A Wednesday afternoon dose of Occupy Wall Street predictability courtesy of MRCTV:

To get a pulse of the thinking of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, MRCTV’s Dan Joseph asked them a series of quickie questions, one being whom they thought was a greater threat to the United States: conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh or international terrorist group al Qaeda?

The results weren’t completely predictable: one person answered “Al Qaeda.” Poseur!

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Sigh. Seriously, Tina Brown?

Yes, I’m talking about you, Oxford University-educated Newsweek/Daily Beast editor Tina Brown.

You’ve resorted to recycling bottom-of-the-barrel moonbat photo cliches about conservative female public figures and their enraged “crazy eyes?” Really?

Who’s in charge of Newsweek cover graphics now — a Media Matters Soros Monkey? A random Daily Kos commenter? Keith Olbermann’s intern’s intern?

The once-mighty Newsweek magazine-turned-Beast is apparently so proud of its Democratic Underground-pandering Michele Bachmann cover and title that its editors are promoting the photo and pushing the hashtag #QueenofRage on Twitter.

And the left-wing press is eating it up:

Gawker, predictably: “Ha ha, just kidding—they don’t call her CrazyEyes for nothing.”

The Village Voice rejoices after receiving a high-res image of the cover (and dutifully cropping Bachmann’s eyes).

More reax: Newsbusters and Dana Loesch (who launches her own caption contest for Tina Brown).

Rep. Bachmann is unabashedly conservative, willing to take both parties’ leaders to task, passionate about her work, popular with grass-roots activists on the Right, committed to reining in the size, scope, and power of government, and yes, expressive. For all this, she must be destroyed.

No doubt the editors and photog will deny doing anything to make Bachmann look bad.

But here’s what GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann looks like in a straight photo.

A link-filled reminder: The liberal media fetish of demonizing conservative women and their looks goes back years.

In 2005, I blasted USA Today for altering a photo of then-GOP Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to demonize her eyes. The before:

And after:

After a massive backlash from bloggers, commenters, photography software experts, and readers who called out the newspaper’s sneaky photo doctors, USA Today removed the retouched photo and admitted it had been enhanced — “giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards.”

It is, however, in keeping with the “crazy eyes”/”batsh*t crazy” narrative that’s a mainstay in the progressive blog sewer:

As documented by Karrin Anderson on the left-wing blog Bag News Notes, the Bachmann-eye-bashing editors of Rolling Stone and the Huffington Post already beat Brown and her Newsweek/Beast to the punch.

Yep, the magazine that popularized those “conventional wisdom” charts is now slavishly following the conventional crap-flinging of puerile progs on the Internet.

When I came out with Culture of Corruption in 2009, for example, one Soros-employed lefty’s response consisted entirely of multiple freeze-frame shots of my “crazyface” and “wide-eyed zealot” TV appearances, including these:

To repeat what I said last month: I’d rather have “crazy eyes” than willfully blind ones.

Also: “Crazy eyes” are also useful for doing the Mom Death Stare on unruly kids. Invaluable weapon. Wouldn’t trade these peepers for anything.

While Anderson notes that a few liberal female politicians also have faced the exaggerated crazy-eye photo treatment, she fails to recognize that those images are almost all relegated to Internet humor/blog sites — as opposed to the mainstreaming of demon conservatives images by national media publications.

As faithful readers will recall, The Atlantic magazine hired unhinged photog Jill Greenberg in 2008 to take a cover photo of then-GOP presidential candidate John McCain…

…which Greenberg then altered for her website thusly (this is just one of several bizarro images she photoshopped and featured on her professional website)…

…causing The Atlantic to issue this mortified editor’s note:

We stand by the respectful image of John McCain that we used on our cover, and we expect to be judged by it. We were not aware of the manipulated and dishonest images Jill Greenberg had taken until this past Friday.

Jill Greenberg has obviously not done that. She has, in fact, disgraced herself, and we are appalled by the manipulated images of John McCain she has created for her Web site.

It wasn’t just about vetting her political views, though. It was her previous record of unethical and unprofessional behavior motivated by left-wing malice. Greenberg tricked McCain into standing over a light to create ugly shadows on his face. Manipulation is her stock and trade. (Indeed, it’s her Twitter handle.) Four years earlier, she deliberately terrorized children, stripped them, ordered parents to “step out of the studio for a couple minutes” in concerted attempts to make children cry who were not cooperating, and then captioned the photos of the children with anti-Bush slogans.

Later, she admitted to trying to make Glenn Beck look bad (a failed attempt that he laughed off) in photo art published by Time magazine.

Time magazine has previously carried distorted photos and photoshops of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

Disseminating unflattering photos of conservatives isn’t journalism. It’s Alinskyite narrative-shaping. And for holier-than-thou highbrow poseurs from Time and Newsweek to the Soros zoo and rage photog Jill Greenberg, it’s a hard habit to break.

***

Question: When was the last time Time or Newsweek put a halo around a conservative politician? Hmmm?

When last we visited the financial monkey business taking place in race-hustling Rev. Al Sharpton’s non-profit “National Action Network” last September, an internal audit showed delinquent taxes, shoddy bookkeeping, and campaign finance law-skirting.

The hijinks continue unabated.

Yesterday, the NYPost reported a new tax tab for Sharpton and Co.:

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has vowed to clean up his fiscal house, has a new tax lien to pay.

Sharpton owes $359,973 to the IRS for 2009 personal income tax, according to documents on file with the city.

Public records show he owes a total of $3.7 million in city, state and federal taxes, including penalties, dating to 2002. But Sharpton’s spokeswoman, Rachel Noerdlinger, said that he had paid back “well over seven figures” as part of agreements with the state and IRS and that the liens remained on the books as “a matter of bureaucracy.”

Perhaps Sharpton’s rent-a-mobsters should get out of Rush Limbaugh’s business and stick their noses in the National Action Network’s books instead.

I noticed a new game the blamestream media is playing this week. It’s the same game they played with Sarah Palin last week: Blame the victim. After a slew of Democrat leaders issued open threats against talk radio, conservative radio hosts rose up to defend themselves. And now, the BSM is deriding those who work in talk radio for inserting themselves into the Tucson massacre story and for having a “persecution complex.” No, really.

This week’s column also spotlights the repeated attempts by Red Queen open-borders radicals to insert themselves into the Tucson shooting rampage that had no more to do with illegal immigration than it did with talk radio.

On a related note: The worst sheriff in America is still mugging for the cameras.

***

The Hate Speech Inquisition
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

There isn’t a shred of evidence that deranged Tucson massacre suspect Jared Loughner ever listened to talk radio or cared about illegal immigration. Indeed, after 300 exhaustive interviews, the feds “remain stumped” about his motives, according to Tuesday’s Washington Post. But that hasn’t stopped a coalition of power-grabbing politicians, progressive activists and open-borders lobbyists from plying their quack cure for the American body politic: government-sponsored speech suppression.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting rampage, Democratic leaders mused openly about reintroducing the Orwellian “Fairness Doctrine” – a legislative sledgehammer targeting conservative viewpoints on public airwaves. New York Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter assailed the Federal Communications Commission for failing to police broadcast content and vowed to “look into” more aggressive language monitoring. Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ed Markey blamed “incendiary rhetoric” for triggering “unstable individuals to take violent action.” In his own manifesto calling for resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine, Democratic Rep. James Clyburn pressed public officials to “rethink parameters on free speech.”

This week’s fashionable new media meme is to deride talk radio hosts for taking these speech-squelching threats seriously. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jay Bookman sneered at the “persecution complex” of conservative broadcasters who reacted to Slaughter and company. Politico’s Keach Hagey dismissed concerns about the Democrats’ chilling campaign against right-leaning media outlets and knocked conservative talkers’ “defensive posture.” (Sound familiar? This is the same tactic they used against Sarah Palin and all those on the right falsely accused of being accessories to the Tucson massacre: Attack ‘em. Attack ‘em for responding. Accuse the smear victims of playing the victim card. Repeat.)

Make no mistake: The Hate Speech Inquisition is real. And it’s being fought on all fronts. Last week, using the non-radio-inspired Tucson massacre as fuel, the National Hispanic Media Coalition called on the FCC to gather evidence for the left’s preconceived conclusion that conservative talk radio “hate speech” causes violence. It’s Red Queen science — sentence first, research validation later.

The head of the NHMC is Alex Nogales, who has filed more than 50 petitions to deny broadcast licenses and has led anti-corporate crusades to “force” broadcast stations across the country “to hire Latino reporters and anchors” and adopt “diversity initiatives.” Grabbing the Tucson shooting limelight, Nogales told Broadcasting and Cable magazine last week:

“We can’t stand there with our arms crossed and make like there isn’t a reason why this is happening. … We started this dialog(ue) in the last immigration debate four years ago. We could see that it was just out of control. It started with just an issue of immigration, then every pundit on radio and TV who wanted an audience started talking about it and started using the worst of language, and now it has spilled out into mainstream.”

Loughner’s wild Internet rants and creepy campus meltdowns clearly demonstrate that crazy doesn’t need a motive. But progressive censors need their bogeymen, and Nogales isn’t about to give them up for reality’s sake. The NHMC first filed a petition in October 2009 demanding that the FCC collect data, seek public comment and “explore options” for combating “hate speech” from staunch critics of illegal immigration. The petition followed on National Council of La Raza President Janet Murguia’s call for media outlets to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves “even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights.”

Nogales’ group is part of a larger “media justice” coalition dedicated to curtailing and redistributing conservatives’ political speech under the guise of diversity and decency. As left-wing philanthropists at the Media Justice Fund put it: The movement “is grounded in the belief that social and economic justice will not be realized without the equitable redistribution and control of media and communication technologies.” But, hey, we better just ignore these communications control freaks lest we be accused of suffering a “persecution complex.”

The Praetorian Guards of civility keep telling us that “words matter.” Threats should be taken seriously, they insist. Except, of course, when those words and threats are uttered by those hell-bent on regulating their opponents’ discourse out of existence.

John Kerry’s list of significant epochs in world history:

–Upper Cambrian
–Lower Permian
–Middle Jurassic
–Paleocene
–Gigolocene
–Know Nothing (Late 2010-?)

Thurston Heinz III’s swift boat has sprung a leak in the deep end again. Strange — just a couple of years ago the country was brilliant, progressive and in a period of mass awakening, and less that 24 months later that same nation is ignorant and blind to the facts.

Could it be that some of the hypnotized hopeful who believed harmonic convergence would be free and that clean air, world peace, free gas and kickass careers had finally arrived in the form of catch-phrases and campaign slogans eventually awakened to the fact that they were duped? Nah, it’s much easier just to blame talk radio for dumbing down America:

With his party braced for defeats in the midterm elections, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee told the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce that a Republican machine — fueled by talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck — has undermined progress and misled the public into believing Democrats created the country’s current economic problems.
[...]
“It’s absurd. We’ve lost our minds,” said a clearly exasperated Kerry. “We’re in a period of know-nothingism in the country, where truth and science and facts don’t weigh in. It’s all short-order, lowest common denominator, cheap-seat politics.”

The “enthusiasm gap” talk among Democrats means the left thinks the problem isn’t as much that Republicans are going to outnumber Democrats at the polls next week, but that many Democrats who showed up two years ago are going to sit this one out. It’s doubtful that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are the ones who have convinced these particular left-leaning voters to stay home. John Kerry is as adept at avoiding reality as he is at avoiding Massachusetts luxury taxes.

Kerry’s comments about the “Big Dig” are as priceless as the Big Dig itself. To paraphrase Thurston, the Big Dig “cost way too much and was poorly managed, and as a result other cities will want to replicate it.” Kerry must be on the payroll to get Tea Parties targeted to local governments.

Kerry also blamed Republicans for the country’s woes, pointing out, for example, that the $700 billion TARP bailout was requested by President Bush. This particular “blame Republicans” point might have been a little more effective if Kerry himself hadn’t voted yes on passing TARP. But since this is the period of “know nothingism,” I imagine Kerry’s counting on us not knowing that.

(h/t Jammie Wearing Fool)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Opinions will no doubt vary among Rush fans for his agreeing to lend his voice to an entire Family Guy episode revolving around him. The show airs Sunday night on Fox.

I’m not a regular viewer of the show, but I have seen it on a few occasions and am well aware of its penchant for the full-throttle dredging for low-level laughs by insulting and/or mocking the handicapped, veterans, old people, young people, minorities, majorities and the Palins. Sacred cows of the left are mercilessly shish kabobbed as well, though on much rarer occasion from what I’ve seen. When it comes to all of the above, Family Guy can make South Park look like Romper Room.

Here’s a preview of the Rush episode — what do you think? Looks damn funny to me — but I’ve been accused of having an overly irreverent sense of humor (my wife just doesn’t get me sometimes), so you’ll have to decide for yourself:

(h/t WZ)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Guilt by high school classmate.

Yes, the left has found a way to play the Rush Limbaugh card in the Koran-burning case:

Terry Jones, the Florida pastor threatening to burn a Koran tomorrow on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, was a high school classmate of Rush Limbaugh.

…MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann was one of the first to call attention to the Limbaugh/Jones nexus when he posted news of it on Twitter overnight: ” ‘Rev.’ Terry Jones was classmate of none other than Rush Limbaugh (Cape Central class of ’69). Coincidence?”

Liberal rules of association:

1) It’s beyond the bounds to point out an intimate, 20-year relationship between Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

2) It’s not only acceptable, but de rigeur, to hype Rush Limbaugh’s fellow high school alum.

As if you needed any more proof of the bankruptcy of the “news” media, this “story” is now the number one post on Memeorandum.

Rush Limbaugh is getting married today to Kathryn Rogers, and the “wedding singer” is none other than Elton John:

It’s wedding bells for Rush Limbaugh – for the fourth time.

The conservative firebrand, 59, will exchange vows Saturday in Florida with Kathryn Rogers – a blond bombshell half his age – in a lavish Hawaiian-themed wedding bash headlined by none-other-than Sir Elton John.

It’s an odd pairing considering El Rushbo’s history of anti-gay commentary on his conservative radio show and the openly gay “Tiny Dancer” singer’s longtime commitment to gay rights.

Some various blogs and news stories I’ve read so far mentioning Elton John being hired to perform at Rush’s wedding reception focus only on Rush’s staunch conservatism vs. Elton’s gay activism, comments about banning religion and liberal politics in general as being odd bedfellows — for lack of a better term. “Why would Elton John play at Rush Limbaugh’s wedding?” Simple: Capitalism:

The Palm Beach Post reported the British superstar will pocket $1 million for playing the wedding reception at the posh Breakers Hotel.

Without capitalism, Elton wouldn’t have performed at Rush Limbaugh’s wedding and Rush wouldn’t have been in the position to pay that much for the evening’s entertainment. Capitalism: It can bring people from all walks of life together.

I congratulate Rush and Kathryn, and also tip my Detroit Tigers cap to Elton John for performing at the wedding, because he’s got to know he’s going to take some heat for this in his left-leaning, artsy, environmentalist, gay-activist circle of pals — most of whom would gladly accept a million bucks from George W. Bush to tap dance on a floor made of California Redwood and elephant tusk or take whacks at a piñata in the likeness of Harvey Milk that Roger Ailes stuffed with cash. But they’d never admit it.

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Ew.

As I mentioned this afternoon, Democrat Rep. Eric Massa owes much of his career and political success to anti-war nutball Gen. Wesley Clark.

Massa served under Clark and worked on Clark’s doomed presidential campaign. Clark provided the cash-strapped Massa critical PAC support, nutroots help, and funding for Massa’s congressional bid.

Gen. Clark, you may recall, was also the speech-stifling zealot who led the backdoor “Fairness Doctrine” drive to kick Rush Limbaugh off of Armed Forces Radio in 2007. The pretext for that censorship campaign was Harry Reid and the Left’s false claim that Rush had “smeared” American troops because he dared to mention the disturbing trend of phony, anti-war soldiers like the infamous Jesse MacBeth (see here and here for refresher courses on Winter Soldier Syndrome). You may remember that Rush turned the Democrats’ attack on its head and raised millions of dollars to benefit the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation by auctioning off Reid’s bully letter.

Well, here’s another reminder that the relentlessly opportunistic Massa chimed in on the side of Clark, Reid, and the leftists providing cover for anti-war fraudsters like MacBeth and his ilk. In fact, he recorded a YouTube campaign spot attacking Rush that as of 11:40pm Eastern tonight, was still featured on his MassaforCongress channel:

Transcript…

MASSA 1:38:00 — “You’re a pompous coward and it’s about time that someone called you out on it. And that someone is me. My name is Eric Massa. I’ll go on your show any day. And I’ll say it to your face and I’ll say it anywhere. You did your best to dodge military service while hundreds of thousands of Americans wore the uniform to give you the privilege of misusing the radio waves and spread propagandistic lies that are wholly inaccurate about our military service members. I know them personally. Many of them are deep and dear friends of mine. And I daresay, Mr. Limbaugh, if you asked any of them today, they’d much rather stand with those of us who stood with each other rather than with you.

I’m tired of your tactics..You might have a lot of weight to throw around, but it doesn’t carry a lot of weight with me. Rush Limbaugh, I’ll go on your show any day. My name is Eric Massa and you know where to find me.

“Conservative hero” my foot.

“Crapweasel” is too kind a description for the desperate, bottom-feeding Massa. He is not a useful idiot. He’s just an idiot.

Leave him to the likes of Democrat creep Eliot Spitzer. Blech (and note that this ad ran just one day before Spitzer resigned as a result of Client Number Nine-gate. Birds of a feather:

Takeaway line delivered by Spitzer: “Together, we’re going to clean up waste, fraud, and abuse in government.”

Creep Factor: 10+

***

More from New York blogger/columnist Bob Lonsberry.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line:

The Washington Post reports that “conservative activists [have] rallied to the side of” Rep. Eric Massa “after he charged that his party’s leaders had conspired to oust him over his opposition to President Obama’s health-care legislation.” I’m quite willing to believe the worst about Rahm Emmanuel and the Democratic leadership in the House. However, I’m not prepared on the current record to “rally to the side” of Rep. Massa.

My reluctance stems from the fact that Massa’s story doesn’t seem to add up. His claim, as I understand it, is that the charges of sexual harassment against him represent a conspiracy to force him to leave the House before it votes on health care legislation. Massa is a committed “no” vote.

Massa says he’s innocent of anything more than a few borderline comments at a party. But he has resigned in order, he says, to avoid an investigation that would injure his family and divide his staff.

But if Massa’s version of the facts is correct, then he has little to fear from an investigation. Moreover, any investigation would likely occur only after Massa cast his “no” vote. If he truly believed he was the victim of the vicious plot he alleges, Massa would likely stick around to cast his vote and then leave town. What better way to get back at Emmanuel and company?

***

Update from John McCormack at Weekly Standard: “Reliable sources on Capitol Hill say the House ethics report on Eric Massa will be damning.”

Conservative radio talk host Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a Honolulu hospital on Wednesday afternoon with chest pains, sources told KITV.

Paramedics responded to the call at 2:41 p.m. at the Kahala Hotel and Resort.

Limbaugh suffered from chest pains, sources said. Paramedics treated him and took him to Queen’s Medical Center in serious condition.

He was seen golfing at Waialae Country Club earlier this week. The country club is next to the Kahala Hotel and Resort.

More at the Rush Limbaugh website. He is “resting comfortably” now. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Throwing out a couple discussion topics:

* What good is an “opposition” party that wants to elect its own worst opponents? Related: Where is Sarah Palin?

* Rush shreds the RAAAAAAACIST card. Related: First newspaper retracts fake RAAAACIST Rush quotes.

* Out: Dissent is patriotic! In: Fox News Channel’s dissenting anchors are unpatriotic!

* ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief: “The more I spoke about Obama and the Democrats part in the ACORN scandal, the more I drifted away from the ACORN 8. I never thought that their mission was bad, but ACORN’s subversive nature is rooted in pay for play politics and if one is to clean house, it has to be across the board. I was proud when Marcel appeared on Glenn Beck but often dismayed at the picture she painted of ACORN. Yes, the members are great people, but they do not need an ACORN to help them. Local based initiatives run by people in their own communities seem to do more to really help the poor. As more ACORN corruption was exposed, it became evident that reform was really not an option, it was a band aid on the Titanic. By breaking free of someone else’s agenda and doing the right thing, I was able to take this story to another level by doing research and exposing even more corruption.”

Talk amongst yourselves!

The apocalyptic hysteria over Rush Limbaugh’s interest in buying an NFL team is yet another stark reminder of the limits (and double standards) of left-wing tolerance.

Doug Powers lists the cretins the NFL welcomes into the fold. As for partisanship in sports, there’s Obama-philic Steelers owner Dan Rooney. And as Doug pointed out in last month, while the NFL PAC leans left, NFL owners, team officials, players and coaches overwhelmingly favor Republicans.

No matter. Rush-bashers are so desperate to keep him from pursuing his football team ownership dream that they have resorted to fabricating racist quotes.

Par for the course.

Back in February, I wrote a Sunday piece for the NYPost on the anti-Rush revival after President Obama attacked the conservative talk show giant by name. This passage holds true today, as it has for two decades:

I asked Limbaugh this week why his enemies on the Left repeatedly fall into the trap of distorting his words and overreaching in their anti-talk radio demagoguery. Why, after 20 years, don’t they learn?

“On the contrary,” he said, “I think they believe all of these campaigns to have been profoundly successful. Their objective is to use their brethren in the drive-by media to echo their charges against me for the purpose of ensuring that I do not become ‘mainstream’ in the popular and political cultures. They strive to have the general population, particularly those who do not listen to the radio, hate me (and by association, all of conservatism). This happens for one reason: I am effective and thus have to be marginalized as an extremist, fringe figure.”

***

On a related note, Ken Shepherd at Newsbusters spotlights anti-religious bigotry against Florida Gators QB Tim Tebow.

What are they so afraid of?

***

Update….

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from a group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams. Limbaugh was to be a limited partner in a bid led by St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts, but Checketts said in a statement Wednesday that Limbaugh’s participation had complicated the effort. The group will move forward without him.

Rush Derangement Syndrome took over the NFL. It’s a damned shame that the selective guardians of football chose to side with race hustlers, quote fabricators, and political opportunists over their own self-interest. The game has no more passionate fan and supporter than Rush Limbaugh. But now the NFL thinks it can afford to apply ideological litmus tests for ownership. What’s next? Political litmus tests for fans, too?

In case you missed it yesterday, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck spotlighted Team Obama’s direct and indirect threats to free speech — and how the Fairness Doctrine (or some stealthier form of it) might be reinstituted.

Watch the whole thing.

Rush has the full transcript. An excerpt:

BECK: Now joining me on the phone is radio talk show host Mr. Rush Limbaugh. Rush?

RUSH: Glenn Beck. How are you, sir?

BECK: Very good, sir. I want to play something for you. I don’t know if you just saw it, but I want to play it again. This is the new diversity officer for the FCC, a newly created position. This is what he said at a speech or talk he was giving about Chavez’s Venezuela and how the media work down there. Watch this.

MARK LLOYD: In Venezuela, with Chavez, you really had an incredible revolution — democratic revolution — to begin to put in place things that were going to have impact on the people of Venezuela. The property owners and the folks who were then controlling the media in Venezuela rebelled — worked, frankly, with folks here in the US government — worked to oust him. He came back and had another revolution, and Chavez then started to take the media very seriously in his country.

BECK: Rush, I find that breathtaking.

RUSH: I find the whole administration breathtaking, Glenn. You’re doing great job this whole week. I mean I saw Sarah Palin even “tweeted” about what you’re doing, urging people to watch. This whole administration is as radical and far left as any that the country has ever had, and what they’re trying to do here to communications is simply stifle dissenting voices. They’re trying to wipe out any opposition. If you look at Barack Obama and his track record as a politician, it is to clear the playing field. He doesn’t even like debating his opponents. He just wants to get rid of them. And this “diversity czar” comes from a fringe, radical, Saul Alinsky-type of background; and the things that he’s talking about doing — and I watched your show for the first half hour today — but the things he’s talking about doing to shut down radio are simply un-American. It’s not enough to say that it’s not constitutional.

It’s simply un-American, and make no bones about it, folks, Glenn is right — and I think he’s maybe underselling a little bit about as far as their intentions are concerned. The stimulus plan! Glenn, look at what they’re doing to the US economy. Anybody with a sense of economic literacy would know this is not how you create jobs. You do not rebuild the private sector. This is being done on purpose. All of these disasters are exactly what Obama wants. The more crises, the better. The more opportunity for government to say, “Let us come in and fix the problem.” His number one opposition is on radio and Fox News. His number one opposition is on radio. They can’t go Fairness Doctrine because it’s too obvious. So they’re trying to do this backdoor route with “diversity” and ownership, a 100% tax on operating in order to pay public radio because they’re supposedly fair. It’s insidious. But I don’t think it’s gonna work in the end because the American people are too informed, Glenn. They’re too aware of it. Their radio means too much to them. Their free speech — freedom in general — means way too much to them. And just as they’re fighting back on health care and a number of other things, so will they fight back on this.

***

Flashback:

Barack Obama has a stunning lack of tolerance for free speech. And one thing Americans can expect from an Obama administration, and a Democratic-controlled Congress, is a legislative attempt to bring back the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which will limit free speech and diminish the conservative influence on talk radio.

A new ATI-News/Zogby International poll released on Oct. 26 made it clear that those who intend to vote for Obama support re-establishing the Fairness Doctrine.

The poll asked likely voters, “Some members of Congress have discussed reinstating the Fairness Doctrine for broadcasting. The Fairness Doctrine requires radio stations to provide equal air time for opposing viewpoints.”

“If reinstated, regulators determine if both sides of an issue are equally presented. There is concern among some broadcasters that this equal presentation could lead to dropping some popular conservative talk shows in an effort to avoid airing less popular liberal talk shows. Knowing this, do you support or oppose reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine?”

Those likely to vote for Obama support reinstating the Fairness Doctrine by a margin of 49 percent to 36 percent, and Democrats support it 47 to 38 percent. Independents marginally support the fairness doctrine 42 percent to 40 percent, though this is within the poll’s margin of error. (The remaining respondents all replied “not sure.”)

Those polled were then asked, “Some say the Fairness Doctrine could result in popular radio shows, such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, to be taken off the air in some markets. Knowing this, do you support or oppose reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine?”

When informed that the Fairness Doctrine might take Limbaugh and Hannity off the air, the percentage of Democrat likely voters who support the Fairness Doctrine rose to 53 percent. The percentage of Obama supporters supporting the Doctrine rose four points to 53 percent. However, the percentage of Independents opposed to the Fairness Doctrine rose to 49 percent.

I noted in my column on the Internet Snitch Brigade this morning that former CAP operatives have been installed at HHS and work closely with the health care czar.

At Newsbusters, Seton Motley reports on the new FCC “Diversity Officer” — a racial engineering czar who has been targeting conservative talk radio since his days working for CAP.

Know your enemy:

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced a new “Chief Diversity Officer,” communications attorney Mark Lloyd.

But Doctor of Jurisprudence Lloyd is far more than merely a communications attorney. He was at one time a Senior Fellow at the uber-liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), for whom he co-wrote a June 2007 report entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.”

Which rails against the fact that the American people overwhelmingly prefer to listen to conservative (and Christian) talk radio rather than the liberal alternative, and suggests ways the federal government can remedy this free-market created “problem.”

* Restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations.
* Ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing.
* Require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.

These last two get perilously close to the use of “localism” to silence conservative (and Christian) radio stations, about which we have been warning for quite some time.