Nightly Ramble: The “BitsBar” Edition

Welcome one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere: The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the “Bit’sBar” edition.

Lots going on tonight. Pour yourself a cold one, and let’s get to it.

• A tale of two murders: LaShawn Barber  over at Pajamas Media does her usual fabulous job of getting to the heart of an issue, as she compares the murder of Private Long at the Recruiting Station in Little Rock to the murder of late-term abortionist George Tiller, and finds that the narrative being carried about each story is instructive, particularly in comparison.  Personally, I’d be interested in her take on all that, within the context of the shooting in DC yesterday, that both David and myself discussed here.
•  About those toenails:  I made mention here yesterday about the Palin women and the left’s pursuit of them… and of course we’ve spoken at length about Carrie Prejean, and that whole mess too. Don Surber takes a wide angle view of why liberals castigate women. Must read.
• Oops. Rosanne is gone, now, too?
  

  Brain Mahoney, the Radio Equalizer.

  Now that he’s in office, should dedicated Obamists support the president even as key campaign promises are broken and empty rhetoric becomes the order of the day? While many liberal talk hosts may be willing to do so, Roseanne Barr isn’t one of them.

  So says the Radio Equalizer… All in line with what I predicted here last January. I mean, let’s face it, the woman is an idiot, albeit a loudmouthed idiot. But if even she’s getting the message, what kind of turnover does anyone suppose is going to happen in the next couple election cycles?  This ain’t rocket science, kids. Keep a watch, and you’ll see more of this kind of happening ramping up… and the dinosaurs ignoring it.

• We now know Obama’s ‘compensation czar:  Kenneth Feinberg.  Ya know, does anyone remember what happened with wage and price controls the last time it was tried in this country? Apparently not.  Let’s remember, gang, the people we now have running this circus have mostly never held a real job in their entire life, and are in government specifically because they have no clue, or interest in how businesses work in a free market arrangement.  They don’t’ believeReynolds We’re in a free market arrangement. So, this is supposed to help the economy?  Does any of this help in the area of wealth creation?  No, it doesn’t.
• Here goes Oil again. Prices are heading up again. Yet another thing he current government knows little and cares less about.
  

  Glenn Reynolds

  We’re seeing predictions of $250/bbl. I dunno as it’ll get that high, but I won’t discount it.  Reynolds quips:
  

  If gas gets up to five dollars a gallon again, we’ll get stories on how that’s good because it forces us to conserve.…

  Sad part is, he’s right…. and this is exactly what the Democrats WANT. Did anyone think when Obama shut down chatter about offshore drilling ramping up, that it would go any other way?  Think there’s no connection between Obama getting into office and the price of oil doubling in less than six months? This is going to help get our economy moving again?  This is a wealth -killer, folks.  Even for the low income folks. I’m telling you, people, we’re already halfway to serfdom. Oh, Hopey changitude.

•  Opening up America?  Doctor Krauthammer,  for whom I’ve always had great respect, makes the case today that Fox News “opened America” by breaking the liberal monopoly over broadcast media.

Fox has done a great service to the American polity — single-handedly breaking up the intellectual and ideological monopoly that for decades exerted hegemony (to use a favorite lefty cliché) over the broadcast media.

I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting — half the American people. The reason Fox News has thrived and grown is because it offers a vibrant and honest alternative to those who could not abide yet another day of the news delivered to them beneath layer after layer of often undisguised liberalism.



Doctor Charles Krauthammer

.-.-.

That’s why Fox News is so resented. It altered the intellectual and ideological landscape of America. It gave not only voice but also legitimacy to a worldview that had been utterly excluded from the mainstream media.

I’m proud to be part of this televised apostasy. And particularly proud to be part of the single best news program on American television, the six-o’clock news — first with Brit Hume, now with Bret Baier. How good is “Special Report”? So good that even if I weren’t on it, my mother would watch it — and she spent 50 years as a Democrat.

Hmmm. With great respect to the Doctor, I think in thankfully playing to the giddy audience this speech was delivered to, he may be overstating the case somewhat.  There’s no question that the monopoly has been broken.  At least, that is,  until government steps in to the picture, re-establishing that  leftist monopoly with ‘fairness’ oriented legislation, regardless of what they call it.  There’s also no question in my mind that monopoly being gone is a good thing, assuming actual results come of it.    there’s the thing; What IS in fact the result? What changed as a result of all that?  Do we now have an overwhelming conservative majority in congress? Do we have a conservative president?  Are our state and local governments being swept with a conservative wave?

No, quite the contrary. At least as of last January, we had a liberal tide washing over the country, for good or ill…(I think ill) There seems little question that the reportage of events, since that time has swung the sentiments of many, even strong Obama supporters, in the other direction.  Things being what they are, I wonder if it wouldn’t have happened that way in any event.

I point to the UK as a parallel example. There is no really right-wing press in England… or even  balanced, as Fox is.  The biggest outlet, there last I knew, and certainly the most established, is the government owned BBC, and in watching both their domestic output and their exported “BBC America” one can hardly miss the left leaning, pro-Labour party nature of the thing. Yet, in the most recent council elections, there, Labour got itself trounced in historic proportions, and the next national election looks to be a rout of the same scope. (Fairness… I’ve not seen recent viewership numbers there, but if Fox sister/counterpart Sky News is getting serious numbers there, perhaps we have some indication of our next election cycles, I don’t know.)

However that may be, we’ve really yet to see electoral result from this breaking of the leftie monopoly on news media in this country. As such, I wonder if Doctor Krauthammer’s victory dance isn’t a bit premature.