discussion of issues of public concern over the nation’s airwaves.”

Opponents of the Fairness Doctrine say that if it were reinstated, stations that air conservative viewpoints would have to give free air time to liberals. As a result, many stations might then opt not to air the conservative talkers.

There has been growing speculation on Capitol Hill that Democrats will seek to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine under the guise that conservative talk radio is disproportionately dominating American radio.

Martin wrote that the FCC was considering the use of local advisory boards to ensure that broadcasters are fulfilling their obligation to serve their local communities, but stressed that these boards “would not regulate the content of the broadcasters’ programming.”

He concluded in his letter to the Ohio Republican: “I appreciate your interest in this matter and reiterate that I share your concern that the Fairness Doctrine not be reinstated. [emphasis added]

Well, there's Martin's out if, as expected, a Democrat succeeds George W. Bush in the White House.  But this letter and the previous one to which it refers still pretty much cements his ouster by the author and perfector of Hopeandchange, who will rediscover his affinity for rewarding dishonest media bias and punishing the honest advocacy journalism which it begat about ten seconds after John Sith McCain gives his concession speech on November 4th.

Hey, those local "advisory" boards will still be in place, remember.  The missions of such bureaucratic entities are infinitely expandable.  Of which all our readers should make a mental note in case a trap door opens next year and you never see my fat ass in this space again.

It was with great sadness that I heard about Tony Snow's death yesterday. He was one of my favorite media people - always cheerful, smiling, and handling the press corps with ease and humor. I loved listening to him when he used to guest host on Rush's show, that's actually where I first really listened to him, since I rarely watch T.V. He was a man of deep faith and conviction, and he will be sorely missed. May his family rest in the knowledge that they will see him again one day.

JASmius adds: Here's Fox News' memorial tribute:

Do you want to yell, "TIMBERRRRRR!" or shall I?:

According to several broadcast executives, the networks will still cover all the major speeches [at the Democrat convention]. But beyond that, all options are open as they look for savings to balance out the anticipated costs surrounding the stadium event. The acceptance event is an unexpected departure from the traditional convention hall format for which they have spent months planning.

Network executives expect Obama’s relatively late-breaking decision to speak at Invesco Field at Mile High, a 76,000-seat football stadium, could add hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to already cash-strapped news divisions. Each network has budgeted millions to cover the political conventions, but that spending is already accounted for in specific costs ranging from hotel rooms to staffing to building convention platforms.

We've looked at Barack Hussein Obama's totalitarian instincts and the fetish for grand, fascistic spectacles that they are giving rise to.  I wondered how a party that is already thirty percent short of the necessary cash to put on this full four-day event could possibly afford to glom a freaking football stadium for the final night absent BO remembering to bring along his checkbook.  Now we see that the DNC's isn't the only wallet that this impulsive indulgence of godhood delusion is eviscerating.

Of course, given that by late August the Pocket Savior will have received nineteen uninterrupted months of wall-to-wall media tongue-bathing, perhaps truncated media coverage of his pre-emptive coronation won't matter all that much.  Particularly as the Republican gathering that follows it will be covered like a pre-emptive wake.

Still, there is a stubborn part of my vast and fertile intellect that wonders whether there might yet be a public crystalization point for all of BO's BS.  A Rubicon past which a majority of voters will be too outraged, too disgusted, too frightened, too just plain weirded out to hang the chad for this fricasseed Lenin.

That's the part of my mega-brain that the interface experts at the local Obama Federal Anti-Cynicism Clinic will doubtless lobotomize out of me next year.  For my own good, of course.

I wonder if I'll miss it.

Dick Morris thinks so (via Newsmax Insider):

Top political analyst Dick Morris’s new book Fleeced has shot to the #1 spot on Amazon.com’s list of best sellers just three days after it was published.

Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran ... Are Scamming Us ... and What to Do About It! co-authored by Eileen McGann, is a hard-hitting call to arms spotlighting the hundreds of ways American taxpayers are routinely fleeced.

The authors detail how taxpayers are fleeced by our own government; by foreign countries like Dubai that are gobbling up American interests and spending millions to influence government decisions; by Washington lobbying firms that push the agendas of corrupt foreign dictators; and by hedge-fund billionaires collecting huge tax breaks courtesy of the IRS.

It also discloses how Barack Obama has called for $1 trillion in tax increases over the next 10 years — and dressed them up as tax cuts.

Commenting on the remarkable success of the book, Morris told Newsmax: “Fleeced is number one on Amazon perhaps because it explains, in detail, what Obama would do as president. It doesn't quote his wife, his pastor, or his dog, but quotes him on his plans to raise taxes on anyone with a household income of more than $100,000, on how he will extend health insurance to illegal immigrants, and how he will require the feds to notify terrorists within seven days of the start of an investigation into their activities.

“It explains why fifty of our Gitmo detainees are back in Afghanistan fighting our troops. It quotes from the diversity guidelines issued by the Society of Professional Journalists on how to skew terrorism coverage to lull us to sleep. It names the foreign companies that are helping Iran develop nuclear weapons — companies in which we all own stock that we should sell.

“And it exposes the do-nothing Congress, the plan to muzzle talk radio, and much, much more.”

Hmmm; that sound like it just might be worth a read....