Nightly Ramble: How About A Burger?

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

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• MORE ANITA DUNN:  Victor Davis Hanson, on Saturday:
  

  I am not a big fan of saying that officials should resign for stupid remarks. But interim White House communications director Anita Dunn’s praise of Mao Zedong as a “political philosopher” is so unhinged and morally repugnant, that she should hang it up, pronto.

  Mao killed anywhere from 50 million to 70 million innocents in the initial cleansing of Nationalists, the scouring of the countryside, the failed Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Tibet, and the internal Chinese gulag. Dunn’s praise of a genocidal monster was no inadvertent slip: She was reading from a written text and went into great detail to give the full context of the remark.

  Trouble is, Victor, she’ll never do it. And the administration will never force her out either.

  You’re quite correct in that this was no inadvertent comment, but lets please disabuse ourselves of the idea that so many avowed  Marxists showing up the inside this administration is an inadvertent slip, also. They’re not going to toss her out, precisely because she’s what they wanted. Her politics directly reflect those of this administration.  Frankly, I don’t know what can be more frightening about government, currently, than that.

• ONE HAND, MEET THE OTHER HAND:  Mark Tapscott at the Washington Examiner points out that the rhetoric coming from the White House doesn’t seem to be meeting their actions.
  

  President Obama said something yesterday during his New Orleans stopover that caught the eye of Patrick Creighton of the Institute for Energy Research.
  Here’s what Obama said: “What I think we need to do is increase our domestic energy production… I’m in favor of finding environmentally sound ways to tap our oil and our natural gas.”

  That statement got Creighton’s attention because one of his jobs is to follow the progress of Washington’s processing of applications to explore and develop energy resources in places like federal lands in the western U.S. and in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) areas off the U.S. coast.

  Here’s what the Obama administration has done in those regards thus far in 2009, according to Creighton’s tracking:

  · Feb 2 – Revokes 77 Utah oil and gas leases (later reinstates 17 of the 77 leases)

  · Feb 10 – Delays new Five-Year-Plan for the OCS

  · Feb 23 – Cancels commercial R&D on oil shale leases

  · Sept. 17 – Obama’s Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar explains these facts by observing that he’s “in no hurry to make a decision on whether to allow offshore drilling in federal waters off Alaska and other states”

  Well, look, this is a campaign-oriented White House. They’re telling people what they want to hear while doing whatever they want… regardless if it matches the words of the head of the ticket or not.

• WE CONTROL THE HORIZONTAL, AND THE VERTICAL: If you doubt that the White House is controlling the press, make particular note of this video:
  What you’re seeing, is White House Communications Director Anita Dunn discussing the degree to which the White House controls the media. It also would seem to answer the question of just why the White House has decided to declare war on Fox News… they can’t be controlled. A couple of the pull-out quotes:

  “Very rarely did we communicate
  through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control,” said Dunn.
  …
  “One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters”

  Dunn also goes into some detail on why Obama has gone to some length to use live TV as much as possible. Now, granted, that the context of the statements is the actions of the Obama campaign. But, again, it seems fairly clear that the White House is in permanent campaign mode. I’ll be interested in anyone providing any proof whatever that the situation is not as I describe it here.

  I’ve no doubt I’ll be told that we should be looking to Karl Rove for the inspiration for this attitude. INdeed, she says it herself in the vid. But at what point did Rove ever shut off access to one news outlet, due to their being unwilling to knuckle under? Indeed, rather the opposite has occurred. Consider the case of Helen Thomas as an example.

  There is this, also.  The kind of “routing around the messenger” that Rove and others had the Bush administration doing in the end left them without a sympathetic press corps toward the end of his second term.  I suggest that effect is less pronounced when there’s a Democrat in the White House, given that the press corps is by and large sympathetic to leftists. So, Obama will be naturally somewhat more immune to the effect… but, it can’t be completely discounted, either.

  Oh… speaking of Rove… I note him making the link we did the other day, between Obama’s White House shutting off press they don’t like, and The Nixon White House  Enemies List.

• BITCH, BITCH, BITCH: Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog is making noises that Obama’s busy walking away form the so-called ‘public option.  I’m beginning to think that this is all a matter of trying to herd the White House toward government takeover by the left.  Frankly,though I doubt they’ll do it. Don’t mistake me…  I think the White House does want a full government takeover of our Healthcare system, as miuch as the left-o-sphere, including AmericaBlog does. The problem (And perhaps America’s salvation)  is, Obama has to face the reality of the situation,  and Joe Sudbay doesn’t.
  Oh… You’ll want to check out the picture of the pro-Obamacare “Organizing For America” rally in Cincy that Glenn has up. He’s got links to more, too. Tell me again how they’re not socialist.
• FIRST THEY CAME FOR RUSH: So says  Dianna West, as she weighs in on the NFL issues surrounding him. And she makes an interesting point I’ve not seen made elsewhere. Oh, certainly I invoked Olberman myself, but neglected to mention the NFL connection, here :
  

  Diana West

  I will start with two words: Keith Olbermann. In addition to his nightly gig on MSNBC — a numbing blend of Leftist politics and something approaching Tourette’s Syndrome — Keith Olbermann is a co-host of NBC’s “Football Night in America,” the pre-game show that leads into “Sunday Night Football.” Naturally, that would be Sunday night NFL football.This job makes Olbermann a public face of the NFL. And a public face of the NFL with many filthy things coming out of it. These include his recent pronouncement that Limbaugh claiming his own success paved the way for Glenn Beck is “is like congratulating yourself for spreading syphilis.”

  We could slap a headline on that — “NFL talker compares star radio and TV conservatives to venereal disease” — only trash talk against conservatives doesn’t generate mainstream outrage.

  Message to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell: How about that, Roger? If we’re to accept the judgments about Limbaugh, would you mind telling me how having Olberman in such a position is any less divisive?

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