Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read on the sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble
This is the Campground Edition
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- The signs: The surest sign that Obama and his people know Obamacare is in serious risk of being shot down in a ball of fire the size of Washington DC itself, is that Obama’s using his campaign slogans again to sell the thing [2]. One can certainly understand why. When one looks past the slogans, he’s an empty suit pushing socialism. When the slogans come out to play, and he shovels some manure, with a ‘winning smile’, the morons just melt. He pulled all the stops he could out at the presser today, and of course the press hit him with n really hard questions, as you’d expect. It’s an open question now, which will win out with the people; Slogans, delivered by a used car salesman, and repeated by an adoring press, or logic, and freedom.
- Regulating Blogs: Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz:
This Wednesday, ABC is turning an entire day of news programing over to the Democrats’ health care plan. Wouldn’t viewers alter their judgment of the accuracy and objectivity of ABC’s reporting on the subject if they knew that the ABC employees donated to Democrats 80 times as much as they did to Republicans? Certainly, I can’t help but note that if the circumstances were reversed, most people who see nothing wrong in ABC’s actions now would suddenly see ABC’s donations as profoundly undermining the integrity of ABC’s reporting.
Now, of course, Love is talking about the regulation of Blogs [3], as proposed by the FTC yesterday, but this seems to speak to the campaign being run by the Administration to sell the minions… that is, you and I… on government healthcare. So, I picked that quote first, because it makes a rather nice bridge, and solidifies my point of how much Obama’s tossing at the problem of getting this monster past a cost weary public. But as to the FTC proposal, Shannon starts out:
So, the bright bulbs at Obama’s Federal Trade Commission have decided to regulate blogs [3] based on the premise that undisclosed financial relationships between bloggers and businesses could lead bloggers to deceive their readers as to the value of products they blog about.
Fairly innocuous on the surface. Who could complain about the fairness of that? But it never stops at the entry level. As I said at OTB yesterday [3]…
Does anyone not understand that we’re looking at the first step toward control of the one voice government has been unable to control… Blogs?
With ‘news’ agencies like ABC so clearly in the hip pocket of the liberals in the White House, what voice other than blogs stands between them and heir socialistic goals> Face it, the blogs and talk radio are the only people speaking out against the Obamacare bit, and other topics of the like… and guess which mediums the Federal Government wants to regulate? Yep… the blogs and talk radio. This ain’t rocket science, kids.
Now, I’m not sure I’m down with Love’s call for regulations demanding that…
the government should require that anyone legally defined as a journalist or publisher (such as for shield laws, broadcast licenses, etc.) be required to reveal their history of political affiliations in terms of political donations, membership in political parties and membership in political activist organizations.
… because I see that as an opportunity for corruption of itself. I’m sympathetic, though to the reasoning behind the call. there’s no doubt in my mind at all that such bias is currently prevalent in the news business, and not being required to reveal such personal biases isn’t helping matters. As I described it on Q&O a couple years ago [4]:
When standards go by the way, people tend to fall to their own devices, and beliefs. I submit that veering right or left from the mythical objectivity, is a direct result of the devices, and beliefs of the people in question… in this case press people.
Now, by their own polling, the US press is a group of people who are overwhelmingly leftist to the tune of 85-90%. Which way will things fall among such a group, when those journalistic standards get bypassed? Which way is objectivity more likely to fail?
As I have said, this leftist tilt of the press is by no means a policy of the press, but rather the failure of policy, which given the integral leanings of press people can hardly be avoided. Gravity kinda takes over.
Now, we’re supposed to accept that government types are immune from these natural processes and can regulate Blogs, and on another vein, talk radio… the two remaining places where the left is being loudly opposed, in anything like an objective manner? Yeah, right.
- Hear, Hear! Fired IG Walpin wants a congressional hearing on his case [5]. Of course, given that Congress is run by the same Democrats who have been hauling Obama’s water on most other topics, he’s not going to get one. After all, something might get out that makes Obama not look like a water -walker [6]. Unless we get a Democrat or three who actually have morals and a spine. Not likely, but I mention it for completeness’ sake.
- Global cooling? Yes, indeed. [7] Al Gore: The gig’s up.
- Mind if I smoke? I gather that’s a touchy subject at the White House these days. from the Nashville Post, [8] by way of Reynolds. [9]
- The swamp’s flooded again: Again by way of Reynolds [10], comes a Washington Examiner article advising us that G.E. has hired Linda Daschle as lobbyist. [11] Snarks Glen: “Is that swamp drained yet?” Obviously not. Is this the transparaency we were promised?