http://tinyurl.com/4nnx2h
- - - Other Obama supporters have threatened critics with criminal prosecution. In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Obama that were "false." I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis. Similarly, the Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Obama's ties to Ayers. These attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals. Congressional Democrats sought to reimpose the "fairness doctrine" on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view. The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio. Liberal talk-show hosts have mostly failed to draw audiences, and many liberals can't abide having citizens hear contrary views. To their credit, some liberal old-timers -- like House Appropriations Chairman David Obey -- voted against the "fairness doctrine," in line with their longstanding support of free speech. But you can expect the "fairness doctrine" to get another vote if Barack Obama wins and Democrats increase their congressional majorities. Corporate liberals have done their share in shutting down anti-liberal speech, too. "Saturday Night Live" ran a spoof of the financial crisis that skewered Democrats like House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank and liberal contributors Herbert and Marion Sandler, who sold toxic-waste-filled Golden West to Wachovia Bank for $24 billion. Kind of surprising, but not for long. The tape of the broadcast disappeared from NBC's Website and was replaced with another that omitted the references to Frank and the Sandlers. Evidently NBC and its parent, General Electric, don't want people to hear speech that attacks liberals. Then there's the Democrats' "card check" legislation, which would abolish secret ballot elections in determining whether employees are represented by unions. The unions' strategy is obvious: Send a few thugs over to employees' homes -- we know where you live -- and get them to sign cards that will trigger a union victory without giving employers a chance to be heard. Once upon a time, liberals prided themselves, with considerable reason, as the staunchest defenders of free speech. Union organizers in the 1930s and 1940s made the case that they should have access to employees to speak freely to them, and union leaders like George Meany and Walter Reuther were ardent defenders of the First Amendment. Today's liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society. Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech that they don't like and seem utterly oblivious to claims that this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead. - - - Michael Barone is a particularly level-headed mainstream conservative commentator. That he sees this coming too is both refreshing and a frightening confirmation that I'm not entirely bonkers. Now if only he'd talk about the stories the mainstream media is suppressing, that further elucidate the nature and causes of the disaster-in-making of a prospective Obama presidency, I'd be ecstatic. As it is I see all the warning signs being totally ignored or chalked up to partisan politics, which is ironic because presidential politics are and should be the only time partisan political dialog really matters. I had a realization today about this. The media has been very successful at boxing all dialog in terms of "plans" and "proposals". I.e., all that matters is what the candidates have to say "about the issues in the news today" in terms of "what they are going to do." The granularity of these plans is always vague, but implicit in this way of framing the issues is "the more detail the better". Naturally the media sets itself up as the arbiter of this subjective judgment--in any case, they can positively or negatively affect public perception of a plans specificity and feasibility, especially using incessant polls, which do more to make the news than to report it. The dialog should be about values and philosophy. But such a dialog would lead us naturally in Obama's case to the names that appear as footnotes longer than any of the bullet points on his resume: Ayers/Dorhn, Al-Monsour, Odinga, ACORN, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Fr. Phleger, Saul Alinsky. These are not moderate, mainstream names. These are not even the names of people who represent liberal/constitutional democracy. Obama has gotten a lot of mileage out of Bush-bashing, lies (McCain's supposed opposition to common sense regulation) and guilt-by-association (McSame etc.) -- mainly because the media glosses over his hallow attacks, and has done more than any paid PR company could do to promote his messianic image, and rock-star celebrity status. We used to be a nation of laws, not men. We used to have as an ideal that the president was not a king or all-powerful savior, whose very hand controls and guides the economy like it's direction could be controlled by an X-box or PS3 controller, but a man of judgment who served as the executor of laws written by Congress, and a counter-balance to the same in an elaborate, hard-to-thwart system of checks and balances. Both parties over the last 100 years have done more to make the coming Imperial Presidency than you can imagine. An Obama presidency with a Pelosi/Reid congress would simply be the reductio ad absurdum of the argument against such a thing. Anybody who imagines an Obama presidency with a filibuster proof Congress lead by Pelosi and Reid should be horrified. Bush never had such unchecked power. The lurch to the left under such a triumvirate will be so sharp and violent, so naïve and reckless, and the turn to shut down free speech so aggressive, that it will tear this country apart. Are we ready for a black president? Or a woman president? Yes, we are. I would vote for either or both myself, and there are plenty of good black and female politicians out there I would vote for. Not coincidentally the ones I support tend to support the free market, religious freedom and limited constitutional republican government. But that's the way it's supposed to be: we support people who support our values regardless of race or gender. A better question might be: Are we ready for an Hugo Chavez or Raila Odinga? No. But that is precisely what Obama is. Everything in his record screams this fact, louder than any of the hype around his supposed intelligence, post-partisan, post-racial persona, which frankly is all political myth, with absolutely no basis in fact. - Bob _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
