Without even commenting as to any possible First Amendment breach by virtue of news organizations being beholden to a government for the ability to keep its doors open, my concern is this…Many of us stopped purchasing various newspapers and news magazines in order to punish those organizations for biased reporting and a lack of journalistic ethics. I am exercising the power of the purse – and my decision is not arbitrary, nor is it negotiable.

How I spend my consumer dollars is up to me. Not the government. They do not get to tell me when it is time to buy a new dining table or a sofa. They do not get to tell me when it is time to go to the movies. Nor should they get to tell me when to buy a newspaper. If I decide that the New York Times is no longer the paper of record, but rather a biased rag that was cheerleading and running interference for one candidate while actively working to bury another, then I am entitled to the decision not to support that newspaper with my hard earned dollars.

If Congress makes a decision to bail out this organization with my taxpayer dollars, then they are, in essence, not only telling me how to spend my money, they are spending it for me, against my will.

And where is the accountability? If these media organizations cannot be counted on now to be honest watchdogs, digging for the truth and presenting it fairly, what do you think will happen when they are beholden to a government bailout to keep their doors open?

American Girl in Italy’s excellent article, newspapers are dying because journalism is a joke, agreed with Dan Gainor’s testimony before a Congressional subcommittee that while technology is one reason print media is faltering, the bigger reason is that true journalism is a dying art. Likewise, newspapers are not the only medium to suffer. MSNBC and CNN’s ratings are tanking as well. Why? Because many disgusted consumers have stopped watching certain news programs altogether. If they wanted to watch cheerleaders rather than journalists, they could turn on a football game.

Some concerned citizens have actually gone so far as to contact their cable companies and block these stations from view altogether; deservedly so. We don’t need infotainment and baseless opinion 24/7. We need the whole truth – no matter where it leads.

We need the facts, not propaganda, press releases or Pravda.

I am not getting good value for my dollar with media outlets such as Time or Newsweek, therefore, I no longer choose to give them my hard earned money.

There is a reason why certain businesses die. Pardon this seeming unrelated example, but as something of a frozen yoghurt freak, I decided to check out both the new yoghurt joints that recently opened in my neighborhood. One looks pretty festive from the outside, but when you walk in, the interior is dank, not particularly clean, and the employees’ attitude is don’t bug me, get your stuff and get out. And while I tried to enjoy my cup of grasshopper non-fat, I was treated to smell and taste the cigarette smoke of said employee while he was on a break at the table next to me. As to the other shop – it’s all lit up like a Christmas tree – and the employees have an attitude to match! That place is a gold mine with non stop business day and night. Why? Good value for the dollar and the consumer is treated with respect. Gee. I wonder why that business is doing well.

The news media is not treating the consumer with respect. They are acting like we are a bunch of mindless sheep that can be led around by the nose and distracted by meaningless celebrity pabulum and White House puppy searches.

By the way, how is this Administration’s decision to bail out GM any different? Perhaps the company faltered because it does not make a good product. Perhaps it faltered because it does not have a good business model and is not well run. If something fails, perhaps it is because a message is being sent by consumers – no good value for the dollar. Yet we are being forced to use our hard earned money to support what we obviously do not consider to be a worthwhile or competitive product.

Objecting to this reckless bailout behavior is not a partisan concern, no matter how the folks over at MSNBC et al would like to paint it as such. This is a practical concern. In a recent interview with Fareed Zakaria, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill pointed to the folly of the government pretending it is a magic entity that can get away doing what no smart investor would do: namely, throwing good money after bad.

If our government is able to arbitrarily take our taxpayer dollars and say yes to an organization we say no to, they are taking away our power of the purse. Boycotts have no meaning. Free will is over.

Let news organizations rediscover journalistic ethics. The evolution of technology may dictate we move forward and get our news in a different manner. If that is the case, all the bailouts in the world won’t force people to go out and buy a newspaper. Regardless of the medium, those who are honest enough to offer a good value for the dollar will find a way to stay in business.

Congress should not take our money to bail out whomever they please for reasons of their own.

Note: Wings Under America was a response to Homeland Security’s Right Wing Extremism Alert discussed by Susan here and here.

If you really want to get the feel of a Klan rally you should don a sheet and sneak into one. Otherwise you are just guessing about what the tenor there really is. That is why, when I was researching information from the Left Wing Extremist Advisory (see note under photo), I knew that I could not really get that total left-wing feeling just by reading a banal review of The Anarchist’s Cookbook on Amazon. I went underground. I slipped into some true black screen anarchy web sites and wandered through the darkness. After I found the quotes I needed I took a long shower and returned to my scribbling.   What I learned later was downright scary. And it was not the freaky words from the left-loon anarchists that spooked me. Let’s go back to the Klan rally. I’ll take you with me on this journey.

Let’s say that, a few days before that research project, you went to the Post Office. While you were there you stepped on one of the itty-bitty, near invisible, tacks spread across the floor and one stuck in your shoe. As soon as you entered the big open field, surrounded by trees with a nice fire in the middle, (that’s where they always hold them in Hollywood) Klan rally the GPS transmitter in your shoe sends a signal back to home boy security alerting the obatron monitors that you have entered into the coordinates of a known risky bunch of stylishly impaired choir boys.

The wake-up call. A few days later you go to city hall to pay your water bill and the girl behind the counter asks you to wait a minute. A federal marshal comes out and asks you to state your business. You toss down the check for the bill and head back home. Behind you is a state trooper. You get in the house and hear an odd clicking when you pick up the phone. Twenty minutes later a man comes to the door and says he is there to pick up your sheets for cleaning.

Itty-Bitty Invisible Radio Tacks. That’s what the techies at Google have given to the White House. If you visit their website a software program operated from Google servers places a tracking device onto the hard drive of your computer. Since we all know that George Orwell was a prophet we must believe that “they” know the web address of every miscreant on the planet. As soon as you visit the anarchist site the itty-bitty invisible tracking device in your computer could send an alert to Washington, cc’d to Chicago, of course. You have just been tagged.

The common name for the IBIRTs (Itty-Bitty Invisible Radio Tacks) is a cookie. That may sound innocent. Cookies are used to help your computer remember your passwords and to help a website recognize you on your return visits. But not all cookies are alike. Some are the type of evil, nasty, spy vs spy information gobblers that even Larry Johnson’s former bosses would put a chain on.

But, isn’t our government, using such technology on an unsuspecting public, against the law? Well, it depends on who is ruling what the definition of isn’t is.

Bill Clinton signed into law a bill that forbade federal agencies from secretly collecting information from your browsing habits. Under George W. Bush the law was further defined and strengthened.

The use of cookies on agency sites is sharply restricted by guidelines set at the end of the Clinton administration, by the E-Government Act of 2002 and by regulations issued by the Bush administration in 2003. “‘Cookies’ should not be used at Federal Web sites… unless, in addition to clear and conspicuous notice, the following conditions are met: a compelling need to gather the data on the site; appropriate and publicly disclosed privacy safeguards for handling of information derived from ‘cookies’; and personal approval by the head of the agency,” according to a memo issued in June 2000 by Jacob J. Lew, then director of the Office of Management and Budget.

So, why are the IBIRTs back? Let’s pull back the sheets.

“The Executive Office of the President is not an agency and is therefore exempt from the law.”

Can we expect more of the same from the little Kenyan Who Could?

You can assume you know, or at least have an idea, what the White House is getting out of this technology partnership, but what’s in it for Google?

The Googles have already sent a sales team to DC to sell to members of congress a gold plated promise that if they advertise with Google in their next campaign that Google can guarantee that their ads will appear in the browser windows of only those people whose browsing habits match the profile of the type of voter who is interested in federal government and who have interests, determined by what other websites they visit, that would make them be classified as someone who would vote for or donate to the legislator.

You can expect this information farming/netting from a political campaign or a commercial web site. Yahoo and Goolge both know where you have been and display ads on your screen accordingly. The feds have rules that bar the use of government assets for political campaigning. But how long will that last?

“There are indications that the administration wants to revise some of these laws, particularly with respect to the Internet, and we’re waiting to see if we can play a role,” said Peter Greenberger, a former regional campaign manager for Al Gore’s presidential bid who now heads Google’s Elections and Issues Advocacy team. “The real question that people are trying to answer is what can the White House do now that they’re the White House as opposed to a [political] campaign.”

Snip

“There would be issues providing some services to an elected official that is not provided to somebody else,” such as a political opponent. But, he added, “in some cases, you know, incumbency is a powerful thing.” [He actually said that? - EMc]

Google is also working with federal officials to map out government data so that Google’s most valuable property, the Google search page, can better direct citizens to sought-after government information. Any increased traffic through the Google Web page to federal sites gives the company a greater opportunity to sell advertising to government and commercial customers, said Greenberger. “It would be great if HUD’s site had a little ad saying, ‘Are you eligible for the mortgage bailout? Fill out this ad,’” Greenberger said in February, using the Department of Housing and Urban Development as an example.

Yes. But how “great” would it be if the ad said “You visited a divorce advice site yesterday and today you were reading a review of the Vagina Monologues. We can refer you to a Health and Human Services counselor to talk to you about your men-hating derangement,” and the person actually seeing the ad on your home computer was your husband?

I, for one, do not think this would be any more “great” than having my sheet pulled off, revealing my reporter’s notepad and pencil illuminated by the glow of a burning cross. “Oh, Brother. Where am I?”

The National Journal brought in some pros to research this information and you really should take the time to read the resulting article.

Just don’t visit any federal sites, especially the White House, before you go off to one of those Despicable. Shameful, Misleading and … anti-progressive websites.

I wouldn’t want you infected by an IBIRT.

In the nation’s capitol, on the brink of history, the hour approaches …

If January 20th marks the “brink of history,” what have we been living in so far? And won’t the Visigoths, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians be just a little bit ticked off to be left out of history, particularly by Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, and David Shuster?

Another favorite of mine is “new beginnings.” If it’s a “beginning,” it’s necessarily new. I.e., the phrase is ridiculously redundant.

Okay, that out of my system, here’s a video about a nice, sweet man from Illinois about whom a great fuss was made and for whom police were called, until today when, all of a sudden, he was before the Vice President of the United States, being sworn in as a U.S. Senator:

Just kidding. It was sweet today to see him touch his name plate next to the door to his new Senate office. And the excitement in the faces of his family. PEBO erred on that, but Harry Reid paid the price. But, at least in the end, it came out the way it should have for U.S. Senator Roland Burris (D-Ill.).

And what else is going on in the world? And Illinois? Any new scandals?

For those of you who log on every Tuesday night and listen to the Warrior’s show, I am the Warrior’s friend and former NY radio colleague Jay. I have appeared on his show weekly over the past few months discussing the topics of the day and giving my opinions or just asking questions that have not been asked.

After last week’s show, I had a chance to speak to Susan and she made me an offer I could not refuse…so…going forward the Warrior will be known as the Norman Lear of NQ Radio and there is now a “spin-off” of his show.

Starting Wednesday January 7th, 2009 at 9pm Eastern Time (6pm for those of you out on the left coast), I will be hosting a new show on NQ Radio, “No Topic Taboo…Everything Else with Jay”. Now this show is going to be a little different for the NQ audience. As Susan and I discussed, the topic matters to be dealt with we decided that everything is game: news and current events, politics, sports and the entertainment world will all be open for discussion. I may come in with a game plan for the evening but you the NQ listener will drive the show.

Some of the topics that might come up in the first month or show of the show include, The BCS Championship game which is the night after my debut show (and watch this space for a future blog on how I feel on the whole BCS/No football playoff issue), the NFL Playoffs, the Super Bowl and the Super Bowl ads. (What will happen to them with everything going on in this economy? Months ago GM said they were pulling out before they asked for the cash. Who will be there and who else won’t???), the inauguration and all of the events around it, The Golden Globe Awards and award shows in general and anything else that might pop up. But as I said as much as I may have a game plan this show is going to be driven by you, the NQ listener. So don’t be afraid to pop us on and take me for a left turn. And yes I am working on some guests (calling the Warrior..calling the Warrior). Some will be regulars here on NQ and others I will be keeping under wraps for now.

I would like to thank Larry & Susan for giving me this opportunity. I think we are going to have some fun, provoke a few thoughts and maybe an argument or 2.

I hope you’ll join me on January 7th and make it “appointment on line radio” each week. Stealing a line from a local NY sports radio host….”We can’t do it without you the listener.”

For those of you around the country dealing with the onset of winter weather like I am don’t over do it clearing the snow. Everyone if I don’t get a chance to blog before, have a Happy ______________ (fill in the blank depending on what you celebrate, and have a good rest of the weekend).

I am your humble scribe and NQ radio host and I am out for now.

PS: For those of you who can or wish I urge to support the effort of my close friend the Warrior with the “Capture the Magic” ads here on NQ. Great way to get that ooh and ah from your kids on Christmas morning and help the efforts to “keep the lights on” here at NQ

Jonathan Martin of Politico reports that the Pennsylvania GOP is running the following
ad in the Key Stone state. Martin writes:

McCain has refused to invoke Wright or allow his campaign to use the pastor in ads. A senior campaign aide said they knew nothing about the Pennsylvania party’s ad in advance. Officials with the state party didn’t respond to an e-mail.

Martin, however, wants to blame McCain for the ad:

McCain’s campaign is taking a hands-off approach, not disavowing the ad.

Says campaign spokesman Peter Feldman.

“John McCain’s position with regard to Reverend Wright is clear. He is not the referee of every political ad in this election.”

Of course, McCain is the leader of the leader the GOP, and could urge a state party to not air such an ad.

Of course Martin is upset because this ad is accurate. This ad is fundamentally about judgment. Obama chose a racist pastor and stayed with him for 20 years; that’s bad judgment. Obama infers that Pennsylvanians are racists. These facts about Obama and his devotion to Wright along with the insults directed at the good people of Pennsylvania will swing many Independents to McCain.

Obama’s arrogance is repulsive; his judgment is worse.

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UPDATE from Bronwyn Obamanot: As our regular readers know from reading our stories on Friday and Saturday — including “GOPTrust.com Kicks A–! (Great ads in all the battleground states!)” — another 527, GOPTrust.com, is also running a searing ad about Obama’s long relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Many of you contributed to the 527’s fund, and I want to be sure to let you know that your donations are paying off!

On Sunday night, one of our writers noticed that GOPTrust paid to run the ad during the highly-rated CBS primetime Sunday reality TV show, The Amazing Race.

Now that is hot ad placement! The Amazing Race has won 11 Primetime Emmy awards.

The prime-time Nielsen ranking and rating for the October 21st airing is:

18. “Amazing Race 13,” CBS, 10.29 million viewers.

Imagine that. Your contributions enabled GOPTrust.com to reach over 10 million people tonight during a show that is ranked 18th out of all prime-time primary network programming — and that’s just on the one ad spot that we are aware of. True to its word, GOPTrust.com has placed its ads in as many spots as possible, both nationally and in the key battleground states.

Tell Bill Ayers that that is true “power to the people.” Tell the anti-free speech Obamabots that all the viewers of tonight’s Amazing Race saw this ad:

Obama and Wright: He Never Complained Once

Read Text of Ad — Click Here

Donate Now to Have This Ad Air in Swing States — Click Here

Note: We don’t know if it’s still helpful to donate to GOPTrust.com. Visit their site to be sure using the link immediately above.

I’ve always been a fan of British humor and the October 31st Times Online review of Obama’s infomercial, written by Chris Ayers is a perfect example of that dry British wit. The title and subtitle set it up perfectly:

Review: A no-holds-barred weepathon

At times during this half hour of mawkish misery you longed for the wit and wisdom of a debate featuring Sarah Palin.

I didn’t have the stomach to watch what HotAir brilliantly termed the “Transmission from Mt. Olympus.” So I am grateful for Chris Ayers’ insightful review of the “weepathon.” Here’s how America appears to him:

America’s supplies of tissues must have been exhausted during Barack Obama’s 30-minute election broadcast late on Wednesday night. It had been billed as a “closing argument” by the Democrat’s seemingly unstoppable campaign. In reality, it was an all-out, no-holds-barred weepathon with a feel-bad factor pitched somewhere between the third act of Schindler’s List and the slaughter scenes in Watership Down. I emerged from my TV room sodden-eyed and legs trembling, wishing that Iran would just drop the bomb and get it all over with.

It began, as these things so often do, with a flugelhorn. Then pictures of wind-rippled cornfields. Then footage of children and old people smiling — the tape slowed down a little, to make their happiness appear somehow tragic.

I’m not even sure what a flugelhorn sounds like, but I can certainly imagine how Amabo Productions made use of it (you know, Harpo=Oprah backwards, so why not?):

When Obama, made his entrance he was wearing a sombre black suit (pictured right) and standing in what appeared to be a log cabin. You could practically smell the coffee roasting. This was Obamaland, where everything is safe and warm, where Big Brobama loves you and keeps the evil profit-doers at bay. You, too, could go to Obamaland, went the subtext, just so long as you voted for the man with the “D” next to his name. But in case Americans didn’t realise what was at stake, Obama set out to demonstrate what a God-forsaken, economically devastated shell of a nation they now live in.

So we cut to a harried mother named Rebecca, from North Kansas City, Missouri, who complained that her husband Brian, who works at a tyre plant, has to stand up all day, even though he has a dicky knee. We were treated to a glimpse of Brian slumped on his sofa, looking fed up. He had planned to have surgery in June, said Rebecca, but because of the rising cost of living he couldn’t afford it. We then saw Rebecca rationing the food in her fridge, balancing her cheque book, and driving her humungous SUV in the moonlight.

Rebecca and Brian are clearly Obama’s shout-out to the bitter gun-totters, I suppose. And then there’s this little nugget, as if Obama actually cares one iota about a single working mother with a sick child:

From this purgatory we emerged again into the comforting fuzzy goodness of Obamaland. “We measure the strength of our country not by the number of billionaires we have,” he boomed, “but by whether a waitress who lives on tips can take the day off to look after a sick kid without being laid off.”

Coming up is the biggest insult to the working class. I’ll let Chris Ayers paint the picture:

Then we were back in the wasteland of He Who Must Not Be Named — the dark wizard Bush (whose dead half-brother, McCain, has been exhumed to carry on his dastardly work). This time we were in Sardinia, Ohio, with an elderly African-American woman named Juanita who needs 12 different medications each day for rheumatoid arthritis. Her husband Larry lost his health insurance when he retired, so he took out a loan to pay for the pills, and now, at the age of 72, he has been forced to work as a salesman at Wal-Mart. We saw him putting on his name-pin with an expression of sadness and contempt.

Larry has to work at Wal-Mart! Yuck, that is so uncool! Okay, he’s 72 and maybe wants to stop working, but come on, most people I know hope they’ll be able to work at 72 because we sure as hades won’t be able to afford to retire. But Wal-Mart! Do they even sell arugula?

Moving along to my favorite paragraph:

Then Obama brought up his dead mother. It was enough to make you pine for the wit and intelligence of a Sarah Palin debate. I had hoped for goosebumps and that swollen feeling you get in your chest when you know that something good might happen. But instead I just felt downbeat; not only because of America’s obvious problems but also because of Obama’s willingness to exploit them so mawkishly.

Exploitation is the name of the game for Obama. This Brit sees it pretty clearly.

[Admin UPDATE: The founders of GOPTrust.com have kindly visited our blog and sent us the most remarkable messages, so we are proud to display their ads. We encourage you to donate so that EVERY VOTER can see these ads by Tuesday!]

Underdogs (McCain/Palin and this blog) UNITE!

Here’s the latest TV ad from this highly dynamic, go-get-’em PAC that is firing up TV ads and raising money in a whirlwind of energy:

Obama and Wright: He Never Complained Once

Read Text of Ad — Click Here

Donate Now to Have This Ad Air in Swing States — Click Here

GOPTrust has raised $4.5 million, and is reaching out to all of us — time is of the essence — for another $2 million to get their ads on all of the major networks, and in all the battleground states. From its site:

• Urgent Letter From Scott Wheeler About Barack Obama
• Joe the Plumber and Obama’s 3 Biggest Lies
• Urgent Letter Re: Obama’s Plan for Driver’s Licenses for Illegals
• FACT SHEET: Obama’s Record on Driver’s Licenses for Illegals
• FACT SHEET: William Ayers – Barack Obama
• FACT SHEET: Obama’s Dismal Record
  on Illegal Aliens
• Dick Morris Praises National Republican Trust PAC

HERE are more GOPTrust.com ads, and news:

Barack Obama: The Redistributor

Read Text of Ad — Click Here

Donate Now to Have This Ad Air in Swing States — Click Here

:::::::::::::::

Visit GOPTrust’s site where you can view its other ads, read all the accompanying transcripts, and donate to get these ads on the air everywhere, especially the battleground states.

Maybe they aren’t comfortable praising or taking seriously a political infomercial.

Maybe they think taking an infomercial at face value will make them look too partisan.

Maybe they are worried that if they cover it too much it will destroy the delicate balance of kinda sorta equal coverage.

Maybe they were all overcome by the soft focus imagery and soaring music and became mass hypnotized, in a euphoric state usually only found with the VERY best illegal substances.

Maybe they got a collective grip on Uppity’s hopey-change bong.

And maybe they’ll come out of it tomorrow. I don’t know. Note, I don’t for a second believe any sense of ethics or fair coverage is the issue here. Unfortunately, the above “reasons” are entirely ironic. Well, except for the last two. Anyway, here’s a few interesting tidbits.

Read the rest ->

1) At The Corner on NRO, you could expect a tepid response at best, but here’s an interesting point.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think the night worked for him. The last time anyone did this — Ross Perot — it was so weird a world unto itself (strange-looking guy with pie charts) that, beached between Cybill and Murphy Brown (or whatever it was back then), it had a kind of integrity and distinctiveness. This time round, The O Show followed by the Phillies followed by Jon Stewart cumulatively undermined the candidate.

For a start, the show itself was slick only in a drearily generic way. The waving wheat and music made it seem like a standard campaign commercial, only longer — “It’s Morning, Noon And Night In America,” which is a big enough problem thanks to the media’s Obama cultists without the candidate himself piling on. As for the King Barack Meets [Insert Name Of Downtrodden Subject Here] stuff, aside from the fact that I don’t recognize the hellhole this country apparently is, there’s something faintly ridiculous in doing it in the middle of the Phillies winning the World Series. Maybe on Super Bowl Sunday, instead of Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunctioning, Obama could come out and interview people about how our entire rotten society is malfunctioning. And then The Daily Show kibbitzing stepped all over the infomercial even more.

Not having watched the show, I won’t quibble over anyone’s perceptions of it, but I do think it is interesting that it was sandwiched between the World Series and The Daily Show. That would tend to lower the seriousness of the show, if you took it seriously in the first place.

2) How did BO do in the ratings last night? According to Nielsen, he got about 21.7 % of households in top markets. While 21.7 % is not terribly impressive, it’s still 1 in 5 of households with a tv on at that time. But who was watching? I think that’s the more important question.

The Hollywood Reporter translates those Nielsen numbers.

Obama’s 30-minute primetime infomercial was seen by 33.6 million viewers across seven networks — including CBS, NBC, Fox, Univision, MSNBC, BET and TV One.

That’s 70% more people than watched the conclusion of the World Series last night on Fox (19.8 million). Clearly, Obama vs. McCain is more compelling to viewers this week than Phillies vs. Rays.

Nielsen estimates that roughly 71% of viewers were white, 17% of viewers were black and 15% were Hispanic.*

The NYT has a blurb right now, but it’s not worth your time, just a rehash of the above.

3) Newsbusters responded to a WaPo piece about the infomercial.

Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales offered his own endorsement of Obama for President with an oozy review of Obama’s half-hour infomercial, which he called “Obamavision.” That certainly was supposed to carry more than one meaning, including a tribute to Obama’s visionary politics. It wasn’t hidden in tiny type on the home page like yesterday’s sleaze-Internet-cash story. It stood out in bold lettering: “An Appeal to the Masses | Poetic and practical, Obama’s paid political broadcast was a montage of montages.” Shales was more syrupy than that in the full text:

Somehow both poetic and practical, spiritual and sensible, the paid political broadcast, which aired on seven major cable and broadcast networks (on Univision, it was identified as “Historias Americanas”), was a montage of montages, a series of seamlessly blended segments interweaving the stories of embattled Americans with visions of their deliverer, Guess Who.

————————–

The half-hour was underscored with music in a kind of elegiac, Aaron Copland mode — sorrow and stature. Obama seemed as heroic a figure as Henry Fonda’s Tom Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath,” but with more of a Jimmy Stewart personality. He has come, the film said, to show us all the way, and if we don’t know it by now, and after all those millions spent to tell us, it’s our fault.

…Now it seemed to be turning into a Frank Capra movie; after all, “Grapes of Wrath” did not have a happy ending, but, according to last night’s multicast — in spectacular ObamaRama — this movie will.

Spectacular ObamaRama?

ObamaRama? Hey, isn’t supposed to be racist to suggest the guy is a celebrity? And Aaron Copland? He composed “Fanfare for the Common Man.” I don’t think that applies to BO.

4) Naturally, some people OMG just REALLY LOVED the BO commercial and just think it really, like, showed a picture, like, of how Barack can really touch all of us and bring us together in a caring way. Or some sort of drivel. Like this:

This was an expression of empathy, a report from Barack Obama about what he has learned after spending the better part of two years with a hurting populace.

The commercial, which aired on multiple networks at a cost of $4 million to the Democrat’s campaign, was poignant and direct. And it did hold out a measure of the “hope” that has been the essential message of the senator’s once-audacious and now-presumptive candidacy.

Of course, in order to sell change, you first have to sell despair:

But at a deeper level, Obama presented a chronicle of despair:

Sick people are having a hard time paying for medicine.

Old people are working to make ends meet.

Teachers are taking second jobs to pay for food.

Third-generation factory workers are watching the American dreams that they once took for granted turn into nightmares of dislocation and declining prospects.

Yeth, I read thith tho you didn’t have to. Now I have thugar poithning. Gotta get thome lemon thorbet to cut the thweetneth. Blech. Gack.

5) CBSnews had this to say about the infomercial and all those BO promises:

Without question, the Barack Obama infomercial served as a very slick and powerful recitation of the biggest promises he’s made as a presidential candidate. But the very bigness of his ideas is the problem: he seems blind to the concept his numbers don’t add up.

Let’s start with his highly suspect, and widely discredited, claim that he can find federal “spending cuts beyond the costs” of his promises. Very few independent economists believe he has identified the savings needed to offset his remarkable list of tax credits, tax cuts and spending pledges.

After going through a few fact checks, CBS mentions this:

Most of the time he spends the Iraq savings in the context of the roads he wants to build; sometimes it’s for the teachers he wants to hire. Tonight, he riffed rhetorically on the savings, asking how many scholarships could be funded, or how many schools could be built. In the end though, presuming he really saves $90 billion, he can only spend it once.

Remember he also mentioned rebuilding the military ($7 billion/yr); his education initiative ($18 billion/yr); and his energy initiative ($15 billion/yr). He did not mention the $188 billion that he would spend on the brand new stimulus package he has proposed.

Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, CBS. All of us ignorant, bitter, non-professional bloggers have been SAYING THIS FOR MONTHS. Jeeeeez, dude, get a freakin clue.

6) The WSJ has an interesting piece about all the crowds BO attracts.

There is something odd — and dare I say novel — in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics. We associate them with the temper of Third World societies. We think of places like Argentina and Egypt and Iran, of multitudes brought together by their zeal for a Peron or a Nasser or a Khomeini. In these kinds of societies, the crowd comes forth to affirm its faith in a redeemer: a man who would set the world right.

As the late Nobel laureate Elias Canetti observes in his great book, “Crowds and Power” (first published in 1960), the crowd is based on an illusion of equality: Its quest is for that moment when “distinctions are thrown off and all become equal. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd.” These crowds, in the tens of thousands, who have been turning out for the Democratic standard-bearer in St. Louis and Denver and Portland, are a measure of American distress.
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. . .The coalition that has propelled his quest — African-Americans and affluent white liberals — has no economic coherence. But for the moment, there is the illusion of a common undertaking — Canetti’s feeling of equality within the crowd. The day after, the crowd will of course discover its own fissures. The affluent will have to pay for the programs promised the poor. The redistribution agenda that runs through Mr. Obama’s vision is anathema to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the hedge-fund managers now smitten with him. Their ethos is one of competition and the justice of the rewards that come with risk and effort. All this is shelved, as the devotees sustain the candidacy of a man whose public career has been a steady advocacy of reining in the market and organizing those who believe in entitlement and redistribution.
———————
This election is the rematch that John Kerry had not delivered on. In the fashion of the crowd that seeks and sees the justice of retribution, Mr. Obama’s supporters have been willing to overlook his means. So a candidate pledged to good government and to ending the role of money in our political life opts out of public financing of presidential campaigns. What of it? The end justifies the means.

Interesting thoughts. It’s simply that a cult of personality has been developed around this dude. We’ve seen it for several months now. The problem is, historically, cults of personality don’t lead to good things. But hey, this guy is the messiah, so I’m sure everything’s copacetic.

7) The Christian Science Monitor has something to take seriously. While this author does not think BO is a socialist or espouses socialist mantras in the classical sense, he does think what could be coming from BO is a kind of socialism.

But what about a milder form of socialism? If reckoned as an attitude rather than a set of guidelines for running an economy, socialism might well describe Senator Obama’s economics. Anyone who speaks glibly of “spreading the wealth around” sees wealth not as resulting chiefly from individual effort, initiative, and risk-taking, but from great social forces beyond any private producer’s control. If, say, the low cost of Dell computers comes mostly from government policies (such as government schooling for an educated workforce) and from culture (such as Americans’ work ethic) then Michael Dell’s wealth is due less to his own efforts and more to the features of the society that he luckily inhabits.

Wealth, in this view, is produced principally by society. So society’s claim on it is at least as strong as that of any of the individuals in whose bank accounts it appears. More important, because wealth is produced mostly by society (rather than by individuals), taxing high-income earners more heavily will do little to reduce total wealth production.

This notion of wealth certainly warrants the name “socialism,” for it gives the abstraction “society” pride of place over flesh-and-blood individuals. If taxes are reduced on Joe the Plumber’s income, the rationale must be that Joe deserves a larger share of society’s collectively baked pie and not that Joe earned his income or that lower taxes will inspire Joe to work harder.

A warning shot that, like Republicans before them, the Democratic party will hew ever more to its extreme wing. We’ll just lurch from idiocies of the right to idiocies of the left. Get out your dramamine. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

8 ) The Hill has an interesting piece that bears watching. As every interest group or constituency that supports a candidate knows, before the inauguration the handout line forms. So, who would have an IOU from BO?

The Accountability Now coalition, whose members include the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), MoveOn.org and the United Steelworkers of America, plans to target members of Congress who waver on their agenda. The group is raising money to fund progressive primary challengers in 2010.

Created by liberal bloggers Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com and Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, the Accountability Now political action committee has already raised $500,000 since starting up in March. The group hopes to press Democrats to use their majorities to pass liberal legislation and work with a White House occupied by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
—————–
Joining the Accountability Now coalition means that they’ll extend their political efforts to legislation, particularly on measures that seek to increase healthcare coverage and make it easier to join and form unions, Burger said. SEIU and other coalition members will soon use its grassroots network to knock on doors and make phone calls to put pressure on members of Congress ahead of key votes, Burger said.

And just in case you still think these groups support various people because of principle:

Burger added that SEIU wants the Democratic-led Congress to deliver legislation almost as soon as it arrives.

9)The Boston Globe is starting to wonder if Obama would be a President tolerant of dissent. They’re wondering this now because?????

If opinion polls are right, Barack Obama is cruising to victory. As president, would he show the same forbearance as Bush in allowing his opponents to have their say, unmolested? Or would he attempt to suppress the free speech of those whose views he detested? It is disturbing to contemplate some of the Obama campaign’s recent efforts to stifle criticism.

When the National Rifle Association produced a radio ad last month about Obama’s shifting position on gun control, the campaign’s lawyers sent letters to radio stations in Ohio and Pennsylvania, urging them not to run it – and warning of trouble with the Federal Communications Commission if they did. “This advertisement knowingly misleads your viewing audience,” Obama’s general counsel Bob Bauer wrote. “For the sake of both FCC licensing requirements and the public interest, your station should refuse to continue to air this advertisement.”

Similar lawyer letters went out in August when the American Issues Project produced a TV spot exploring Obama’s strong ties to former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Station managers were warned that running the anti-Obama ad would be a violation of their legal obligation to serve the “public interest.” And in case that wasn’t menacing enough, the Obama campaign also urged the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation.

In Missouri, an Obama “truth squad” of prosecutors and other law-enforcement officials vowed to take action against anyone making “character attacks” on the Democratic candidate – a threat, Missouri Governor Matt Blunt later remarked, that had about it the “stench of police state tactics.”

Perhaps these efforts to smother political speech are simply the overly aggressive tactics of a campaign in its adrenaline-fueled sprint to the finish. But what if they are the first warning signs of how an Obama administration would deal with its adversaries?

Uh, You think??

10) According to Reuters, Qaeda wants Republicans “humiliated” in this election. Hmmmm. I guess they don’t want Democrats humiliated?

An al Qaeda leader has called for President George W. Bush and the Republicans to be “humiliated,” without endorsing a party in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, according to an Internet video posting.
———————–

SITE (terrorism monitoring group) said militant postings on al Qaeda-linked websites typically discuss Obama in terms of his race, or his religion and foreign policy. Some forecast a racial crisis dividing the United States if he wins. Others say his planned phased withdrawal from Iraq would be a boon to al Qaeda’s affiliate and give it a base for Middle East expansion.

11) I just can’t leave you with something THAT depressing. So, here’s something more lighthearted. Apparently Erica Jong and some of her more delicate friends are having conniption fits – literally worrying themselves to death that BO could somehow not win. According to the New York Observer, Jong gave an interview to an Italian publication and some of her comments reflect the immeasurably great stress she is feeling over this election.

Here’s a translation of Jong’s more spirited quotes to the Milan-based Corriere, as selected by Rocca.

“My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can’t cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves.”

“My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium.”
——————

“If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it’s not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets.”

She also laments that not all of America’s men of letters share her devotion to Obama.

“Tom Wolfe and John Updike are men of the right and Philip Roth is at this point a hermit who leads a monastic life in Connecticut, far from everything and everybody.”

Luckily, she said there is her and Michael Chabon, who, she says, have “taken the place of Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer respectively.”

I didn’t realize Jong was the new Sontag. Chabon is the new Mailer? I guess I’m the new Molly Ivins then. Except I’m not in Texas. And I don’t write as well as she did. And she was funnier. Oh darn.

Here are my notes from the McCain/Palin conference call that ended moments ago. Rick Davis, McCain’s Campaign Manager, said the following:

• Watch for an unprecedented velocity of McCain TV ads this final week
• Obama was spending $40 million a week during housing crisis, he’s now to normal levels
• They will be spending $10 million more than Obama on the air this week
• They believe they have been winning the economy and tax argument over the last 10 ten days
• Of note for Hillary supporters, they have “learned from primaries, late breakers don’t go to Obama.”
• Just released closing ad, McCain talking about service to country
  and a contrast ad on economics and spending
• Continuing to run what they call the “Joe the Biden” ad about Obama being tested. Still on air; best closing argument ad
• They’re ready to win election
• In Florida and Nevada, early voting is the same as 2004, favorable to McCain.
• McCain is picking up a lot Democratic support in both states.
• John McCain always finishes very strong in New Hampshire
• Polls are all over the map. New Hampshire is a hard state to poll.
  New Hampshire is a low-tax state.
  Joe the Plumber has changed the dynamics of the race.
• Tight electoral college year, tight popular vote.
  Polling is not cumulative. Polls from 10 days ago do not mean anything.

Never underestimate a Republican operative in the last week of race who is outspending you by $10 million.

Obama and Wright: He Never Complained Once

Read Text of Ad — Click Here

Donate Now to Have This Ad Air in Swing States — Click Here

GOPTrust has raised $4.5 million, and is reaching out to all of us — time is of the essence — for another $2 million to get their ads on all of the major networks, and in all the battleground states. From its site:

• Urgent Letter From Scott Wheeler About Barack Obama
• Joe the Plumber and Obama’s 3 Biggest Lies
• Urgent Letter Re: Obama’s Plan for Driver’s Licenses for Illegals
• FACT SHEET: Obama’s Record on Driver’s Licenses for Illegals
• FACT SHEET: William Ayers – Barack Obama
• FACT SHEET: Obama’s Dismal Record
  on Illegal Aliens
• Dick Morris Praises National Republican Trust PAC

HERE are more GOPTrust.com ads, and news:

Barack Obama: The Redistributor

Read Text of Ad — Click Here

Donate Now to Have This Ad Air in Swing States — Click Here

:::::::::::::::

Visit GOPTrust’s site where you can view its other ads, read all the accompanying transcripts, and donate to get these ads on the air everywhere, especially the battleground states.

Tonight Senator Obama starred in his own prime time special, about Senator Obama. Is it me or is Obama passé? I find his voice — artificially deep to project gravitas — to be just as grating as George W. Bush’s faux-Texas accent.

Obama the brand is wearing thin. He has his own hand sign, his own temple, music videos, Dish Channel, a fake presidential seal, coffee mugs, t-shirts, etc. But still Obama the man comes across as a caricature of his own creation. And whether we want to be or not, we’re witnesses to his ego-trip. So stale is Obama’s image, it’s reported that even the youth may not be showing up for The One. Obama fatigue is setting in.

Like George W. Bush, another megalomanic with whom he shares many personality traits, Obama is thin-skinned, irritable, paranoid, and in constant need of having his ego stroked. Bush made his chief of staff, Andy Card, greet him every morning with an obsequious, “Thank you for the privilege of serving today.” Would a President Obama command a hand salute and a recitation of passages from his bizzare “race” speech? I am not being facetious.

Obama knows well that the false image he’s projected to the public could crumble at any moment, exposing the man who has accomplished nothing. Both Richard Nixon and George W. Bush forced the nation to ride along on their exhausting megalomania-fueled train wrecks of ego-feed and self-destruction. Can the nation afford another president who sees himself as anointed?

Obama could possibly make a perfect candidate for Donald Trumps’ “The Apprentice,” but I doubt Trump would hire him. Instead this election feels like the reality show, “The Surreal Life,” with Obama in the mansion along with his sordid friends: Ayers, Wright, Khalidi and Rezko. The media force-feeds the nation this junk food. Just think, we could be listening to Hillary talk about the intricacies of health care or something else intellectually nutritious. Instead, it’s more Obama drama.

Early in the primaries, President Clinton told Charlie Rose that picking Obama would be a “risk” and suggested that nominating Obama would be like nominating a “a gifted television commentator.” How right you are, Mr. President. Although “gifted” appears to have been an overstatement.

What else is going on?

The three 30-minute ads or infomercials cost Obama nearly $1 million each. This is the first time mark the first time in 16 years that a White House contender has aired commercials of that length on broadcast networks. Billionaire Ross Perot paid for 11 half-hour ads during his 1992 bid as an independent.

According, to USA Today, Obama’s ad spending will easily surpass the record $188 million President Bush spent in 2004. How is this possible? How does Obama have $230 million to spend on television advertising? The answer is that he accepted campaign finance reform and then rejected it when his campaign decided he was not just a cash cow, but the whole herd. Meanwhile, John McCain, who first began working on campaign finance reform with Senator Russell Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin,13 years ago, is limited to $84.1 million because he accepted taxpayer funds for the general election.

Once again, John McCain shows himself to be a man of his word. And Barack Obama?
Well, he has already shown himself to be a liar, since he went back on his promise to accept campaign finance reform as well as on many issues. But as if that is not sufficient cause for alarm, one has to wonder about the conscience of the man who is being hailed as the messiah of the Democratic Party. One has to wonder about a man who claims to have worked in the field of education for years.
$230 million for television advertising????
It takes my breath away.

And I’m wondering, how many school books that might buy. How many salaries for teachers? How many college educations?
Hmmm . . . How many mortgages might that pay? How many gas tanks might that fill?
How many hungry bellies might that feed?
I guess Obama is for redistribution of wealth as long as it is not his wealth.
I am stunned at the utter lack of morality and ethics on display here.
For shame, Obama. For absolute shame.
Let’s not waste a moment letting the world know that the American public will not be bought. Let’s get ourselves to any field office or campaign office, especially if it is in a battleground or border state.
This is the real deal. So I say, Just Say No Deal. Vote McCain/Palin and do the right thing.

I would like you to think about some numbers:

In the 2004 Presidential election there were more than 122,000,000 votes cast. In 2006 for the Congressional race, which put the Democrats in charge of both the House and the Senate, 80 plus million people voted. I was surprised that 42 million folks decided not to vote.

Now look at the media numbers. According to Drudge Report, the number of folks watching nightly network news is less than 22 million:

CBSNEWS w/ Couric shed a half a million viewers, falling from 6.4 million to 5.9 million;
ABCNEWS dropped from 8.1 million to 7.6 million;
NBCNEWS slumped from 8.2 million to 7.8 million.

The numbers for cable shows is even less. Fox News, with O’Reilly Factor and Hannity and Colmes, sits atop the heap with around 4.3 million viewers. CNN and MSNBC combined rarely exceed 4 million viewers. Let’s be generous and assume that no one watches more than one show and that the “viewers” are individual and unique. For the national news shows we are talking around 30 million people tops.

Radio, by contrast, reaches over 160 million people each day. And conservatives appear to continue to dominate in this market. Rush Limbaugh, for example, attracts around 14 million listeners. (Note–I have not located a comprehensive summary breaking down total numbers for conservative vice liberal radio stations. If you have it please post below or send me an email and I’ll update this piece)

So where are most of the people who are voting getting their information? It looks to me like radio, rather than network television, is the key medium. I’m also curious about the televised medias’ constant drumbeat against Sarah Palin while she continues to to draw record crowds to her events. Sarah’s authenticity, like that of Joe the Plumber, has struck a chord with average Americans that the media elites don’t comprehend.

Medusa’s original post: According to a rumor on Daily Kos, Obama’s internals show him with a mere 2 point lead in Pennsylvania. If true, this is very bad news for the Anointed One. John Kerry carried Pennsylvania by only 2.5 points, and Kerry didn’t insult the voters there.

Heidi Li Feldman and Marc Rubin of the Denver Group and Democrats for Principles Before Party (DFPBP) have two ads currently running in different metro regions in Pennsylvania. Watch the most recent one, here:

Pennsylvania is key in the election, and as you may have heard, Democratic Representative Jack Murtha first called his own Pennsylvania constituents “racists” but has now softened the insult by calling them “rednecks.” In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Murtha said:

There is no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area

But actually it turns out that these people are the gun-toting, bitter, religious types that the Dems find so clingy and bitter. Murtha clarified his remarks to mean that:

some of his constituents in western Pennsylvania are “rednecks” and the entire region just five to 10 years ago was “really redneck.

Marc Rubin’s fabulous post on No Quarter How Democrats Can Defeat Obama, See McCain Win, Still Get Everything They Want and Respect Themselves In The Morning spelled out the reasons why many Democrats refuse to vote for Obama:

Many Democrats seem to be going through a period of conflict over this election. They see Obama for what he is: a dishonest snake oil salesman, unfit and unqualified to be President, throwing out one sweet talking lie after another as the political Mr. Goodbar, trying to pick up as many votes as he can get.

Rubin rightly states that Obama must be defeated in order to “fumigate” the Democratic Party of its corrupting influences. And he urges people to vote for McCain to send a clear message to the party that gave us the Rules and By-Laws that awarded Hillary’s votes to Obama:

Obama is the nominee because of a dishonest primary in which these same people, along with the press, did everything possible to sell Obama as the nominee and do it as dishonestly as they knew how, including rigging the roll call vote, violating every Democratic Party rule and procedure in the process.

Dean, Pelosi, Brazile, Fowler and every member of the DNC who engineered and went along with fixing the process needs to go. Those who won’t resign (though I think many will after an Obama defeat) need to have their power and their base removed, so the that the Democratic Party can air itself out. And the only way that can happen is with an Obama loss. And the bigger the better.

Rubin is a former advertising executive and he understands how advertising works. In a recent interview on No We Won’t radio, with Riverdaughter, Heidi Li and Harriet Christensen, Rubin explains how skewed the polls are and why, and he says that with enough money to create ads, he feels that the DFPBP could influence this election away from Obama. Listen to the interview here.

Donating to The Denver Group’s DFPBP is a powerful way to make a difference now. If we can get 500 No Quarter regulars to donate $20 we, as a community, could raise $10,000 to run powerful, persuasive ads in Pensylviania and other battleground states!!! Now is the time to act. You have the power. Click here to donate.

Remember what Hillary said:

For everyone here in Ohio and across America who’s ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up — this one is for you.

More No Quarter posts on The Denver Group:

The quality of intent: What is really at stake in the 2008 Presidential Election by Heidi Li Feldman

Holding the DNC’s Feet to the Fire: An Interview with Marc Rubin of The Denver Group by Ani

The Denver Group’s New Video by SusanUnPc

The Denver Group’s Letter To Prevaricator Howard Dean by Uppity Woman

MAKING THE SQUEAKY WHEEL SQUEAK LOUDER Marc Rubin

NQ Radio Interview — The Denver Group Bud White