The New York Post says that “print reporters have posted a sign in the desk area of the White House press room reading, ‘Blog-Free Zone.’” (Hat tip: James Linville). I wonder what that’s supposed to mean?
Maybe it means that you have to have a professional card to write or speak out ‘legitimately’. Glenn Reynolds notices allegations that the Obama administration is threatening to unleash the Press on its enemies as retribution. He notes one allegation without necessarily vouching for it: a lawyer claimed “one of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House Press Corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.” That, if true, would explain the “Blog-Free Zone”.
In addition, Hot Air says Fox reporter Major Garrett wasn’t called during a White House press conference by Barack Obama in retribution for the networks refusal to carry his press conference live, so maybe you need the right kind of professional card to ply your trade.
Partisanship might actually be a good thing because it would bring the bias to the surface. That way the reader will have the choice of consciously reading the pro-Obama media or the anti-Obama media and anything they might care to identify in between. That could be better than picking up the “papers” and assuming the contents in it were truth instead of processed fact.
Jake Tapper says the White House denies it has threatened to loose its journalists on investors who won’t toe its line in the Chrysler bankruptcy settlement. The antagonists are a group of investors represented by Tom Lauria and Barack Obama who is said to have referred to Lauria’s clients in a recent statement.
While many stakeholders made sacrifices and worked constructively, I have to tell you some did not. In particular, a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout. They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none. Some demanded twice the return that other lenders were getting. I don’t stand with them. I stand with Chrysler’s employees and their families and communities. I stand with Chrysler’s management, its dealers, and its suppliers. I stand with the millions of Americans who own and want to buy Chrysler cars. I don’t stand with those who held out when everybody else is making sacrifices. And that’s why I’m supporting Chrysler’s plans to use our bankruptcy laws to clear away its remaining obligations so the company can get back on its feet and onto a path of success.
I suppose that if Obama is entitled to use publicity to persuade certain persons to get into line then they can return the favor. It’s hardly an equal contest. Lauria fired back at the President on a radio interview but that platform is utterly dwarfed by the kind of publicity that Obama can command: despite the fact that Fox News held back from covering one of his press conferences, BHO can get many times the coverage that Tom Lauria ever could. Incidentally, Power Line says that Tom Lauria was a Democrat who had made substantial contributions to the Obama campaign. There’s a moral in there somewhere, though I’m not sure what it is.
Ace is reporting that Jake Tapper asked the thugs about the extortion threats. Hope Jake is ready for what’s coming his way.
The Press relies upon a presumption that they are acting in some professional capacity to justify their ability to act and claim 1st Amendment protection for actions which if done by average persons in a private capacity would constitute trespass, stalking or harassment. Consider the two Psychologists who were videotaped telling the ABC News reporter that they had a non-disclosure agreement with the CIA and that they could not answer any questions. As soon as they said that the reporter and the cameraman lost any justification they had as members of the press to be there under the First Amendment. The person being assaulted by them should be free to say “You have been told to go and I no longer view you as a member of the Press doing your job as protected by the First Amendment. You are now acting as a common criminal assaulting me and if you remain then I will be free to act to defend myself until such time as Law Enforcement arrives to protect me.”
A regime’s attitude towards the press defines both. The history of every resistance movement starts with an period I will call the “test” in which people from all walks of life must cross a line to choose their sides. It’s the defining moment of every historical event of this type. All the rest, you might say, is detail. I’m not saying that things have entered this phase, but if it ever does then it will start with a cycle of retribution and defiance. For now it’s just a disturbing trend that needs to be watched.
This is more of the War between the SWPL Elites, safe in their Seinfeld-like sinecures, but uneasy at the challenges roiling beneath them, and ordinary people.
Of course the story is true, that the WH threatened to use the Press Corps to destroy people who don’t do what it tells them.
The Press, ALL OF IT, are nothing but whores. They have always been and always will be nothing but whores for the hard-left Elite yuppies. Kennedys, Obamas, it doesn’t matter. The Press is nothing but Yuppies and those who aspire to it. What else could they be?
Wretchard,
That’s my question. What will be the “Calvo Sotelo moment” that makes the majority of Americans aware that the “test” has started?
I found it quite telling when Susan Roesgen said on live TV the tea parties were “Anti-government, anti-CNN”, in effect placing her employer firmly on the side of the government and againt the tax-paying American middle class who, apparently, should just bend over and take whatever is given it.
Hey Whiskey what do you mean by “SWPL”? In my town it’s “S**t White People Like”.
In America, how is it possible for a citizen to be anti-government? The last time I checked, the government is supposed to be working for us, all of us. If we don’t like what is happening, we can fire our employees and hire others. Takes a little paperwork and a whole bunch of electioneering, but remember, it already has happened in California just like it is supposed to work (Grey Davis recall).
Ok, quit laughing darn it.
Programmer: Have you checked lately?
That programmer @7. He’s such a crazy guy. LMAO. Oh, pshaw, p, quit pulling our legs.
if it’s not 5 W’s (& possibly H),
then it’s subjective…
…what this president can’t afford to do is lose control of the message…
not that he’s some Orwellian big brother consumed by habitual double-speak (although whenever I hear him speak I can think of nothing else!)
Although not controlling the media through authoritarianism, they do command a virtual monopoly with 90% of the Obamedia self identifying as liberals…
just as if you repeat a lie enough it becomes the truth for most, if enough of the obamedia reports, or repeats the press releases of the WH, working (or more likely non-tax-paying possibly working) stiffs that barely pay attention will follow the essence of what is being fed to them…
…that is why the blogging kooks need to be shut out as trouble makers; just as independents from South Carolina to Texas pose a threat to his legislative agenda, the bloggers display an uncontrollable independence that does not bode well for the monolithic story line of these intellectual elites, who happen to have very little experience actually running anything in their lives…
…which gives me a glimmer of hope; perhaps their sycophants in the media will perhaps come to the conclusion, prior to their taking their last breath/death rattle, that they ought to try slanting the other way for purely business purposes…
…that is that if they could overcome their nausea with anything conservative, they might find that reporting with a middle america slant might actually sell…
a nice thought; but, hardly likely…as I think back on my days in college, as I struggled through calculus, chemistry and physics, the daft ones that were strumming their guitars out on the plaza; these were the dim-witted journalism majors…
I guess they spend the rest of their lives trying to convince others of their true intelligence, and thus pride prevents them from sticking to the 5W’s…
in all their wisdom, they could never honestly report with a conservative slant, so they’d artificially report conservatively; but, the American public would see it for the cynicism that it was, and it would be rejected…
the alternative would be for the major media to re-staff with something that looked a little more like a cross section of America; however, if successful, as soon as readership shot up, someone with nefarious purposes would probably buy them out and start calling the editorial shots…
so that leaves the wild west of the blogging world as the major exposed flank for which the control freaks in washington have no place…
…the big question is whether these manipulators will overplay their hand and grenade themselves before they’ve managed to place enough people on the dole to ensure their power for perpetuity…
It’s going to take a while for most of the people to realize that they were sold a bill of goods – hence the continuing efforts of the MSM to conceal the facts.
The real question, the one we speculate about, is what will happen when the truth is revealed for all to see: this emperor has no clothes (nor a clue, either).
Is there enough backbone in the country, enough Scots-Irish, to force a change? Or, as has been stated, has the fight been bred out of the populace?
Things will get worse before they get better.
How far to the bottom???
2. Lifeofthemind:
The Press doesn’t have any rights under the 1st Amendment that you and I don’t have. They want you to think they do, but they don’t. And they certainly don’t have any right to trespass.
that sign might as well say “Time to Circle the Wagons’.
Anyhoo, that guy who made a little blog & Fox news sometime back, accusing (via his film documentary “How Obama Got Elected”) the MSM of actual actionable malpractice in the way it discharged itself during the 08 campaign, John Zeigler is his name, just got arrested a week or two ago for handing out leaflets peacably nearby some Katie Couric industry self-ass-kiss-a-thon glitter-gather. Cops had to gotten a complaint from the glits –wonder what it was?
The notion no press body should be viewed as “clinically objective” is something I have been discussing for sometime. Jonah Goldberg visits that topic periodically. He notes the press of old used to be viciously partisan and the I note that today’s press and news outlets are starting to go partisan is not an aberration but a return to the norms.
Now-a-days it is dirt cheap to at least put one’s self into a position to garner a readership in the millions (Wretchard is testament to that, if he had to buy a multi-million dollar printing press to get this writing out would we be reading his work?) In the days of “clinically-objective” media it was sky-high expensive to get into the game so the model chosen was to bland news down and attempt to keep it “clinically-objective” (though, even in the old days I think most people would say the news leaned in one direction). This need drove print as well as broadcast media and hence the first stage of the newspaper die-off was the two paper model, two papers pushing the same view is redundant and one will necessarily die.
I think print media will resurrect but will do so in smaller circulation publications – closer to home and with a decided and obvious point of view.
BTW GO PACMAN GO!
“Fox News held back from covering one of his press conferences…”
False. Fox, the broadcast network, declined to cover the press conference, and played “Lie to Me” instead. The Fox News Channel covered the conference.
Nixon already tried an “enemies list”. Everyone would do well to remember how that worked out for him.
And it was bloggers who brought down Dan Rather, successor to Uncle Walter Cronkite, arguably the most powerful person in either print or televised news media.
Obama is running his White House like he’s still in Chicago. I can’t believe either the nation or the world will allow that sort of petty (and stupid) thuggery to succeed.
Dancing Bird
Snowball and Stevie Nicks
Snowball – Japanese Believe it or Not TV
Here ya go, Buddy:
USC Annenberg School of Communication
John Ziegler / Katie Couric at USC
John Ziegler was detained by the USC Campus Police for simply asking questions about the Excellence in Journalism award being given to Katie Couric at the Journalism building at USC on 04/15/09.
Ziegler went to USC to witness and ask questions about Katie Couric getting the Walter Cronkite journalism award for her interview of Sarah Palin and it’s impact on the campaign!
This is the state of “Journalism” today!
John recommended skipping the first 8 minutes, but I had to watch the whole thing.
CRONKITE AWARD WINNERS: “DEMOCRACY IS AT ITS STRONGEST WHEN (MEDIA) ARE GREAT”
April 15, 2009 Professional television journalists from across the country and a group of USC Annenberg students and faculty gathered April 15 for the 5th Walter Cronkite Awards Ceremony, administered by the Norman Lear Center, at USC’s Davidson Conference Center…
Katie Couric (pictured with Broadcast Journalism graduate student Michelle Phalen) made the trip to Los Angeles, taking time from her position as anchor and managing editor for the CBS Evening News to accept her award for
“Special Achievement for National Impact on the 2008 Campaign,”
which she won for her interviews with Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
At the podium Couric told the audience she went to great lengths to be unbiased in her interviews, focusing on every facial expression and body position.
“My goal was to be a conduit, to allow her a chance to express her issues and let the viewers decide for themselves,” she said.
ABC News’ This Week with George Stephanopoulos won its second Cronkite Award this year for its “On the Trail” series, which consisted of interviews with every presidential contender in the 2008 campaign. The judges applauded George Stephanopoulos, who attended the event, for his “compelling” and “thoroughly prepared” interviews.
My local paper has finally priced me out of the market. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay 75 cents for the crossword puzzle and the obituaries. I’m done with it.
By the way, staying in a motel recently, I tried to read the Belmont Club on their computer. Comments were blocked–not fit for the kids, it said. They had a little space to object, so I did, saying he kids might actually learn something. Kind of ticked me off. I imagine your comments section might be blocked in all the motels in America. Who would be behind this?
Tapper is one of the very few mainstream media reporters that hasn’t been totally in the tank for Obama. His blog, which you link to below, was a regular read for me last fall. Perhaps the “Blog-free zone” sign is a dig at him??
starling, i think it’s a much broader thing –one hears constant snips from ‘credentialed journalists’ about ‘amateur bloggers’. myself, i’ve always thought that studying writing is the same as studying reading. I mean, if you can read, that is anyone from joe blow’s rant to the bard’s great tragedies, you are seeing the whole thing right there on the page. the play’s the thing. Study Hemingway’s writing? Why? Just read it. then you know how he did it.
bob, motels have a lot of gall. it’s ok to keep your mom’s mummy in the basement and stab beautiful blondes to death in the shower, but, noooo, can’t let the kiddies read belmont.
doug, re Couric, remember Memogate?
Just before the 2006 election (calendar-wise in the same slot as the 2008 bank panic), it broke the same day the DNC released their “Fortunate Son” ad cmpgn (making GWB out to be a rich-kid string-puller) and Couric’s “Today Show” featuring an unprecedentedly intense book roll-out, with three straight days of in-depth interviews with celebrity-authoress-cum-character-assassin & fictional-fabulist Kitty Kelly regarding her new book release featuring GWB snorting coke at Camp David and i think making out with his sister-in-law.
Gunga Dan Rather, Cute Katie Couric, NYT, DNC, all three had clearly conspired and coordinated. Yet nobody much complained let alone ever went to jail (nor my preferred response to slandering and libeling a sitting wartime president: stretching a rope).
That whole little starburst of shamelessly raw lying may well have been the beginning of the end of “professional journalism”.
Katy Couric, in there with Cronkite, alright –but not in the place she thinks.
NY Times is sending messages ‘in the clear’ –must be reacting to sudden threat (July 4th tea parties?)
(open quote)
Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus
by John M. Broder, May 01, 2009
The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”
The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.
Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”
(close quote)
(ht instapundit)
The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes
Yeah, needs rewrite –how ’bout, “Getting lied to turns people off, fostering images of self-interested pseudo-scientists, government banditry, and cynical nonsense which has always in the past gulled the hicks and yahoos sufficiently to rob them as needed.”
“The Press, ALL OF IT, are nothing but lazy whores.”
There was a word missing.
Yes… I am sure that the mainstream media is getting nervous, feeling the hot breath of the blogs at their back. And I am also equally sure that only a handful of the most thoughtful and observant of the old mainstream reporters are seriously aware of how deeply the Tea Partiers could shake things up.
In the aftermath of the Tax Day protest in San Antonio, I was talking to a local political columnist who remarked, somewhat awed, that he had gone to the Tea Party on Alamo Plaza and walked about, and although he had been covering San Antonio politics for twenty years, he only saw two or three people that he recognized. Whereupon I answered, very sweetly, that perhaps he ought to get out more.
They are just beginning to realize that the sleeping dragon is waking up.
And my other point is that we are not depending on local media for coverage, much. Our local committee is recruiting volunteer photographers, videographers and bloogers to cover our ongoing events. Flood the zone with our own coverage, bloggers and amateurs welcome; we’ll give you a press credential, you can use the press room, upload your coverage to whatever blog or platform you favor, we’ll link to it on our website. Grassroots activism… grassroots news coverage; diversified, non-centralized and spreading outwards.
No wonder the current White House press corps is beginning to look nervously over their shoulders, and being bitchy about bloggers and amateurs.
Would be nice to know how many tea baggers were first-time rally attendees.
…first for me since 2002 Linda Lingle State Race.
Also, the general joviality quotient, contrasted to the acidic bile bathing left-wing functions.
(and the condition afterward of the grounds on which the functions were held)
One thing we know, whether the “MSM” does, or not:
The Parties will grow.
Illegal Immigrant May Day Celebrations were in decline, as Tea Parties grow.
Doug – in answer to your questions as regards the SA Tea Party; just about all of them, including roughly a quarter who had traveled long distances to attend.
When I went out to circulate, the feeling in the crowd was very jolly, very laid back; it felt like a neighborhood block party.
And we had volunteer clean-up crews standing by, although they were not much needed. I walked half the length of the Plaza afterwards and didn’t notice much else, other than additional bags of trash neatly placed by the permanent receptacles.
A more than usually perceptive observer noted that the next generation of political leaders may come out of the Tea Party. It may already be happening. One of the executive committee members resigned this weekend, as he is going to run for local political office.
Limbaugh got a call on Friday (from Texas, I believe) from a Consulting Engineer (private business) who was thinking of running for office.
…said there was nothing really wrong with the incumbent, in his opinion, other than the fact that this would be his 13th term, and the caller had serious reservations about the ability of said incumbent to see reality from outside his 13 term DC Bubble.
A lady in a Southern California Community that had never been active in politics before asked some questions about a local Tea Party and ended up being the principal organizer of the event.
Exactly what happened with the head of our Tea Party Committee, Doug – he looked around on-line for information about a local Tea Party, and within days he was in charge of it.
He’s a retired Air Force officer, who works full-time as a software consultant… he’s still pretty astonished by the transition.
I am considering the whole Tea Party movement as if the public was a huge pile of bone-dry tinder; a great inarticulate mass of people who over the last few years were slowly becoming fairly unhappy with various aspects of our government. And now there are sparks here and there, setting it ablaze almost spontaneously, while mainstream media runs hither and yon, trying to put it out with buckets of ridicule, and political hacks like San Fran Nan insist it is all partisan astroturf. There is almost a frantic quality to their words and actions, as if they know already that the fires could be on the verge of becoming one huge inferno, toasting them all to a well-done crisp.
Nancy and Harry.
How low can we go?
“They are just beginning to realize that the sleeping dragon is waking up.”
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto to Ogata Taketora on January 9, 1942.
* * *
I looked at attending a Tea Party which would have been my first ever, but had other scheduled appointments on that day and would have had to take a full day off from work to get to and from the nearest one.
It’s amazing to me that the Powers That Be in Los Angeles scheduled *SIX* rallies / marches / demonstrations last Friday — four for illegal aliens and two for communist unions — through downtown LA, totally gridlocking the whole downtown area for the paltry few who did show up to wave their Mexican flags. While the closest two tea parties to downtown were in Pasadena and Santa Monica.
But our mayor is Mexican so you know whose sympathies he will be with, and what strings will be pulled from City Hall. (How the hell did La Raza Antonio manage to get re-elected by a hefty margin a month ago????)
i’d say, about Spring 2009 low
is about as low
as we’ll go
Obama reminds me of a provincial premier we had a few years ago. Similar background, union organizer, etc. Great personal charm, could talk and convince. Portrayed moderation.
The commonality is that neither of them had any personal limits in what they would do. Any limits they had lived by were imposed by external forces; battling in community groups or unions the wins are usually minor compared to the effort and extremism of the measures. There is nothing either of these men would not do.
Eventually the premier fell from grace, entirely due to his own action, his own over reach on issues.
Obama is a constructed image. Reality has a very nasty way of intruding, and is already.
I’m looking for a prediction. When will the left start trying to convince everyone that the low unemployment numbers up till last year were falsified? They couldn’t have been that low.
Derek
Have any of you seen the Friday segment of Glenn Beck’s show? In that program the same point was made as some of you have: that there must be a new generation of people running for office, at all levels.
The media whores in Washington – just like Congress – should be afraid of us. Very, very afraid.
I also hope that the Sept. 12 march in Washington breaks all records for demonstrations. I want to see the DC establishment quake in their knees. I want to see them so scared of us that they will try to throw everything but the kitchen sink at us, and yet, they won’t be able to hide how much of weasels they really are.
amen amen amen all yez
Buddy @24 – studying writing is the same as studying reading – sounds like my approach to playing the piano. What the hell, anyone can do it, there are the keys, just commence to banging away on them an you’re playing the piano. I’ve tried it in bars once or twice, it works for the first thirty seconds or so. Heh.
Back to the topic – I love it when my liberal friends instruct me that liberals are open to others’ ideas, they are not rigid in their thinking, they are broadly flexible in their philosophies, and oh by the way, Republicans and conservatives are evil. I swear, it all boils out in one breath or one sentence, they don’t see the incongruity.
Did you guys get the email before the election that if you don’t vote for Obama, you’re racist? More brilliant open-mindedness, as championed by today’s media. This won’t last forever, but while it’s hear, especially in service to the sophmoric narcissist in chief, it’s annoying.
Conservatives think liberals have bad ideas, liberals think conservatives are bad people. Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Fascists were “liberal” like today’s liberals, but this is America. Right?
Other than voting regularly, I had NEVER attended a political rally until April 15th. I gaurantee it will NOT be my last.
The problem, as I see it, with our local scene is thus: Democrat union-affirmative-action-dominated city in a northern union “bluish” state. The burbs are pretty conservative; all the smart, hard-working folks long ago moved out of the decaying core, leaving it to be run by the kakistocracy.
Makes it tough to fix things from the “inside out”. I think you folks in San Antonio have a much better chance.
I say let Obama release his press corps poodles. He tried it on Rush; Rush’s ratings shot through the roof. He tried it on Santelli, and turned him into an icon. His administration has -from the primaries on – portrayed Fox News as the Great Satan of journalism; Fox News wipes the floor with CNN and MSNBC. They attack private investors in the Chrysler debacle, and now I’m finding even the most financially illiterate lefties asking for information on junior and senior debt, and more importantly, the rule of law.
Buffet commented that the market collapse was the equivalent of Pearl Harbor. Though wrong in his analysis – if anything it was the election of the ultimate useful idiot to the Presidency as the comparable event – Pearl Harbor is still a useful comparison. Just as the Japanese thought that such a devastating attack would force Americans to sue for peace, the Obamunists seem to believe that the stick of rapid suppression of American rights applied with the promise of a few golden carrots – the social equivalent of Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time” – will crush the American experiment. It won’t.
And the reason it won’t is because America – unlike most countries – is fundamentally chaotic. It is not a country well ordered by a small gene pool, or a single religion, or a single cultural meme. It is a country based on an idea – personal, individual, liberty – that is intrinsic to human experience, formed and tempered by experience. That desire for liberty is Sgt. Mom’s bone dry tinder; the idea that liberty, individually expressed, is the cornerstone of a better life, is the spark, self generating and freely available to all.
Obamunists should do well to remember that it only took six months before Americans turned the tide in the Pacific, at the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea; it took three more years, and huge sacrifices on the part of Americans to free the world from Japan. But they did do it.
that’s funny, Tony –i’m also good for about 30 seconds on the piano at a bar –I’ve got a few Vince Guaraldi trix –then i have to grin and shuffle off to buffalo.
re your part deux, i was watching a History Channel show on the “night of the long knives” last night –and was amazed at the copious use of ‘our revolution’ and other permutations of revolutionary rhetoric, in the writings of the hitlerites. i really think today’s MSM would’ve LOVED that bunch –on the ‘movement rhetoric’ basis, if not them stylish uniforms.
there’s the Saturday Night Live skit you’ll never see –the White House Press Corps –at a Hitler press conference.
“Herr Hitler, could you tell us what is most enchanting about your dictatorship?”
Incidentally, Power Line says that Tom Lauria was a Democrat who had made substantial contributions to the Obama campaign. There’s a moral in there somewhere, though I’m not sure what it is.
The moral would seem to be don’t waste money buying dishonest politicians. A dishonest politician is one who doesn’t stay bought.
Wretchard @3 talked about the “test” — the point at which people realize they need to take sides.
I think in this instance the test will come when the WH sends troops or police to break up tea party gatherings. After all, he’s already proven he’s more than willing to coerce and threaten to get his way. He’s already ridiculing them, calling them tea baggers like his lapdog media do. His mouthpieces have already said that these demonstrations are “unhealthy.” CNN has already sent reporters to cover them who literally provoked and staged a “fight,” all to support their contention that the tea partiers were a violent, unruly lot.
Make no mistake, if the tea partiers march on Washington, there will be a large force there waiting for them. I’m not saying that to scare anyone off going… but I think we need to be prepared that we might end up in jail for it, regardless of how peaceful we are. Heck, for all I know, the WH/ACORN/leftie shill group of some stripe or other will have agent provacatuers in the crowd trying to make the peaceful protestors look like a violent threat. They boasted they’d do it during the April 15th protests; they may keep that “promise” on July 4th, all to serve their Messiah.
Be vigilent, have your cameras at the ready… and pray that when we present the evdence to our fellow Americans, they make the right choice.
Fox News covered the press conference, Fox didn’t. They’re two different channels (one is cable, one is not.)
Ace is reporting that Jake Tapper asked the thugs about the extortion threats. Hope Jake is ready for what’s coming his way.
One at a time, bud. One at a time. Self-hanging of this sort doesn’t happen overnight.
Buddy @48, 49 – Yah! Funny. Reminds of the time I thought “Anybody can ski!” and soon thereafter, asking, “Hey, what are those signs with the black diamonds?”
Hope we’re not all on a downhill like that right now, but we do seem to be seeing some scary signs going by. It’s difficult learning how to ski going straight down the cliff.
“This won’t last forever, but while it’s hear, especially in service to the sophmoric narcissist in chief, it’s annoying.”
—
Heh,
Kurzweil’s influence on the mind is insidious:
Even years later everything’s converted to audio by default.
You could have used Buddy’s approach, and asked him what’s the big deal about “learning how to read” and replaced the scanner with a computerized Monkey generating random characters.
Doug,
By replaced the scanner with a computerized Monkey generating random characters, do you mean Google it!
Computers have learned to read and listen very well, in all languages. But they still don’t Comprehend what they are reading, let alone approach the ability to Translate, let alone Write. Errr, I mean, play the piano.
Re: “Journalists vs bloggers”
Really, the whole point of creating Journalism as a collage curriculum was to set up filters to keep out the “wrong sort of people” out of the occupation. And that was how Journalism went from a working man’s trade to a gentrified occupation. Now the Internet and blogging has blown away the filters, and the gentry has to compete with just anyone with time, Internet access, and a decent command of the language. Which lets the cream rise to the top. They just hate that.
Samizdat contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union.
“Samizdat” refers to the Russian underground circulation of hand-copied and unauthorized news from the outside world done on FOR GOD’S SAKE MEMEOGRAPH MACHINES AND TYPEWRITERS. To posses, to create, to transmit, such unauthorized writings could get a person arrested, beaten, tortured, sent to the gulags. But people kept at it. They knew they were getting a load of bushwa from the news organs of the state.
The government controlled all manufacturing, and all broadcasting. Television and radio sets were manufactured with controls that allowed reception ONLY of government channels. It was a crime to alter the sets so they could be tuned to receive and amplify unauthorized frequency bands.
The great irony of the USSR was that the official government-published newspaper was named “Pravda” – “TRUTH.”
Will the people that voted for O grasp what’s going on when the government makes it illegal to own a television set that gets anything other than government approved channels?
What about government censorship of internet?
Radio?
There’s a brilliant woman who was hired by the beef industry to study ways to keep the cattle tranquil and placid as they approached the slaughterhouse. She studied the situation at a number of places and later said her autism helped her see things from a point of view similar to that of the animals – visually and viscerally rather than intellectually. The steers don’t know they’re going to their deaths. Herd animals by tens of millions of years of inherited reflex, they react to distractions and unexpected trivialities – a flying scrap of paper will make them bolt and panic.
So the lady recommended a set of design elements to carefully control the winding approaches (sorta like the queues for the rides at King’s Island or Disney World) so the critters end up arriving calmly at the killing point, unconcerned and controllable for that moment the bolt punches a medallion of bone into their brain.
Hmmmm. Anyone remember William Jefferson Clinton’s Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown?
yep, died in a plane crash on a trade mission –in europe. witnesses said he hasd a bullet hole in his head, but then thr reports went dark –dunno what came of it –do you have any ideas?
I did a fair amount of reading – OF COURSE it was all from the internet, and not a single peer-reviewed encyclopedia article.
You may recall that Secretary Ron Brown was under investigation by the DOJ for possible criminal influence peddling prior to his participation in a trade mission to Bosnia and Croatia by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Much potential for embarrassing his boss. During that visit, the aircraft carrying Brown and a number of others crashed under suspicious circumstances.
Secretary Brown was found to have a circular hole punched in the upper portion of his cranium approximately one half inch in diameter. Speculation at the time of the recovery of remains from the crash was that the hole must have been punched by impact with some baggage, debris, or structural element of the aircraft. Autopsy performed in the U.S. indicated other possible causes.
I invite skeptical readers to do a search on the text “Lt. Col. Steve Cogswell” to see some articles on missing X-rays and autopsy reports prepared by Doctor Cogswell, who is idientified as a forensic pathologist member of the staff of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
The organization Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia in attempt to force the government to provide answers to a number of questions raised in the handling of the crash investigation, and subsequent destruction of autopsy documents for Secretary Brown.
The good news (at least for politicians who make it to the top) is that all the requests and demands for explanations of the undeniable irregularities have been completely ignored without any consequence to Clinton or anyone else in his administration.
Whatever happened to Ron Brown and all the other folks on the plane, along with several hapless bastards on the ground who seem to have had some very bad luck even days after the crash, we’ll probably never know.
I used to think anyone who bothered paying attention to conspiracy theories like this were nuts.
But the sheer brazen thuggery of Clinton, the connections to BCCI (Remember BCCI? Guess what Arkansas Law Firm drew up the documents for the first U.S. charter for that Bank?) and now the goons from Chicago, make me wonder why it’s so difficult to believe that murdering bastards could extort their way to high office in the U.S. We know that’s the standard career path for leaders in most other countries…
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Hafez Assad, Yassir Arafat, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Juan Perron, Fidel Castro, et cetera et cetera…
i HEAR ya, mad fiddler –the cognitive arc you describe is exactly similar to my own. i live in the membrane between crazy on one side of the looking glass and pistoff at myself for even bothering to think, on the other. side that is.
BCCI banked Enron –i just minutes ago on FoxBizNews heard congressman Steve Scalisi (in discussing cap n trade) mention that the basic concept was Ken Lay’s and that Lay and VP Gore used to hold working meetings on the scheme –or “plan” i guess is the unloaded word.
sometime, search [ clinton body count ] or [ clinton death list ] and be prepared for profound shock at the odds of so many 30-50 year-olds BOTH having been in position to know something about the clintons AND having died by accident, suicide, or random violence (i left the scare quotes off so i wouldn’t seem too tin-hatted).
all that said, it’s less likely that Hill and Bill give the xxx orders –what they have is so many corrupt operations under their protection that certain people are around to to take care of problems –without the clintons even having to say a word or take a meeting. best way to seem innocent is to have firewalls and cut-outs. less theater needed.
Re Ron Brown’s wound –check out Coen Bros film “No Country for Old Men” sometime.
And so from “No Country For Old Men” we’ve come full circle to Freddie Mac’s David B. Kellermann’s suicide two weeks ago. Keep moving. There’s nothing to see here.
getting to be no country for young men either –that guy was 41.