…thy name is also Oprah.

Oprah filming in DC for inauguration week

“There are not even words to talk about what this night means,” Oprah told Access Hollywood that night. “Everybody keeps using the word historic — there’s never been a night like this on the planet earth… Nothing can compare to this.”

The morning Caveman discovered fire?

How about the day World War II ended?

The night Jesus was born?

The Occupier of the Office of The President-Elect Barry Oprah reveals his National Suckurity Team, which of course includes Mrs. Bill Clinton, a fervent rival who roundly criticized The President-Defect during the primaries, but now: BFF!

Mr. Obama essentially said Americans should not take too seriously some of the things said during “the heat of a campaign.”

Really, Mr. Oprah, sir? It will be quite interesting to see just exactly how far you get with that ticket once you step into the Oval Office and find out how utterly unprepared you are for the job (and that it’s a smoke-free workplace), and start doing the math on all the promises you made to win the White House for the people who’d been waiting for you to be the people for whom they were waiting.

Some examples I think you’ll have an unfunny challenge with:

1. Give a tax break to 95% of Americans (better hurry up, you don’t want to piss off 95% of Americans – especially those clinging to their guns)
2. “If you make under $250,000, you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime. Not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes. Nothing.” (“Read My Lips?” I wonder how he will be paying for the expanded child and dependent care tax credit, the expanded earned income tax credit, the universal mortgage credit, the $1,000 emergency energy rebate to families, weatherizing 1 million homes annually, and lowering health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year?)
3. Dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes (a lot of people that voted for Obama think tax returns are actually grant applications; why bother with filing? Let’s just give them all government debit cards)
4. Match 50% of retirement savings up to $1,000 for families earning less than $75,000 (because saving for your retirement shouldn’t be so hard, or even your own responsibility – behold, the C.R.A. of the retirement industry)
5. Give American businesses a $3,000 tax credit for every job they create in the U.S. (unless they make more than $250,000 $150,000 $100,000 $75,000)
6. Make employers offer seven paid sick days per year (Mr. Carter sir, can we just combine #5 and #6? Why don’t you just give the $3000 directly to the sickly so we don’t have to hire him; and why stop at seven? Seems so arbitrary. Besides, work is hard. People should have the right to work, or not work)
7. Sign into law an employee free choice act — aka card check — to make it easier for unions to organize (that way once the Unions are done destroying the airline and automotive industries they can move on to retail, hospitality, and health care)
8. Cut spending on unproven missile defense systems (Let’s wait until a missile destroys New York City)
9. Demand higher standards and more accountability from our teachers (best wait until your second term for that one – let ’em all vote for you one more time first)
10. Go through the budget, line by line, ending programs we don’t need (like the military?) and making the ones we do need (like the pork in Illinois, only bigger and better, Senator?) work better and cost less

Just put the budget up on a teleprompter. He won’t Change anything, but at least some of us will feel better about it.

The Question: What Nickname Should A Conservative Blog Employ For President-Elect Barack Obama So As To Not Offend Our More Tender Readers?

“Oprah” by a slim margin.

HT Flash

Poor Joe. His role in the Obama administration?

For Biden, No Portfolio but the Role of a Counselor

Which is nicey nice for nada. Please stay out of the way and keep your mouth shut.

One can’t imagine John McCain taking that tact with Sarah Palin. She’d put one of her Naughty Monkeys up his…well you know. Another post-mortem observation proving McCain/Palin would have been a better team for America in this time and place.

Mr. Obama has moved quickly to assemble his White House staff and the beginnings of (Bill Clinton’s-JR) cabinet, he is lagging behind even the chronically late President Bill Clinton in bringing clarity to the role his vice president will play.

Breaking up is so hard to do.

“I’m sure that there will be discrete assignments over time,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president-elect. “But I think his fundamental role is as a trusted counselor. I think that when Obama selected him, he selected him to be a counselor and an adviser on a broad range of issues.”

Ah, discrete assignments over time. Well played Axelrod. Methinks those assignments will entail such tools as a discrete infra-red remote control and a strategically placed hassock emblazoned with the seal of the Vice President.

while Mr. Obama held a news conference in Chicago on Tuesday, Mr. Biden was home in Delaware, having spent Monday night in Wilmington stuffing Christmas stockings with his wife for a charity event.

Quaint. We all know how committed to charity Joe Biden is…stuffing a sock where his wallet is.

The President-Elect did not return phone calls from Jill Biden pleading for Mr. Obama to “Please get Joe the (h-e-toothpick-toothpick) out of the house – he’s driving me crazy.”

Mr. Biden seems to be adapting. He is hiring for his office, including a chief of staff, Ron Klain, who has worked with him since he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the 1990s. With Mr. Obama having settled on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, Mr. Biden, whose most recent Senate post was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has privately told people that he recognizes he will not be the point man on foreign policy.

Poor Joe. He will have to fight for that remote too.

The only guy I feel more sorry for than Joe having nothing to do, is the Chief of Staff of The Guy With Nothing To Do.

Hey! Joe’s the Maytag Man! (He He)

Mr. Biden has also interviewed candidates for chief economist, and associates say he is honing his economic credentials.

Not unduly angry?

Aides say Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama sometimes rib each other in private meetings, and they maintain that Mr. Obama was not unduly angry at Mr. Biden for his gaffe predicting that Mr. Obama would be tested by a world crisis in his first six months in office.

So he was pissed, just not unduly. Ouch.

Since then, however, Mr. Biden has not had much to say to the news media.

Because they’re not asking him any questions.

Through a spokeswoman, he declined to be interviewed for this article, itself a break from his voluble past.

(more…)

Bill Clinton?

Obama’s would-be choice for SecState tells us a bit about his confidence and demeanor. It tells us he no less lacks a capacity for leadership and change than he did before he decided to run for high office. So much for the “team of rivals.” So much for change for that matter.

And, to boot, it would appear all the media fuss about Hillary as SecState may be for naught.

…it’s difficult to see Sen. Clinton achieving confirmation unless our elected representatives are ready to ask a few questions about conflict of interest along similar lines. And how can they not? The last time that Clinton foreign-policy associations came up for congressional review, the investigations ended in a cloud of murk that still has not been dispelled. Former President Bill Clinton has recently and rather disingenuously offered to submit his own foundation to scrutiny…, but the real problem is otherwise. Both President and Sen. Clinton, while in office, made it obvious to foreign powers that they and their relatives were wide open to suggestions from lobbyists and middlemen.

Ah, but is that enough in this soon-to-be rarified era of Liberal lunacy control of the White House and The Hill?

In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. A president absolutely has to know of his chief foreign-policy executive that he or she has no other agenda than the one he has set. Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing.

Read the whole article and behold a laundry list of why Hillary Clinton should not be in public office let alone representing us to the world.

A:  “Only one, and that’s not funny”

Joe Lieberman appears in an ad for a phone company.

It’s kinda funny.  Not “wet your pants” funny… 

 …but, y’know, droll.

Look for the Obama Administration to get calls for a central humor vetting office from this guy:

…this is a horrible ad, because speaking as a progressive, the last person I want to see on an ad for things that matter to me is Joe Effing Lieberman. And I really don’t want to see it with the tagline “switching is easy,” because I interpret that as an insult. See, I didn’t take Lieberman’s words on the campaign trail lightly. When he blithely suggested that a question about whether President-elect Obama was a socialist was “interesting,” I took offense to it.

Er…yeah.  I’ll bet he did. 

…And when, after the election, the Democratic caucus voted to retain Joe Lieberman as Chair of the Homeland Security committee when he didn’t offer so much as a public apology for his statements, when he so easily switched his allegiance back to the group that he had so vilified repeatedly on the campaign trail, I took offense, not only at the Democratic caucus who let him off the hook, but at him, for making it clear that his personal honor is a joke, that he never gives more than lip service to anything he claims to care about.

[Which is a bad thing with Democrats, but a good one for Republicans, apparently – Ed.]

I’m guessing that Working Assets means this as a tongue-in-cheek joke, but it’s falling flat on me right now. It’s a little too soon for that kind of humor, especially since Lieberman is in a position where he can do great damage to progressive causes if he desires…

AIRMAN CRONAUER:  “You in more dire need of a &*(#(#$*#()^^^^^^CARRIER INTERRUPTED #*$#*(#))))))++++++++  than any human ever born”. 

A gaffe is when a politician slips up and tells the truth.

I guess it also applies to politicians’ lawyers:

“People who voted for Coleman are more likely to have taken the SAT in their lifetime,” [Bill Star, Franken lawyer] said. “They’ve filled in circles. Franken voters are probably not college-educated. They’re new voters and immigrants. They’ve been brought in by groups like ACORN, from the inner cities. They’re more likely to make mistakes. I’ve bounced this off of minority people, and they agree with me.”

No word as to whether they’re bitter and clingy, and over or to what.

It reminds me of this line from Jennifer Vogel’s classic of hYpStR condescenscion:

A favorite scene from the election took place at my local polling place, in a historically Polish neighborhood. An African woman wearing bright robes stood in a gray plastic voting booth with her ballot. She spoke only a little English, so she asked for assistance. A poll volunteer approached and embarked upon a lengthy explanation. The African woman interrupted. “Kerry,” she said loudly. “I want Kerry.” That was that.

Liberal GOTV in action; give the cattle a name to memorize and herd ’em into the polls.

I’m so proud to be an American today.

News Flash:  Chris Matthews wasn’t the only one whose legs The Light Worker made all tingly:

Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled “Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story.” Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama’s campaign.

Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue — “Obama’s American Dream” — filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.

Commerce is one thing.  Gassy hagiography?  Well, that’s downright…

…unjournalistic?

What’s troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing…But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.

“The Obamas’ New Life!” blares People’s cover, with a shot of the family. “New home, new friends, new puppy!” Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: “I Think I’m a Pretty Cool Dad.” The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle “is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — combined!” for the fashion world…Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it “BAM-A-LOT.”

Remember when the mainstream media umphed and bargled over the propriety of embedding with the troops, because they might not be “detached” enough to cover the war “fairly?”

Those were the days, weren’t they?:

“Here we are,” writes Salon’s Rebecca Traister, “oohing and aahing over what they’ll be wearing, and what they’ll be eating, what kind of dog they’ll be getting, what bedrooms they’ll be living in, and what schools they’ll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas’ tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?”

But aren’t media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?

Read the whole dismal thing.

Note to all you liberals out there:  If you forget history, you are condemned to repeat it. 

Let’s look back a bit, here.  I remember in 1998, discussing Libertarianism (the party and, more importantly, the philosophy) with some lefty friends of mine.  They were, to be charitable and understated, guffawing at the notion of running a government first and foremost on strict constitutional principles, erring always on the side of freedom and liberty.

Two years later, when John Ashcroft was sworn in as Attorney General, these same people were suddenly very libertarian – provided that the “liberties” in question were the freedom to burn the flag, make statues of the Virgin Mary out of dung, and see breasts on statuary during news conferences.  This sudden (and oh so sincere) concern with liberty was transferred after about 2003 in toto to two major demographics:

1. Suspected terrorists
2. People in the US receiving calls from suspected terrorists overseas.

(The left remained silent on the civil liberties of gun owners, conservative talk show hosts, and the data privacy of plumbers who dared to ask questions of their overlords).

But now the left holds nearly-untrammeled sway on the levers of federal power (and if Norm Coleman loses the recount, it won’t be trammeled at all).  And I think things are going to be changing soon.

News stories I think we’ll see before too terribly long – say, along about 2010:

Conservatives Decry “Preventive Executions”

Washington (AP) – As the Obama Administration institutes its’ “Audacity of Death” policy on accused terrorists, liberal pundits defended the Administration’s news appraoch.

The policy, which would allow the State Department to execute accused terror suspects without trial, FISA warrants or notification of any sort of oversight, have drawn flak from conservative critics, although they have broad approval from the Democrat-dominated Congress in an election year.

“It’s just like a bunch of conservative pantywaists to whinge and moan about the “rights” of terrorists”, said Paul Begala.  “I think it’s because they secretly want to be stuck in a toilet stall with Osama Bin Laden and Larry Craig”.

And I expect to see this comment in my comment section shortly thereafter:

PlacqueMonger Says:
November 16th, 2010 at 9:34 am

You neo-nutzies are sooo soft on terror!  What happens – your’re are now longer in power, and soddenly you want to go all soft on terrorr?

Terrrrrorrrists have no rightsts.

Am I being hyperbolic?

Well, doyyy.

But given the way the left seems to toss sweeping statesments of principle down the memory hole when confronted with reality…

Now, as Mr. Obama moves closer to assuming responsibility for Guantánamo, his pledge to close the detention center is bringing to the fore thorny questions under consideration by his advisers. They include where Guantánamo’s detainees could be held in this country, how many might be sent home and a matter that people with ties to the Obama transition team say is worrying them most: What if some detainees are acquitted or cannot be prosecuted at all?

That concern is at the center of a debate among national security, human rights and legal experts that has intensified since the election. Even some liberals are arguing that to deal realistically with terrorism, the new administration should seek Congressional authority for preventive detention of terrorism suspects deemed too dangerous to release even if they cannot be successfully prosecuted.

…I really don’t think I’m being that far out of line.

We’ll see.

Oh, yes we will.

…he certainly didnt’ forget he’s a liberal.

…and he certainly didn’t forget his teleprompter…but it does appear someone set it up a bit too high. Barack Obama usually likes to look down on us angry Americans, not up to us.

Another campaign speech from the Office of the President-Elect. Thanks for the reminder el Presidente’. I think we know we are in a recession. Your people caused it, remember?

He throws a $150 Billion around like we have it. Folks, best hope for another World War because that’s what it took to pull us out of the Great Depression, which was extended by the last “New Deal.”

Not that I need to dig that hard, of course.  But sometimes, things just fall into your lap.

From MPR’s “Loophole” blog, Jeff Horwich writes:

The other day at our weekly brainstorming meeting, a producer friend of ours mentioned that his female friends were all a-twitter about Rahm Emanuel (Obama’s new Chief of Staff)…Evidently the swooning has begun…[as in leftysphere articles] heralding “our sexy, angry, sexy, evil chief of staff designate.” A writer on Gawker invokes the phrase “the cute little guy.”

And someone has taken to Yahoo! Answers to pose the question “Anyone else think Rahm Emanuel is sexy?” The consensus, after 10 responses: Two snaps up.

I have never been prouder of my party.

Well, almost never.

I guess if Sarah Palin can be turned so instantly into a sex symbol, why not Rahm Emanuel?

Jeff Horwich is usually a very sharp guy.  I don’t know if caring for a newborn has warped his mind, or if it’s just working in the Taj Ma Kling day in and day out…

Advisers doubt Obama

The majority of financial advisers have little faith in President-elect Barack Obama’s ability to put the nation back on sound economic footing.

An exclusive InvestmentNews survey of 968 advisers last week found that 61% lacked confidence in the new commander-in-chief’s ability to resolve the country’s economic woes.

After last Tuesday’s historic vote in which Mr. Obama was elected the nation’s first black president, advisers across the country began considering ways to protect client assets from changes that could go into effect under the incoming new Democratic-controlled government.

That’s not encouraging. Investment advisors are already advising their clients on ways to protect their assets from the President and his Economic Geniuses?

…and it might be too late to escape? (emphasis mine)

“Very possibly, we’ll be looking at a retroactive tax increase for upper-income people to Jan. 1, 2009,” Federal Policy Group managing director Ken Kies told more than 1,000 advisers who participated in InvestmentNews’ post-election webcast last Wednesday.

“the tax increase will be significant, and it’s going to be a lot more than anything he campaigned on.”

Before you dismiss this because you don’t count yourself among upper-income earners, remember, Obama’s standard for this distinction has and could fall further.

 Lori Sturdevant remains the DFL Party’s primary unpaid PR flak among the Twin Cities’ mainstream media (although Rachel Stassen-Berger at the PiPress is closing in fast). 

In yesterdays’ column, she pines for “Instant Runoff Voting” because – why else? – it would have put more DFLers in power:

Play the what-if game that’s the rage among Minnesotans who are sick of plurality-rule elections:

(…a subset of voters that includes poli-sci grad students, a few newspaper columnists, a couple of math majors who love to design “cool new systems for running society” in their spare time, and Twin Cities’ third-party members, who believe they’re everyone’s “second choice” for power.  Really – Ed.) 

What if last week’s plebiscite had been conducted under the vote-by-number system called instant-runoff voting?

For more on IRV, read here.  And I mean read carefully.  It’s  a system that only a math major could love or, for that matter, really understand.  I’ll leave the listing of IRV’s disadvantages to that piece, for now.

Here’s my opening bid:

•The Senate race might still be headed for a recount. But there’s a decent chance that it would be with DFLer Al Franken, not Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, in the leader’s spot.

[smug, self-serving speculation removed for brevity’s sake]

And how would the Senate race have changed in message, tone and maybe outcome if the voters’ second choices had mattered all along? Might the fight have been more about, say, health care, and less about old comedy sketches? (See how delightfully speculative this game can be?)

And the “Recount” would be done entirely by machine, centrally, at the Minnesota State Department, managed almost entirely by sorting algorhithms, far too complex for people – indeed, there’d be almost no way for actual humans to follow it.  Odd, really, considering that among IRV’s most ardent supporters are the same people who thought Diebold and the other electronic balloting operations were in the tank for the GOP (who’ve been curiously silent for the past two cycles). 

•U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann would not be headed back to Congress. The outspoken Republican culture warrior wound up at 46.4 percent on Tuesday. Every other vote cast in the north suburban Sixth District, I’ll venture, was an anti-Bachmann vote. 

I’ll venture that Lori Sturdevant was huffing paint when she wrote this piece.

No, I have just as much evidence as she does.

Seriously.  Was “every vote” cast for Jesse Ventura in 1998 an “Anti-Norm Coleman, Anti-Skip Humphrey” vote?  Of course not.  Many were “ignorant nutslap who think it’d be fun to vote for a wrestler” votes.  Many more were “Lower fees on my jet-ski” and “Hey, $1,000 back from the government!” votes.  Many many more were “I don’t care much about politics, but I saw Jesse Ventura’s ad, and it made me laugh” votes. 

In the Sixth?  I suspect (with every bit as much evidence as Sturdevant brings to the table) that the “Anti-Bachmann” votes were easily diluted by the “pox on both their houses” votes, the “Hey, a Norwegian last name” vote, and – rare as this might be – the tiny film of IP voters who realized that Bob Anderson who actually a fiscal conservative and former Republican. 

Note, by the way, her main reason for supporting IP so far (other than “pluralities make me sad”); it’ll get her pet candidates elected.  The ends, in Lori’s curious little world, do justify the means.

•Republican Erik Paulsen would still have the U.S. Rep.-elect title in the Third. My thinking: Paulsen is close to the 50 percent mark already, at 48.5 percent. My unscientific, skimpy sample of voters who opted for the IP’s David Dillon include a fair share who would have given their No. 2s to Paulsen.

So Paulsen benefits from real-life ambiguity, but every single person who voted for Bob Anderson was an “Anti-Bachmann” voters.  Such is the order of the world in that special little space we call “Lori Sturdevant’s mind”.   

•State Rep. Ron Erhardt of Edina would have been reelected. Instead, he was the second-place loser to Republican Rep.-elect Keith Downey in a city that Barack Obama carried with 55 percent of the vote.

Right.

Which is also in a state with a statistical tie for Senate, and where conservative Erik Paulsen won by eight points, both in Lori Sturdevant’s special little world and the real one!

How, you ask?

Don’t:

In third place in the District 41A contest, just 134 votes behind Erhardt, was DFLer Kevin Staunton. If Edina voters used IRV, would DFL voters have given their No. 2s to a small-government, socially conservative Republican, or to a maverick former Republican who was a prime mover of the big transportation bill in 2008? If second choices had been registered and counted, this one wouldn’t have been close.

Presuming, of course, that Lori Sturdevant – she of the selective ambiguity and constantly-shifting context in this district – is really that clairvoyant.

Three-way races have become the norm at the top of the ballot and are proliferating further down. Last week, the Edina legislative seat was won with 36.7 percent of the vote.

And as a result of which…what?

The earth opened and swallowed the city whole?

No?  The mayor, elected with a third-and-change of the vote, had to govern by compromise, as an executive with a plurality rather than a decisive mandate?

The horror!

Seriously – this would be the future of politics with IRV:  candidates elected with phony “majorities” (derived from obscure machinations carried out without the vaguest possibility of human scrutiny, without even a paper trail!), who exist in a political netherworld, not really certain they have a majority, but unsure of how far from majority they really are. 

 Every Minnesotan who thinks democracy should mean majority rule will be watching.

And every Minnesota who thinks that “a phony majority delivered by a voting system one degree of separation from a math-major parlor game is a way to run a government” should have their heads examine.

But not by Lori Sturdevant. 

UPDATE:  A commenter to the column asks: “What if we could instant run-off the worst columnist at the Strib?
We can dream”

The hard part would be actually ranking the “choices”.

On Saturday, King and I filled in for John, Chad and Brian on the second hour of NARN Volume I.  To kill the time with as little effort as possible, we did our “Top Ten” lists of best and worst things about having an Obama Administration. 

Because it beat doing show prep, that’s why.

Anyway, one of “best things” was “Conservatives make better underdogs”.  Another was “Maybe our ‘leadership’ will finally get the message” – but we’ll get back to that.

“Evil Conservative” over at TvM extrapolates on the thought:

My first feeling and it’s a surprising one both in how strong it is and that it’s lasting even until now – relief. Relief from the stress of following the election. Relief from defending George W. Bush all the time. Relief from defending Bill Frist when he wants to ban internet gambling. Relief from defending House and Senate Republicans when they get together to do something colossally stupid like, y’know, banning internet gambling!

For all of you on the “right” that tried to ignore all of us Forbes supporters back in 2000 – you may express your apologies, at least as re spending and economic issues, in the form of bottles of single-malt and/or good vodka.  Thanks.

The bottom-line: the pressure is off us at last. We have had some semblance of control of the federal government for 14 straight years. In that time, many Republicans have lost their way (Lott, Bush, Santorum), many have become embarrassingly corrupt (Foley, Abramoff, Stevens), and many are flat out hypocritical (Larry Craig, most who voted for socializing the banking system especially the No votes the 1^st time around who voted Yes the 2^nd time around when it was loaded with pork).

One last bit of relief that connects my points above about the past and my points below about the future. I’m relieved that our side is taking the correct steps to right the ship. We are not reacting like spoiled little babies like MoveOn and the nutroots in the DailyKos did in 2004.

Actually, I’m impressed by all three of the principals’ approaches to the transition, so far.  Bush is by all accounts being gracious about the transition (and seems unlikely to tolerate the vandalism and less-visible obstruction that his predecessor did eight years ago); McCain has done his best to quell the anger on the part of many of his supporters (although I’m looking forward to him dropping the hammer on some of his more petulant soon-to-be-ex staffers), and Obama has exercised his prerogative to be manganimous in victory.  All to the good. 

Suffice to say I’ll be particularly merciless to any rightybloggers that want to take the low road.  Don’t bother; its still too crowded with leftybloggers who’ve been squatting there for the past four years.

Onward:

There are no more targets on our backs. The media has to report on Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. They have no choice but to be negative to sell, re-state their expectations of The One that they have promoted for the last 18 months, and resist the backlash now that the meme of the media favoring Obama is accepted by at least half of the audience – many who are refusing to watch or buy.

Not so sanguine here.

Of course they have a choice.  The media soft-pedalled Bill Clinton’s transgressions years ago (remember, it took Matt Drudge to get Newsweek to stop sitting on the Lewinski scandal?), and I see no reason to believe they won’t try again.

Of course, the media scene has changed since 1998; blogs, talk radio and a phalanx of alternative media have broken the logjam of “gatekeepers” that so benefitted Clinton.

Prediction:  Congressional Democrats will try to institute the “Fairness” Doctrine; it’ll be a dumb, ugly overreach that starts people thinking “maybe these people are too powerful”.

If there’s one bit of fallout from this election, one constant meme, that I’d like to get past it’s the whole Obama Cult of Personality bit.

Unfortunately, it just seems to go on and on.

A flag-waving gunman closes down traffic in Santa Barbara, California for hours…

…until he’s allowed to carry out his demand:

A masked gunman waving an American flag and a handgun on a freeway overpass surrendered to police Monday after forcing a traffic shutdown for hours.

The man gave himself up at midmorning west of downtown Santa Barbara at Highway 101, a major route along the California coast. No shots were fired. Traffic was backed at least three miles in each direction.

The man agreed to give up after he was allowed to attach a Barack Obama campaign sign and the flag to the overpass railing, said police Sgt. Jim Pfleging.

Audacious, indeed.

The Democrat playbook:  Project, project, project.

For example, to draw attention away from the ACORN voter registration scandal, find and relentlessly hammer on any GOP-leaning irregularity you can find.

To cover your own candidates’ wierd past assocations, harp for weeks on Todd Palin’s attendance at a couple of Alaska Independence Party meetings.

To block coverage of real violence, vandalism and intimidation of McCain volunteers and other Republicans, focus on a sad, sick girl in Pittsburgh and her hoax.

Your candidates are all millionaires who’ve never held real-world jobs and get their clothes from Brooks Brothers by the bale?  Burn days of news coverage on Sarah Palin’s tanning bed and RNC-supplied loaner wardrobe.

And for goodness sake, if your Veep candidate is a loose cannon who needs to be hidden from public view, call in your markers with the entertainment industry to carry out a noxiously-sexist, misogynistic campaign against Sarah Palin.

Duly noted, folks.

Barney Frank has been the recent target of conservative attacks and of course the McCain campaign of late because he represents the absolute worst in congress today. Unapologetic liberalism: tax and spend; weaken our military by cutting funding.

Thing is, Barney is trying to turn the tables, and appear the victim; play the minority card; as if anyone cares what he does with his wiener.

“I’m flattered by this,” said Frank, who is gay. “But I don’t think I’m the single most important member of the House after Nancy Pelosi. There are also a lot of straight white men who are committee chairmen.”

McCain’s chief speechwriter, Mark Salter, shook his head when asked to respond. “We’re bringing him up for his quotes,” said Salter. “We’re prejudiced against wasteful spenders and tax hikers.”

Barney, you’re not dangerous to America because you’re Gay. Who the hell cares. You’re dangerous to America because you are morally corrupt. The two aren’t mutually inclusive.

So why is the media so very, very in the bag for The One?

Theories, as they say, are like, um, toes.  Everyone has one.

But Michael Malone – a career journalist and columnist – has a theory of his own.

It’s the editors (managing editors, executive producers, etc), and it’s about self-preservation (I’ve added some emphasis):

Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you’ve spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power … only to discover that you’re presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you’ll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe — and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway — all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself — an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.

With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it’s all for the good of the country …

Self-preservation has driven people do do stranger things…

Read the whole thing, by the way.

Once upon a time, Minnesota had a congressional delegation member who was one of the most incredibly polarizing figures in state history. 

This person – who came to politics relatively late in life – never minced words, campaigning from the heart with a platform based on solidly, articulately-held beliefs.  The Congressperson was an activist before getting into politics, and even then had been a polarizing figure, who had either rabid supporters or fervid enemies.  Nothing changed on the campaign trail…

…or, for that matter, in Washington, where the Congressperson got into an awkward scene with President Bush that made the detractors titter with glee.  The Congressperson was not afraid to be on the “wrong” side of issues – indeed, to buck the tide in voting on the basis of beliefs that, for the Congressperson, trumped politics.

Which drew admirers – on both sides of the aisle, at least from fellow legislators who respected commitment to principle.  Naturally, it also drew detractors – people who detested commitment to principles who were not their own.  The Congressperson was a lighting rod for media figures who found boundless “red meat” in the Congressperson’s tendency to put the heart on the sleeve.

These beliefs and principles were sure and steady enough to prevent excessive insecurity even when the Congressperson, shooting from the hip, would say things that’d draw ridicule from enemies (and the odd groan from more politically-sensitive, less issue-and-principle-driven supporters).  The tendency to shoot from the hip – to put principle first and political expediency somewhere down the list – was a headache to orthodox politicians, and material on the hoof for the detractors.

It also made politics interesting for the casual observer.

The behavior of the “tanning bed media” – the hordes of media vultures that descend on whomever dares to question The One – should be getting some reactions.  The “Joe The Plumber” story is merely the latest incident…:

“It actually upsets me,” Mr. Wurzelbacher [AKA “Joe”] said. “I am a plumber, and just a plumber, and here Barack Obama or John McCain, I mean these guys are going to deal with some serious issues coming up shortly. The media’s worried about whether I paid my taxes, they’re worried about any number of silly things that have nothing to do with America. They really don’t. I asked a question. When you can’t ask a question to your leaders anymore, that gets scary. That bothers me.”

Mr. Wurzelbacher confronted Mr. Obama over his tax proposals, asserting that the Democratic nominee’s plan would tax him more if Mr. Wurzelbacher bought a plumbing business.

 

In the course of their conversation, Mr. Obama said, “It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success, too. I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

…in a trail of behavior that should make every “liberal” that’s spent the last eight years howling about the Bush Administration’s (largely imaginary-to-the-point-of-paranoid) transgressions against American civil liberties blanche with horror – were it not for the fact that nearly every damn one of them is a mindless partisan hypocrite.

The media took plenty of time off from reporting on two wars and an economic crisis to find, and report with rapturous glee, that Wurzelbacher isn’t licensed, hasn’t drawn up a business plan, and wouldn’t be buying a company that made over $250K even if he did, and has a few unpaid fines and a divorce in his past.

I’ve heard a couple of liberals respond “Then his question doesnt’ count!  He couldn’t have even bought the business!”

Buncombe.  A guy can dream – and he doesn’t have to vet his dreams with a producer in New York before asking a Presidential candidate a question.

Is it personal?  Yell, hah.  Last week, I got into an email exchange with a liberal about Obama and his Democrats’ crimes against the First Amendment.

> [The reinstatement of the “Fairness” Doctrine would be a harm felt…]
> by whom besides Limbaugh and those who echo
> him?

Which is a statement that could only come from a person for whom the (liberal) ends justify the (authoritarian) means (and who supports a campaign that seems by all indications to believe the same).  Is Limbaugh’s speech not protected by the First Amendment?  Is not one who a (dimwitted) liberal might believe (wrongly) “echoes” Limbaugh – that’d be me – entitled to it?  (We all sound the same to them).

Apparently not.

A Nebraska judge tosses a lawsuit against God:

Judge Marlon Polk threw out Nebraska Sen. Ernie Chambers’ lawsuit against the Almighty, saying there was no evidence that the defendant had been served. What’s more, Polk found “there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant.”

Chambers had sued God in September 2007, seeking a permanent injunction to prevent God from committing acts of violence such as earthquakes and tornadoes.

It’s good to know there’s some sort of brake on judicial activism.

Oh, wait – it was “to prove a point”:

Although the case may seem superfluous and even scandalous to others, Chambers has said his point is to focus on the question of whether certain lawsuits should be prohibited.

“Nobody should stand at the courthouse door to predetermine who has access to the courts,” he said. “My point is that anyone can sue anyone else, even God.”

Chambers, an avowed atheist, said he decided to make that point after at least two attempts in the Nebraska Legislature to limit “frivolous lawsuits.”

Laws against “frivolous lawsuits” are indeed stupid – provided you believe in the integrity of judges and juries…

…and we should just change the subject, shouldn’t we?

Barack Obama is buying his own satellite television channel. This is cause for

1) Elation – as this opens up a whole new category of bloggfodder, derision and political satire

2) Concern – What sort of propaganda can Obama have in store for his hypnotized minions, given his series of associations with anti-American far left radical thinkers and activists (some would say even terrorists)?

Bill O’Reilly (paraphrased from his radio show this morning): Why does Obama have to buy Channel 73? He already owns MSNBC.

Looking to the future…

Cable companies will offer one-channel plans.

Obama’s minions will walk the streets like zombies, wearing Obama logoed T-Shirts saying Change: to 73

Whoopee Cushion will leave “The View” and will have a new show on Obammy-73 called “The Pew” (not as in church – as in olfactory dissatisfaction).

Reverend Wright and Michelle Obama will host a perky morning show:

“Good Morning God Damned America”

Bill Ayers will host a new show about blowing up public property for fun and entertainment:

“Smash ‘n Grab”

Tony Rezko will host a home improvement show:

“Steal It, Fix It, Sell It, Prof-it”

The possibilities are endless…