Helen Thomas: Not Even Nixon Tried to Control the Media Like Obama

Apparently, even Helen Thomas becomes outraged a Democrat dishonesty beyond a certain point. Previously, I thought that impossible.  It took the Obama administration to bring it out.

(CNSNews.com) – Following a testy exchange during Wednesday’s briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

Actually, Helen, that’s not true. Mike Allen at The Politco explains it this way:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few”: Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

The remarkable thing about all of this is that the actual output of the paper really hasn’t perceptibly changed.  Ponder the meaning of that for a moment. Personally, I think they should be following up on making sure Bloggers aren’t taking money for pushing various political positions, don’t you? That was all the rage when the left proposed it not long ago. I wonder how they’ll react to this, if they deign to note it at all.

And Helen… you’ve been a willing tool all this time. A tool of the people now in the White House. I suspect the taste of that isn’t sitting well.

Addendum:

Iain Murray at The Corner comments:

Here’s why I find the Washington Post cash-for-access story so disturbing. As even Helen Thomas is now realizing, this administration favors certain journalists with extra access. In that respect, it is mimicking the Blair government in the U.K., which was famous not just for giving extra access to favorable journalists, but denying it to critical journalists. Putting the two pieces together, it might not be long before access becomes a commodity, and writing favorably about the administration not only gets extra access, but becomes profitable. That’s why I am also very glad to see the excellent Howard Kurtz and via him, the Post‘s executive editor, recognize that possibility and how appalling it would be.

All true.  Yet what’s not being recognized here is the reason that Thomas remained in the public eye during the tenure of Presidents Bush .. both of them. they were each a target of Thomas, on an everyday basis.  She made her living, by being a pain in the bump.  The way things are going, we are going to see something that we never would have seen with Bush… Helen Thomas being shut out of the White House press room.

Does anybody remember, when CNN was charged with having “Special access” to Saddam Hussein, on the basis of writing in their “news”, what Saddam wanted the world to see?  If I recall correctly, there wasn’t a great deal of noise from the left over the matter, since the left at the time wanted to paint Bush, and not Sodumb Insane, as the aggressor.   It’s funny , that despite the similarities of these two cases, that little point in history hasn’t come up in this conversation.  Perhaps, the comparison is uncomfortable for those currently infesting the White House?

Chavez, Ortega, Castro and Obama; Charles Krauthammer nails the one, via Gatway Pundit:

“Two weeks ago he refuses to meddle in a country where peaceful demonstrators are getting shot be a theocratic dictatorship. He doesn’t want to choose sides. And, now he’s eager to meddle on behalf of a president in Honduras who’s a Chavez wannabe who’s strong-arming his way to a referendum that has been declared illegal by his Supreme Court as a way to have a referendum to establish a assembly that will establish a new constitution that will be a Chavez-like dictatorship… Look a rule of thumb here is whenever you find yourself on the side of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and the Castro twins you ought to re-examine your assumptions.”

More evidence that Obama’s first instincts are always wrong, from Joshua Muravchik,  Wall Street Journal:

If democracy and human rights are high values, then all societies are not morally equal. This thought cuts sharply against Obama’s multicultural sensibilities.

The most surprising thing about the first half-year of Barack Obama’s presidency, at least in the realm of foreign policy, has been its indifference to the issues of human rights and democracy. No administration has ever made these its primary, much less its exclusive, goals overseas. But ever since Jimmy Carter spoke about human rights in his 1977 inaugural address and created a new infrastructure to give bureaucratic meaning to his words, the advancement of human rights has been one of the consistent objectives of America’s diplomats and an occasional one of its soldiers.

Hat tip:  Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.

A lot of you probably don’t know that BitsBlog has a mobile edition.  Actually, it’s available at the same address, and is fully automatic.  If you log in to BitsBlog from a mobile device, (pretty much regardless of what kind of mobile device it is ) this site offers a customized version just for your system.  That means iphones Palm, cell phones, what have you, the screen is immediately optimized to whatever you carry.  We think you’ll find it useful.

Try it today.

Karl Malden has died, from the Associated Presss:

Karl Malden, the Academy Award-winning actor whose intelligent characterizations on stage and screen made him a star despite his plain looks, died Wednesday, his family said. He was 97.

IMDB home page.

I think of Malden as more of technician than a star.   He was not charasmatic, but he could play any kind of role, the more blue color the better.

To note the seating of the junior senator from Minnesota, I am holding a contest to suggest the most appropriate term of address of our newed senator and the most appropriate photo.

To  be blunt, I see no reason to change my opinion of Franken merely becauses of the fact that he now has the term senator affixed to his name.   Feel free to opine why I should feel otherwise.

Franken has made his living as a clown, now he will be going to the Senate as a thief, from the Wall Street Journal:

The Minnesota Supreme Court yesterday declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of last year’s disputed Senate race, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman’s gracious concession at least spares the state any further legal combat. The unfortunate lesson is that you don’t need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact.

Mr. Franken trailed Mr. Coleman by 725 votes after the initial count on election night, and 215 after the first canvass. The Democrat’s strategy from the start was to manipulate the recount in a way that would discover votes that could add to his total. The Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman

Hat tip and more,  Gateway Pundit:

If Franken had any decency he’d at least thank those 2,812 dead voters for their support

Babs Boxer recently moaned that she had to work hard to get the title of senator.  In the case of Franken, the hard work was done by his lawyers.

I note that in a year of a Democrat tsunami, in a blue leaning state, Franken could not win the majority of living voters.

Hello to Mr And Mrs America and to all the ships at sea, and welcome to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble.

This is the Commuter train Edition.

• Coleman Conceeds: I have to say I rather expected it to happen, eventually, but figured it would go to the USSC before it did happen. In the longer term I really must wonder if this isn’t a good thng. Boortz describes Franken as “A true void surrounded by a sphincter muscle”.  And he knows the guy.  Think of it…after 8 months of tooth and nail, ending up with  Stuart Smalley being the face of the Democrat Party. Think that’s not going to play into things in 2010? That and the stolen election, of course.
• Republicans moving right?  American Glob thinks so.
• Oh, Canada:  You do know it’s Canada Day, today, right? A good day to our Canadian readers.  I’m hearing private Healthcare is booming in Canada. Apparently the people there have learned the lesson at last.
• The Hamilton- Buffalo Baby Exchange:  Speaking of Canada and Healthcare, it appears our premature birth case from Hamilton  I spoke of a few days ago has been reuited with it’s parental units, when Border Agents allowed the couple to cross into US territory. Apparently, the US is not the ogre some were making us out to be. But just as apparently, Canada’s Healthcare system  is. 
• Wal-Mart and Healthcare:  WalMart is now saying it suppsorts government madated healthcare.  I think James Joyner has this one right.
  

  

  James Joyner

  Wal-Mart is already providing health insurance for its employees at enormous expense and would love to have its competitors forced to do likewise.Big firms routinely lobby for government regulations that increase barriers to entry into their business and make it harder for others to compete with them. That Wal-Mart can do that in this instance while coming off as altruistic is an added bonus.

  Right on the money, James.

• I’ve got your “Hope and Change”, right here: We’ve lost another half million jobs, and the pace of job losses are getting worse  and home prices are falling, as a direct result of Obama and the Democrat party polices. Obama’s answer? Increased taxes. Bigger government. Yeah, that’ll work, huh?
• Meanwhile, in that same hemisphere:  The Obamites continue to support the Marixst in Honduras.
• Darwinian Alert: Micheal Jackson fans are committing suicide over his death.
• Run you down:  Via John Hawkins and the Conservative Grapevine, we see notes of interest from Runners world. Apparently we have the makings of a grudge match between Sarah Palin and PresBO.

The Nightly Ramble is an Exclusive Daily Feature of BitsBlog

I warned earlier today that the damage to our country from the Democrats would be downright staggering. Robert Zubrin, writing in Roll Call today, makes the point there, amply:

Robert Zubrin

The United States emits about 9 billion tons of CO2 per year. Therefore, at a rate of $15/ton fee for emission indulgences, the bill would impose a tax of $135 billion per year on the nation. Divided by the U.S. population of 300 million, that works out to a cost of $450 per year levied on every American man, woman or child, or $1,800 for a family of four. While for wealthy individuals like Al Gore such an impost might represent a mere pittance, for working families struggling hard to make ends meet it would be a very significant burden.

But that is not even the worst part of it. As a result of the markup of carbon costs, a lot of those working families will be out of work and unable to pay their existing bills, let alone new ones. Consider: Burning one ton of coal produces about three tons of CO2. So a tax of $15 per ton of CO2 emitted is equivalent to a tax of $45/ton on coal. The price of Eastern anthracite coal runs in the neighborhood of $45/ton, so under the proposed system, such coal would be taxed at a rate of about 100 percent. The price of Western bituminous coal is currently about $12/ton. This coal would therefore be taxed at a rate of almost 400 percent. Coal provides half of America’s electricity, so such extraordinary imposts could easily double the electric bills paid by consumers and businesses across half the nation. In addition, many businesses, such as the metals and chemical industries, use a great deal of coal directly. By doubling or potentially even quadrupling the cost of their most basic feedstock, the cap-and-trade system’s indulgence fees could make many such businesses uncompetitive and ultimately throw millions of working men and women onto the unemployment lines.

Now, understand…. This is merely one aspect… one nasty consequence, of this monster being foisted off on the American people as a “Jobs Bill”. This is going to help our economy how, again?

Keep in mind also, the science of ‘global warming’ which is the boogieman we’re supposedly fighting here, is far from settled. The evidence, in fact is overwhelming that man made global warming is a SHAM. So not only are we killing off our economy, we’re doing it when the stated reason is a flat out lie.

The more I watch these Democrats operate the more I’m convinced they’re about killing off our economy.

 Think that’s too much?

Think I’m overstating the case?

Well, you tell me…. how do you read quadrupling our national debt for programs that demonstrably have not worked, and forcing us into economy killing ‘green’ legislation to solve problems that don’t exist, while openly supporting leftist despots around the world?

John Hawkins has posted the The Rightosphere Temperature Check For June.

Interesting results.   Participating blogs:

The Absurd Report, All American Blogger, All That Is Necessary, The American Princess, And Rightly So, Argghhhh!, Axis of Right, AtlanticBlog, Bad Example, Basil’s Blog, BitsBlog, BizzyBlog, Bookworm Room, Bright & Early, Keith Burgess-Jackson, Cara Ellison, Conservatism Today, Copious Dissent, The Dawn Patrol, dcthornton.com, Dispatches from Blogblivion, Dodgeblogium, Drumwaster’s Rants, Exurban League, Katie Favazza, Fetching Jen, Fraters Libertas, Girl On The Right, GOPUSA Northeast, GraniteGrok, Guardian Watchblog, House of Eratosthenes, Paul Ibrahim.com/, Infidels Are Cool, JackLewis, Keepin’ It Rural, Little Miss Attila, Lotus Blog, Mean Ol’ Meany , Midnight Blue, Moonbattery, mountaineer musings, Mount Virtus, Musings, My Aisling, No Oil For Pacifists, Outside The Beltway, Patterico’s Pontifications, Pirate’s Cove, Pursuing Holiness.com, Reformed Chicks Blabbing, Right View from the Left Coast, Right Wing Video, Samizdata, Josh Schroeder, Sister Toldjah, The Sundries Shack, The TrogloPundit, Villainous Company, Weapons of Mass Discussion, WILLisms, Wolking’s World

Go and see.

As goes Energy, so goes the country.

“The worse, the better,” Vladimir Lenin is said to have observed. What Lenin meant was that the worse social conditions became in Russia, the more likely he and the Bolsheviks could foment a communist revolution. President Barrack Obama’s White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel recently updated Lenin’s maxim, saying, “Never allow a crisis to go to waste.”Last Friday, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives took those maxims to heart when they pushed through their 1,200-page American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act by a vote 219 to 212. The bill is supposed to address the twin crises of economic recession and climate change by creating millions of new “green” jobs. Instead of an old-fashioned Soviet-style five-year plan, ACES can be thought of as 50-year plan to radically transform how Americans produce and use energy.

…Well, look, Ron Bailey, this entire administration seems to me to emulate the tactics of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, in all things, not just energy… and in my view we’ve not seen nearly the worst of it yet. (A Depressing thought as we come to July 4th, isn’t it?)

So why should Energy be any different?  Energy, after all, is the key to our country and it’s prosperity. Which of course was why I raised such holy hell when the first thing Obama did upon being sworn in was to reverse President Bush’s sign off on offshore drilling.  That action is the major reason oil prices have better than doubled in the last 6 months.

 The question that Ron asks, though, seems to me pertinent:

Ron Bailey

Will Americans tolerate such sweeping interventions into their lives and workplaces?

…

The 1994 mid-term election became a referendum on big government and ushered in Republican control of both the Senate and House of Representatives for the first time since the early 1950s. Given the Republican Party’s current disarray, it’s unlikely that 2010 will see another “Republican Revolution.” However, as the new energy policies slow economic growth and impose vast new costs on consumers, it will be the Republicans who are quietly saying, “The worse, the better.”

I have to say I’m a little uncomfortable with this.

Oh, don’t misunderstand me…Ron’s’s quite right, far as he goes. In essence, he’s saying exactly what I’ve often said the last 10 years or so:

The best stump argument the Republicans have is Democrats with power.

Thing is, that doesn’t seem to me a strong enough argument for real change. Being the lesser of two evils doesn’t constitute much of an incentive for long term voter support for the right, which is what’s so desperately needed to reverse this socialistic course we’re on.  At best, if all we have is “We’re not Democrats” for a campaign mantra, we may win short term via the Democrat Over-reaching, but not long term… and even in the short term, support will at best be thin.

What’s needed is not Democrat Lite, but real conservatives. Republicans over the years are successful to the extent they’ve been conservative.  Where they get into trouble, and lose elections, it’s to the degree they’ve gone Democrat lite, and forgotten Reagan’s maxim that government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.  

Don’t make the mistake of thinking the Demcrats are not calculating with this factor in mind.  I observe, as I have previously,  that they seem to be focusing all their efforts at derision against the most conservative Republicans, not the so-called ‘moderates’. They know very well the threat a real conservative Republican party brings to the table.  Look at the amount of time and spittle being expended on the topic of Sarah Palin, as an example.  (How else to explain away the desperate and hateful focus on Trig Palin by a group of people… a party… a political way of thinking… that is ostensibly supposed to be fighting for the downtrodden, such as those with Downs syndrome?)

 Look, too, at the amount of effort the left put into getting the conservatively weaker John McCain into the nomination, only to reject him once he got that nomination, in favor of the outright socialist.

Let me speak plainly to this point so there’s no mistaking me:

 There is not a doubt in my mind that we will be seeing a major shift of power in two years. The polls tell the tale very clearly…  the Democrat party are already over-reaching,  and given Democrat party super majorities in both houses, and thereby no checks on their collectivist asperations, the damage they will cause between now and then will be outright staggering.  Again, I fear we’ve not seen the worst of this. The voter reaction to that over reach… to that damage… is quite predictable;  There will be a massive swing away from the Democrats in 2010. They know this, which is why they’re so desperate to get as much leftist legislation in place now as they possibly can between now and then.

The question before us is, will the Republicans  be conservative enough to capitalize on that day and going forward, and reverse this tragic trend we’re on… or will they offer up Democrat lite which will,  in turn,be swept away by the next tide, scheduled to happen in 2012? 

As I look at the current crop of Republicans and their leaders, I have to wonder.

Please… someone step up and tell me my fear here is unwarranted.

This war is lost.   We need an exit strategy:

DETROIT (AP) — Gunmen in a green minivan opened fire on a group of teenagers waiting at a bus stop near a Detroit school on Tuesday, wounding at least seven including two who were in critical condition, authorities said.

Give Detroit back.

Welcome, everyone and their brother, to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble.

This is the Grocery Store edition.

• Franken: About an hour ago came word that Al Franken was decalred the winner of the Senate Seat held by Ron Coleman, by the Minn SC. The opinion is here.(PDF) I’ve only had a half hour or so to go over it but there’s one point about it that sticks out rather large: There’s no order for Pawlenty to certify him.  Also is the amount of time taken to hand down this ruling. Both of these points back my idea that this is likely going to the USSC.  So do we get to whine like Al Gore has done for the last decade, now? Yeah, right.
• Madoff; 150 years is too long?  Oh, please. Eli, I’ve got respect for you man, but this one’s all out of whack.  Take the 150 years, and be damned glad the judge didn’t just turn him loose in a room full of his victims, which would have been justice in my view.  As I said yesterday, I’m uncomfortable with the populist/wealth envy tilt this thing has predictably taken but let’s let’s not get stupid, either.
• That spiked report: You’ll recall that in yesterday’s Ramble,I  linked a report that the EPA wanted sqauashed. Now, Senator Inhoffe is calling for an investigation. At issue; was the report withheld because it might influnce votes in Congress?  No DUH, people.  Of course implicit in that question, ought to be another: Do such facts as were in this report, make a difference to people whose only motivation appears to be party loyalty?
• Obama The Colonial: Whatever else happens, today, you need to read this from L.E. Ikenga at the American Thinker. Based on some feedback I got yesteray, Limbaugh read it yesterday, and I hear Jim Quinn at WPGB read the whole thing this morning. Brilliant piece.
• Promises Expired: Now that the honeymoon is over, so are all those promises we were made about taxes. And the press just laughs it all off.
• Less than Zero:  That’s where PresBO’s approval rating is these days.
• The Test:  Look, I think Micheal Kinsley is a horse’s backside on a scale only slightly smaller than say, a Bill O’Reilly.  I find seveal areas of his column this monring on the topic of healthcare problematic. Example:
  

  

  Kinsley

  Less care doesn’t necessarily mean worse care. The administration is investing great hopes (and $1.1 billion of stimulus money) in “comparative effectiveness research.” Because we don’t collect and compare in any systematic way the vast piles of data we have about individual patients and their treatment, we know astonishingly little about which treatments work and which are a waste of money. The administration is touting the figure of 30 percent of all health-care costs as spending that may accomplish nothing.I suspect that what a billion-plus dollars’ worth of research will find is that perhaps 30 percent of what we spend on health care is almost entirely worthless, or just barely better than a much cheaper alternative. Or it might be better and no one knows for sure. Denying someone these treatments or tests is rationing.

  What Kinsley(not unexpectedly)  fails to question here is how much of the problem is government induced, already. Adding more government to the issue, will make things worse, and merely altering existing legislation is simply shifting the deck chairs. All this gets by him. He also seems too much consumed by wealth envy.  In fairness, he gets this one correctly:

  Here is a handy-dandy way to determine whether the failure to order some exam or treatment constitutes rationing: If the patient were the president, would he get it? If he’d get it and you wouldn’t, it’s rationing.

  Now, if only he could disabuse himself of the idea that government needs to be even a small part of this process. Nah… that’d be a miracle.

• It’s not like I’ve not predicted this: Over at Pajamas Media , Ron Radosh takes a look at Obama terrorism policy and suggests he’s channeling GWB.
  

  Radosh

  With the Obama administration promising to close Guantanamo, it has become apparent that the President and his advisors have suddenly realized that they have left themselves no wiggle room when it comes to figuring out what to do with dangerous terrorists who previously would have been confined there.Hence, The Washington Post reports that the administration is preparing an executive order that would give it the authority to incarcerate suspects indefinitely. If this sounds to readers somewhat similar to the policy candidate Obama fiercely attacked as repressive Bush administration policy, that is because it is.

  Long time readers will remember I made the case this would happen both here and at PJM back in January, and confirmed it just a month or so ago, now. As I told Ron, it’s nice to have such a well-written confirmation of that opinion.

•  More on Honduras:  You’ll recall I mentioned the efforts of world socialism Including Barack Obama, to get Honduras under their control, yesterday? Boortz gets into it in some detail today.
• Quack:  If it walks like a duck….(vid)
• Rudy for Govenor?  Well, I have disagree ments with the man, but he’s one I could get behind under the rule of ‘the lesser evil’. Meanwhile, the rumors fly…
• Tax cuts WHERE? In Hungary, that’s where.  How bad is it when even the Hungarians get the message our own administration and congress cannot?  Oh… and Germany, too.

The Nightly Ramble is a weekday feature of BitsBlog.

The President has demanded a raising of CAFE standards by some 30%.  The only way to get to this level is make cars and trucks smaller and lighter. Problem is, it also makes cars and trucks less crashworthy.

 Some 2000 deaths annually are caused even by the CAFE standards we had in place before the Annointed One came along.  It’s about to get worse. I examine this topic in some detail in my most recent Pajamas Media piece, this morning: The Hidden Death Toll of Higher CAFE Standards.

Yet it is still the fact that the overwhelming majority of young women, imagining their futures, do not dream of reaching midlife as barren spinsters.

Robert Stacy McCain, Other McCain.    The missus seems to have starched Stacy’s drawers.   But he is taking shots at all sorts of targets, and his aim is not all that bad.

How would we have reacted if TMZ had been wrong about Michael Jackson’s death?

That’s the question of the moment at the LA TIMES.

In answer, it would likely be a lot louder than if the Times had screwed that one up. Ya see, we expect the MSM to screw things up.

TMZ would have been called every name in the book, and the MSM would have been the ones leading the way. But if the L.A. times had managed to file that one up, it would’ve been passed off as some excuse or another; bad communication, bad information and the hurry to get the headline, and so on. 

The fact of the matter is that the mainstream media has succeeded in becoming irrelevant.  Not just by its phony devotion to accountability. Let’s face it, with so many mainstream media outlets in the tank for Obama and the Democrat party anyone describing the mainstream media as accountable than anybody will get laughed out of the room.  The irrelevancy of the mainstream media has been its own doing also by virtue of it being the last to put out “official” reports on anything. Hiding behind the blatant lie of “accountability” simply doesn’t cut it anymore.  By the time the mainstream media gets around to something, everybody already knows it. 

Which may explain, come to think of it, why the mainstream media is the last one to know of its own irrelevancy. 

Welcome Weary Travelers, to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the “”With fowa you get Eggwoll” Edition. Let is repair to the table and chair and this fine establishment’s board of fare.

• Global warming my butt: I’ve been telling you that the junk science behind global warming would never stand up to any serious scrutiny.  It appears that global warming fanatics agree. It should be a shock to nobody that Paul Krugman is now suddenly a climate expert.  John Hawkins has this one covered.  Look also at the report I linked this morning. We’re being lied to by this administration. I wonder how many people are listening to the implications of what Roger Simon over at Pajamas Media is saying, this  evening.
• Payback is nigh: That vote on cap and tax the other night, has left a number of vulnerable Democrats
• Coup, Coup is not a bird: There seems to be some argument as to whether not what we’re seeing currently in Honduras is a coup or not .   It wasn’t. I do notice a report from Hot Air which suggests that the White House tried a step in to prevent the Honduran president’s ouster.   If that’s true, it can only be regarded as yet another foreign policy failure for the Obama administration. The WSJ wades into this one.  You have to wonder, though about the utility of any event that Crazy Uncle Hugo complains about.  And Cuba. Leftist leaders in Honduras are complaining loudly, as well.   Essentially what happened here is that the presdient tried to alter the constitution so as to stay in power beyond the second term… rather like Chavez.  Let’s see.. as David noted earlier today… leftist leaders in Honduras, Hugo Chavez, Castro, and Obama. All on the side of ripping up the constitution in Honduras.  All of them complaining because the people in Honduras stood up for their democracy.  I told you Obama doesn’t believe in Democracy and freedom. Do the math, people; this is just another practical example of that point. Obama is about making the world safe for socialism. Period. Full stop.
• A Reminder: Interesting how this John Edwards sex tape showed up , just now.  Apparently, somebody who had the tape figured we needed a reminder of that incident.  Personally, I’d like to see somebody concentrating not on the tape itself but on the Democrat reaction to it at the time, versus the Democrat reaction to Governor Mark what’s- his- name, now. If (reax)then <>(reax)now then…..
• And the Splashback: Speaking of that, I believe I’ve already said (repeatedly) the guy is toast and should be.  Consider that to my response to the emails I’ve been getting out that particular scandal and whether not the guy should be out of office by now.  He should have been out of office as of that weird news conference.  I suppose it shouldn’t surprise anybody that The New York Times it managed to put up a fairly reasonable profile on the woman scorned. After all, it fits the pattern.  If it makes democrats looked at it doesn’t run.  If it makes republicans look bad, it runs on the front page above the fold. When does the Times do a sympathetic writeup on the wife of a Republican, under any OTHER conditions?
• PHP and other foibles: The problems that we had that kept us off line yesterday, have been for the most part solved.  Apparently, something was hitting the PHP module pretty hard , either from this site, or from one of the other sites that this particular server has on it.  There’s a few tests I want to go through later this evening, but were fine for now apparently.
• If this is the best they’ve got…. If Universal is banking on “Bruno” to save it’s sorry ass, then it deserves to be sunk.
• Kaus gets it on Healthcare:
  

  Kaus

  So if one of these promising new cancer treatments winds up working 25% of the time, but costs $150,000, will Peter Orszag give to you?

  Well that depends on who you supported in the last five elections, ya see. The first thing you’re going to have to understand about all that is when politicians run health care, health care is not about making you well. Health care is about how you affect government in general and how you affect their political careers. Every other consideration is secondary. Which is why we have situations like the one I mentioned last night, with the Parents in Hamilton being unable to get health care for their child in Canada, and shipping the poor kid to Buffalo. As I said last night, not an uncommon thing. Billy Beck addresses this, today:

  

  Billy Beck

  Sooner or later, the facts of medical production will have their ways. Medicine is an economic good which must be produced just like anything else, no matter anyone’s protestation of “rights”. It is being regulated out of production (the basic problem in Canada) right in front of your eyes. The implications will be profound for everyone’s general quality and length of life, and acute for specialized cases. The dynamic flexibility of free production will not avail in cases like this, and they will eventually be allowed to discreetly — and then not so discreetly — die.
  How soon all this becomes real-life fact depends on the alacrity and severity with which DeathCare is imposed in this country. It should be noted that every “deployment” (there’s a fnord for you) necessarily demands its own successors. This is rationale for curing the ills that it inflicts. Coercive interventions, the essential nature of government, instigate demand for coercive interventions. This makes it extremely difficult or impossible to foresee every logical extension of principles in action. The degree and rate of advance into actionable tyranny by any reasonable measure are more logarithmic than linear, and all is subject to swerves of short-range political emphasis.

  As I’ve been saying here for years, now… Canada.. and to a lesser degree, the UK… lesser due to the physical distance, mostly… are the coalmine canaries, gang. And they’re shipping their acute cases south when they can. I sit and watch this stuff happening from some 40 miles distance, and I look at the current move toward government healthcare and I wonder.  The implications on this stuff are much broader than just health care, of course.  Consider Cap and Trade, as an example of these same principles being applied elsewhere.

• Remember that middle class tax hike Obama promised he’d never do?  He’s doing it.  One more promise past it’s expiration date. I mean, leaving aside, of course the Cap and Trade monster which is in reality the largest tax hike in history.
• Madoff: I’ve already commented on madoff today… but it amuses me that he got 150 years for running a ponzi scheme… and yet nobody’s seeing any jailtime for Social Security. Telling, that.

• Conservative?  Dr. Thomas Sowell looks at why it is that most Americans consider themselves conservative, and yet the Republicans are on the outs.  I’ll give you the short answer… While most Americans consider themselves conservatives, the Republicans are not conservative. As I’ve been telling you guys since the late 80’s when Bush 41 got into office, back when I was writing on the old GT network.
• Lest we forget:  The crackdown in Iran continues apace.
• Pop Culture dies:  Well, let’s see. MJ. Farrah. Ed McMahon. Carradine.  Now, Billy Mays, too.  All gone, and all in a very short time.OK, I more than grant tacking Mays onto that list is somewhat incongruous, but pop culture is like that. And yes, that’s the point here. In the trivial world of the pop culture, there is seldom a hard and fast rule for what is and is not popular.  It becomes a matter more than anything else, of what can capture the public attention span, which is notoriously short to begin with.?The depth of the talents of the people on that list are variable at least. Yet the passing of each of them provided a diversion.  When the trivial pushes the reality off what passes for ‘the news’, as MJ’s passing did, for example, you know the reality is by far harder to face.  Jackson’s demise was fairly easy to predict,  He was on an easily identifiable self-destruction course. Apparently so was Carridine if I read the signs aright.  Farrah Fawcett’s passing while tragic at such an age, was predictable… we know it was going to happen soon… The story there, far as I was concerned was not her having cancer and her death but how she faced it all. Oddly, it’s the part of the story that wasn’t told very much. (Too much reality, perhaps?)And then, Mays. Not outstandingly popular, yet well known… and his passing is enough to hold the attention of the public for a few days. The ability to be manipulated into creating a diversion is the one thing they all had in common.  I wonder… what would ahve happened with the Cap and Tax thing, had there not been quite so much on the way of dversion showing up in the news?  No, I don’t think it was at all intentional… but it can’t be denied that there was a curb on our attention to such matters offered by these diversions… 

  You know, I posted an RIP for Mary Lou Forbes earlier today. I would argue that she did more with her writings for the human condition than any of these others, by a longshot. And yet, her passing will be hardly noticed by the folks busy playing trivial pursuit. If there is any indication our priorities are hosed, it’s that.