Obama’s Offshore Oil Feint

What is behind Obama’s announcement of today to support off-shore oil drilling?

Later on this morning President Obama will be announcing his support off-shore oil drilling.  His announcement will open a door to expanded off-shore oil-drilling on the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.  In his announcement Obama will propose further investigations of possible oil rich areas.

Barack Obama speech 12 SC Obamas Offshore Oil Feint

Obama’s reason to drill after he vehemently opposed drilling in the past seems fraught with cynicism.  The stated reason of the Obama administration is to “lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil.”

Might the real reason for Obama’s change of heart be related to the uproar the White House is anticipating when in a few days the EPA announces a controversial ruling that will declare CO2 as a toxic and which will finalize the emission standards of light trucks, etc.   What a devious way to divert the public’s attention from what is to come by announcing a policy that the general public is generally in favor of!

The Obama administration is fully aware and is confident that environmentalists will stop in their tracks for years to come through court action any investigative studies into oil exploration.

Read More: By Nancy Thorner, American Thinker

Photo Credit: Dustin C. Oliver Creative Commons

Countdown Tops CNN Again, But Rates Better Without Olbermann

MSNBC logo SC Countdown Tops CNN Again, But Rates Better Without Olbermann

MSNBC continues its dominance of CNN during prime time as the 2nd place cable news outlet, while CNN remains ahead during dayside hours (with Fox News dominating in 1st place in both categories).

But a strange thing happened in the first quarter of 2010 – the 8pmET landmark show Countdown fared better without regular host Keith Olbermann than with him.

Olbermann was out all but one day during March before returning Monday due to the illness and death of his father. During that month, with Lawrence O’Donnell serving as the fill-in anchor, Countdown averaged 262,000 in the demo and 1,052,000 in total viewers. In January, the program averaged 1,000 more in the demo but 49,000 less in total viewers. In February, the program had 255,00 in the demo and 963,000 in total viewers. The year-to-year difference was also least in March than January or February. Overall though, the show is down 42% in the demo and 26% in total viewers year-to-year in the quarter.

The March ratings are likely helped by the health care debate, which upped ratings across the board on cable news. And no one would say MSNBC is better off with O’Donnell instead of Olbermann at 8pmET. But it does raise the question whether Olbermann still commands the audience he once did, particularly as Rachel Maddow’s stock continues to rise (her 9pmET show performed better than Countdown in March – but that was when Olbermann was out).

Read More: by Steve Krakauer, Mediaite

The Future Of Journalism

For years, media leaders, editors and not a few reporters tried to ignore the coming digital storm, fiddling while technology transformed their world. Now, as that world evolves, the question is whether something greater is at risk from the new digital landscape: the future of journalism itself. What if the public won’t buy into paywalled news? What if there really is no digital economy for the kind of reporting generally thought vital to the functioning of a democracy?

In a recent speech to the Federal Trade Commission, reprinted in the Columbia Journalism Review, Robert McChesney, a communications theorist, argued that this scenario should be seen as an eventuality rather than a probability; and that the consequences for democracy should force us all to reconceptualize journalism as “a public good, not a private good. It is,” he continued, “like military defense, physical infrastructure, education, public health, and basic research…. it is something society requires, and people want, but the market cannot generate in sufficient quantity or quality. It requires government leadership to exist.”

There are two obvious objections to this argument. The first is that journalism managed not only to adapt to the new-fangled technologies of photography, radio and television, but to be adapted by them. Eyewitness reporting developed through a symbiotic relationship with the telegraph, and not because it just seemed clever to show up to record events as they were happening. Mathew Brady didn’t photograph the Civil War because the government thought it a good idea and issued a directive, but because he had made his fortune from photography and thought recording the war was a vital thing to do (it cost him his fortune and then the government short-changed him for the negatives in the resulting fire sale). Technology even changed the form of stories and the style of writing, because words were expensive to transmit and the telegraph was unreliable: Enter the inverted pyramid; exit adverbs and adjectives.

Read More: By Trevor Butterworth, Forbes

Still Surging: Fox News Has Best Quarter In Network History

Fox News channel SC Still Surging: Fox News Has Best Quarter In Network History

Fox News had their best year of all time in 2009. Now that we’ve finished the first quarter of 2010, it’s clear FNC is showing no signs of letting up – they just finished their best quarter ever, in total day total viewers.

It was also the second highest rated quarter ever in prime time total viewers. More details and analysis after the jump.

While Fox News continues to see record ratings, their cable news competitors are dropping off even more year-to-year. In the A25-54 demographic during prime time, FNC was up 16%, while CNN dropped 42%, MSNBC was down 22% and HLN was down 40%. In total viewers prime time, FNC was up 3% while the rest declined as well (CNN – 39%, MSNBC – 15%, HLN – 24%).

We’re now one month away from Fox News becoming the #1 cable news channel for the 100th consecutive month based on total viewers, and this quarter FNC expanded its reach into the cable market as a whole – finishing 2nd in prime time on all of cable, behind just USA Network. It also had the top 13 programs on cable news in both total viewers and the demo.

Read More: by Steve Krakauer, Mediaite

Photo Credit: ario_ Creative Commons

With Hirings, Yahoo Steps Up Its News Coverage

Yahoo has recruited nearly a dozen journalists from traditional and online media outlets and opened a bureau in Washington to push into original content and increase the popularity of its online news site.

The journalists joining Yahoo News, the most-visited news site on the Web, include prominent reporters and editors like Michael Calderone, a media writer who joins from Politico, Jane Sasseen, a former BusinessWeek Washington bureau chief, and Anna Robertson, an Emmy-winning news producer from ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

They will be joining other journalists hired from the New York Observer, Washingtonpost.com, TalkingPointsMemo.com and other publications.

In February, Yahoo News had over 43 million visitors, more than any other news site, according to comScore, a research company.

Read More: By Miguel Helft, NYT

In Cantor Case, Media Fanned Flames Of Violence

Norman Leboon, a convert to Islam, was charged today with making death threats against the House Republican Whip, Eric Cantor (R-VA), and his family. The threat came in a YouTube video that Leboon posted last Wednesday. In it, Leboon says:

Eric Cantor 2 SC In Cantor Case, Media Fanned Flames of Violence

Remember Eric…our judgment time, the final Yom Kippur has been given. You are a liar, you’re a Lucifer, you’re a pig, a greedy [expletive deleted] pig. You’re an abomination. You receive my bullets in your office. Remember they will be placed in your heads. You and your children are Lucifer’s abominations.

In calling Cantor a pig, Leboon may have been thinking of the passages of the Koran where Allah transforms the disobedient Jews into apes and pigs.

His threats to Cantor come after the congressman’s office was hit by what police called a stray bullet, and he received anti-Jewish threats from left-wingers.

A difficult Pesach for the Cantor family, I am sure.

Read More: By Pamela Geller, Big Journalism

Apple Tablets Impact On News

The countdown clocks are winding down. The iPad is almost here. THE big question: Can news companies rise to this occasion, taking advantage of the new platform that will plainly be popular with audiences trained by the iPhone, their appetites whetted. The iPad, and its clones to come, offer the news industry a do-over. Can they apply all they’ve learned – from failure and success – with this new opportunity? Nine questions as we count down, part one of a three-part Newsonomics tablet series.

1. Is it coincidental that the iPad is a launching in The Year of Paid Content experimentation? Yes, it is. Go back to January, 2009, to the very depth of the dark recession (Newspaper Association of America, January, 2009, San Diego).  Leading publishers including Rupert Murdoch and Dean Singleton were laying down the new conventional wisdom that advertising would no longer be the strong support to news publishing it long has been. They challenged Google directly and the movement toward “paid content” started gaining steam. Then, through the year, Journalism Online’s Steve Brill and Gordon Crovitz went out on the road, building toward testing what is now known as Press+. Kindles provided nice new revenue streams to a few publishers, the Sony Reader emerged and then….Apple Mania was loosed. Now the two – the news industry impact of the iPad launch and “paid content”  – will converge in unknowable ways. We may see reverse engineering of a sort, with iPad paid experimentation re-opening publishers’ ideas of what’s possible both with product innovation and business model.

2. Will the iPad also launch a new digital “circulation” business model? Apple is going to pay a 30% sales share to news companies, for sales of their Apps, which could be single copies (mostly in the case of magazines), one-time-sale apps allowing news access, and subscriptions to newspapers. That 30/70 is the inverse of Amazon’s standard Kindle deal, and one far more palatable to news companies. It almost seems fair.

Read More: Newsonomics

Do Democrats Commit Hate Crimes Against Black Republicans?

Frances Rice is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Chairman of the National Black Republican Association

Racists! That incendiary charge hurled by Democrats at Tea Party activists protesting against ObamaCare was shown to be totally false by Jack Cashill in his article “A Closer Look at the Capitol Steps Conspiracy”.

Given the Democratic Party’s 150-year record of racist rhetoric and racial violence – from the days of slavery until today – it is astonishing to see Democrats sanctimoniously playing the race card. A display of unmitigated gall describes how Democrats are falsely comparing anti-ObamaCare protesters to the anti-civil rights racists of the 1960’s who were Democrats. Democrats get away with this racial hypocrisy because they know with absolute certainty that the true history of civil rights has long been buried, and the racism exhibited today by Democrats against blacks, particularly black Republicans, will be ignored by the mainstream media.

For instance, the liberal media expressed no outrage and not one word of condemnation was uttered by any Democrat after SEIU (Service Employees International Union) thugs attacked Kenneth Gladney, a black man. Gladney was beaten, kicked and called a racist name while working as a vendor at a health care reform town hall meeting in St. Louis on August 6, 2009, called by U.S. Rep. Democrat Russ Carnahan.

The assault was a calculated attempt to intimidate and silence Tea Party protesters and town hall activists. On the morning of the Gladney attack, the White House presented to Senate Democrats a “battle plan” to quell the protests. The advice given to the Democrats by the White House was to “punch back twice as hard”, and the first casualty was Kenneth Gladney. In the emergency room of the St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, Gladney was treated for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face suffered in the attack.

The six people arrested in the Gladney case, including a Post-Dispatch reporter, were charged with mere misdemeanor ordinance violations, with a total of ten charges spread out among the six offenders. Not one Democrat rushed to a microphone to denounce the attack against Gladney as a “hate crime”.

Based on the lack of any outrage by Democrats over the Gladney beating, it seems that the newly enacted “hate crime” legislation pushed by Democrats would not apply to cases of hateful brutality against black Republicans. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009 and is designed to punish crimes of violence against people because of their race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

Obama is now governing as a hard-core leftist, after campaigning for president as a centrist

At the core of why Democrats are feverishly painting conservatives and Republicans as racist, especially Tea Party activists, is the need to divert the public’s attention away from the fact that President Barack Obama and the Democrats in control of Congress are slowly and deliberately transforming America from a free society with a representative form of government into a socialist dictatorship. A move applauded by the Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro.

Obama is now governing as a hard-core leftist, after campaigning for president as a centrist. His cynical charade was designed to convince the majority of white Americans to vote for him, the very citizens Obama now castigates as racist.

What Obama and the Democrats are ignoring while trying to silence protesters with charges of racism is the fact that average American citizens are angry because they do not want socialism. They understand that ObamaCare and Obama’s out-of-control spending will produce massive deficits, high costs for consumer goods and fewer jobs. Citizens have tried to communicate this message to Obama and the Democrats in every way possible, from protesting in record numbers to historic votes against Democrats in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts.

Obama and the Democrats have chosen, at their peril, to ignore the will of the people and enact the economy-wrecking ObamaCare with one-party rule, bribing unprincipled Democrats with sleazy deals.

The powerful video posted on YouTube called “America Rising: An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians Patriotic Resistance” implores Americans to hold Democrats accountable in the 2010 elections.

A video posted on YouTube called “We The People” provides an inspiring call for us to take back our country from the socialists.

In the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this call is made for all Americans to unite, engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and vote in November to stop the Democrats from shredding our Constitution and governing without the consent of the governed.

History shows that during the 1960s Democrats used racist slurs and brutality againstDr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican until the day he died, and other nonviolent activists who were trying to stop the Democrats from denying civil rights to black Americans. Today, Democrats are using similar reprehensible tactics against conservatives and Republicans, especially black Republicans, who are trying to stop the Democrats from stripping civil liberties from all Americans.

Democrats use racist invectives to denigrate black Republicans, demeaning them as “sellouts”, “Uncle Toms”, “House Negroes”, “House N-word”

While claiming to be racially sensitive, Democrats use racist invectives to denigrate black Republicans, demeaning them as “sellouts”, “Uncle Toms”, “House Negroes”, “House N-word”, or worse. The list of black Republicans attacked by Democrats is long and includes RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, General Colin Powell and Justice Clarence Thomas.

On the left-wing Internet website called “The News Blog,” Democrats posted a doctored photograph of RNC Chairman Michael Steele while he was the Lt. Governor of Maryland and running for a Senate seat. Democrats depicted Steele as a “Simple Sambo” with a blackened minstrel-style face, nappy hair and big, think red lips. The cartoon caption read: “Simple Sambo wants to move to the big house”. This contemptible racist stereotype is the same one Democrats used to demean black men during the era of slavery and segregation.

Dr. Condoleezza Rice was the object of particularly vicious racist attacks by Democrats. In addition to several other appalling images of Dr. Rice produced by several Democrats, cartoonist Jeff Danziger denigrated Dr. Rice as an ignorant, barefoot “mammy”, reminiscent of the stereotyped black woman in the movie “Gone with the Wind” about the slave era black woman who remarked: “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ no babies”. This is the type of racist stereotype Democrats used to demean black women during the era of slavery and segregation.

A video was shot by WKRN Video Journalist Beau Fleenor at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee that shows Al Sharpton demeaning Gen. Powell and Dr. Rice, when Sharpton was asked to give his opinions about whether Powell and Rice were “House Negroes”.

An article that appeared in a Portland, Oregon paper was one of many exposing how hardly a ripple of protest was made by black Democrats when Harry Belafonte publicly denounced Gen. Powell as a “House Negro”.

Posted on the Internet is an article entitled “A Black Man, The Progressive’s Perfect Trojan Horse” by black entertainer Lloyd Marcus exposing Democratic Party racism toward black Tea Party protesters.

The truth about Democratic Party racism can be harsh medicine, but is sorely needed to finally eject the race-baiting poison injected into our body politic by Democrats, the architects of modern-day racism. As stated by author Michael Scheuer, the Democratic Party is the party of the four S’s: slavery secession, segregation and now socialism. A prominent pundit affirmed that the Republican Party is the party of the four F’s: family, faith, freedom and fairness. Civil rights history details are in the NBRA Civil Rights Newsletter that is posted on the website of the National Black Republican Association.

Written out of our history books are the following facts. The Republican Party was started in 1854 as the anti-slavery party and, after the Civil War, Republicans amended the US Constitution to grant blacks freedom (13th Amendment), citizenship (14th Amendment) and the right to vote (15th Amendment). Republicans then passed the civil rights laws to ensure blacks could exercise their Constitutional rights, including the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1867 and 1875. After Democrats took control of Congress in 1892, Democrats passed the Repeal Act of 1894 that overturned civil rights legislation enacted by the Republicans. It took Republicans nearly six decades to finally achieve passage of civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s pushed through by Republican Senator Everett Dirksen over the objection of the Democrats.

In addition to their reprehensible of record of fighting against civil rights legislation, Democrats have a long history of racial violence. Recorded by liberal professor Dr. Eric Foner in his book “A Short History of Reconstruction”, is the horrifying fact that Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan in 1866 to lynch and terrorize Republicans – black and white. The Klan became the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, killing over 2,000 black Republicans and over 1,000 white Republicans.

The violence against the 1960s era civil rights protesters was inflicted by Democrats. Democrat Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor in Birmingham let loose vicious dogs and turned skin-burning fire hoses on black civil rights demonstrators. Democrat Georgia Governor Lester Maddox famously brandished ax handles to prevent blacks from patronizing his restaurant. In 1954, Democrat Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus tried to prevent desegregation of a Little Rock public school. Democrat Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in front of the Alabama schoolhouse in 1963 and thundered, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

All of these racist Democrats remained Democrats until the day they died. One survivor from that era, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former recruiter in the Ku Klux Klan, is still a Democrat and a prominent leader in the Democrat-controlled Congress where he was honored by his fellow Democrats as the “conscience of the Senate.” It does not even make common sense to believe that after the Republicans spent over 150 years fighting the Democrats and won, the racist Democrats suddenly rushed into the arms of the Republicans. In fact, Democrats declared that they would rather vote for a “yellow dog” than any one in the Republican Party, the party for blacks.

If our soldiers did and do voluntarily put their lives on the line to preserve our freedoms, then we can do no less. If Dr. King had the courage to fight for civil rights for blacks in the face of racist slurs by Democrats and threats of imprisonment or death, then we surely have the courage to stand up for our civil liberties in the face of such threats. This we owe to ourselves, our country and future generations.

China Steps Up Google Service Disruptions

The Chinese government appears to be be ramping up its conflict with Google, according to reports. As of Tuesday, Internet users in China who attempted to conduct Google searches via both computers and mobile devices received error messages.

Google Sign SC China steps up Google service disruptions

Google and China have been at odds for two months after the company said would pull its Chinese-language search services out of China. Google cited concerns over censorship and after a hacking attack late in 2009 that originated from China spurred it to rethink its China strategy.

Last week, Google attempted to circumvent Chinese government by redirecting tens of millions of users in China to its uncensored server in Hong Kong. The former British colony is semi-autonomous and has greater freedoms. Google does not censor searches there. According to the Wall Street Journal, even the most benign searches

On Tuesday however, Internet users in China attempting to conduct Google searches via Google’s Hong Kong site received error messages. Even the most benign searches, such as the word “happy,” returned error prompts stating that the results could not be opened, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Read More: Reuters

LIBERAL POLITICAL VIOLENCE: Remember The 2008 Republican Convention

The Democrats have tried to change the subject away from their health care debacle by claiming that conservatives are threatening violence against them. Their complaints are pathetic where they are not out-and-out lies (e.g., Clyburn and Lewis), and they have taken a lot of well-deserved criticism. It is liberals, not conservatives, who rely on ad hominem attacks, outrageous allegations and violent imagery. We talked about this on our radio show today, and several callers reminded us of a particularly sorry episode of liberal violence that, for some reason, has not gotten much attention: the 2008 Republican convention in St. Paul.

I attended the convention and remember the terrorist acts that were carried out by anti-Republican protesters very well. They threw bricks through the windows of buses, sending elderly convention delegates to the hospital. They dropped bags of sand off highway overpasses onto vehicles below. Fortunately, no one was killed.

These were anti-Bush and anti-Republican protesters. Is it a stretch to think that some of them, at least, may have been inspired by over-the-top, hateful attacks on the Bush administration by Democratic Congressmen, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, Michael Moore, who was a guest of honor at the Democrats’ own convention, various show business personalities, and many other leading liberal figures? I don’t think so. We haven’t seen that sort of hate campaign since the Democrats went after Abraham Lincoln. It seems unlikely that none of the “protesters” who tried to commit murder were inspired by those liberal voices.

Read More: by John, Powerline Blog