Byron York has an interesting look at Barack Obama’s speech to the Human Rights Campaign on Saturday night.

The Center for American Progress, which is the outside the White House arm of the administration, claims Obama signaled that he is standing by Jennings. Maybe, but as Byron York notes, maybe not. What Obama actually said was:

And it’s for this reason if any of my nominees are attacked not for what they believe but for who they are, I will not waver in my support because I will not waver in my commitment to ending discrimination in all its forms.

No one is attacking Kevin Jennings for being gay.

People are after Kevin Jennings for being a supporter of pedophilia advocates and NAMBLA supporters.

People are after Kevin Jennings for encouraging a sexual relationship between a fifteen year old boy and a grown man who solicited the kid in a bus station bathroom.

People are after Kevin Jennings for being named “Safe Schools Czar” while under the believe that schools cannot be safe as long as the Boy Scouts of America are allowed to meet in public schools.

People are after Kevin Jennings because he believes kindergardeners should be taught about gay sex.

People are after Kevin Jennings not because of who he is, but because of what he has and is advocating — a complete rejection of common decency in favor of the most radical aspects of the gay agenda including, but not limited to, man-boy sex.

It is pathetic that we even have to write about such topics here, but that is what it has come to, thanks to Barack Obama’s open mind, so open that all decency and perversion are treated as just equally acceptable non-conflicting alternatives. All decency, that is, except traditional American values.

Josh Silver, the Executive Director of Free Press a media reform group, wrote a piece at the Huffington Post a few days ago urging Glenn Beck to “Stop the Insanity”, tying beck to “Charles Coughlin’s hate speeches”

Looking back, it’s hard to believe that Father Charles Coughlin’s hate speeches were broadcast into millions of homes during the 1930s. Coughlin’s anti-Semitic rants incited prejudice and violence. Now, in the Internet age, it seems positively antiquated that one person could have such a powerful soapbox to engage in fear-mongering and hate speech.

In Silver’s Huffington Post article, he argues that Beck launched a smear campaign against Van Jones, and calls Van Jones “one of the great, principled leaders of our time”:

In the last month, Beck launched a smear campaign against one of Obama’s top environmental advisers and forced his resignation. Van Jones is one of the great, principled leaders of our time, and he was unceremoniously hung out to dry while the White House quietly acquiesced to the agents of fear.

Silver also offers a video of Van Jones speaking to Free Press’s 2008 media reform conference that ends with “join the fight for real journalism”.

Van Jones also spoke the year before here. At 5:30 Van Jones calls 2007 the tipping point of the “media justice movement”.

Jones is also on the board of Free Press, and Free Press defended him and attacked Beck in a statement saying that “our leaders have a responsibility to condemn fear-mongering … and support a more diverse media system that provides alternative voices to the likes of Glenn Beck” and “calls on [the] Obama administration to resist extremism in the media”:

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More and more videos are circulating each day of congressmen facing the wrath of the American people. Consequently, the Democrats have come up with an official talking point — the protests are bought and paid for by lobbyists and the insurance industry.

Whether we want to or not, we have to pay attention to what Think Progress says when it starts saying the same thing over and over. Think Progress is the online mouthpiece for John Podesta’s Center for American Progress.

As I wrote a while back, “Ben Smith, writing in the Politico, tells us Barack Obama’s allies meet every morning by conference call at 8:45 a.m. to build their talking points. The calls operate as a left-wing character assassination squad run by John Podesta of the Center for American Progress (“CAP”). Podesta was also Co-Chairman of the Obama-Biden Transition Project. In addition, CAP’s political wing runs a website called Think Progress, which coordinates online messaging among leftwing bloggers.”

Think Progress and, therefore, the Democrats and online left, have decided to smear Americans opposed to Obamacare as corporate shills, much as they ridiculed tea party protestors as corporate shills. They aren’t doing it to persuade the public, they are doing it to reassure wavering Democrats in Congress. Those wavering Democrats can just repeat over and over “these voters are bought and paid for by the insurance community.”

Already Dick Durbin is using the talking point. Of course, Durbin also called our soldiers in Iraq “Nazis.”

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They sort of slammed them — by implication, that is. They don’t have the guts to actually criticize their leaders. The best they can do is pick some conservative who might be guilty of the same offense, and criticize him. Then they leave it to you to connect the dots. As long as you do your homework, you can see they’re biting the hand that feeds… subtly.

In this case, the hypocrites are the team at ThinkProgress. They said nothing when George Soros bragged about having made a cool billion off of the global economic downturn, and seemed delighted at finally getting the recession he’d been predicting:

George Soros, who predicted the global financial crisis twice before, was one of the few people to anticipate and prepare for the current economic collapse…

But other investors failed to take notice of his prediction and his decision to come out of retirement in 2007 to manage the fund made him $US2.9 billion.

And while the financial crisis continued to deepen across the globe, the 78-year-old still managed to make $1.1 billion last year.

‘It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work,’ he told national newspaper The Australian.

ThinkProgress also didn’t raise a stink about Michelle Obama hypocritically parading around in $540 sneakers. Nor did they criticize Barack Obama for the costliest inauguration in American history.

Unable to muster the cojones to criticize one of their own, ThinkProgress goes after one of their favorite targets - Rush Limbaugh:

After more or less reprising his radio show routine, Limbaugh went on to brag about his $400 million contract with Clear Channel Communications. As he continued to gloat about his show’s success, Limbaugh mocked the idea that Americans are suffering, noting, “I’ve never had financially a down year” despite the “supposed” recession…

I’m sure ThinkProgress isn’t going easy on Soros because he bankrolls them. There’s probably some good reason. I wonder if he recognizes the vicious hit they’re taking at him — extremely obliquely.

Update: The Left seems to come unhinged when you attack Soros! Rather than admit he’s contemptible, several are trying to argue that Rush is denigrating those who are hurting during these tough times, while Soros is not. The only thing is, ‘I’m having a very good crisis’ is actually worse than anything Rush has said. And Soros has said plenty of other stuff worthy of our contempt. Once again, they find it hard to be honest about the guy who’s bankrolling them.

Although Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) won a vote renouncing The Fairness Doctrine 87-11 last week (see the post for more details),  Senator Dick Durbin won a vote on a measure that has the potential to stifle free speech and destroy conservative talk radio on a 57-41 vote.  A Durbin Amendment to implement a different regulatory roadmap for the FCC to stifle talk radio was passed during Senate consideration of a bill to provide a vote in the House of Representatives to the District of Columbia.  The vote on the Durbin measure is an interesting case study on how the left is working attack conservative talk radio through what I call the Son of the Fairness Doctrine. 

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Don’t be fooled by President Obama’s purported renunciation of the Fairness Doctrine last week.  The far left fully intends to use a new regulatory scheme, the Son of The Fairness Doctrine, to regulate conservative talk radio.  As Erick Erickson wrote last week on Red State, “Congress will restrict how many stations a company can own in a market. They’ll also require advisory boards for each station and make it easier to address consumer complaints against stations.”  Although the left has backed away from the Fairness Doctrine because it is ineffective, they are gathering support for an attack on conservative talk radio.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com that “As the President stated during the campaign, he does not believe the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated.”  Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) said to The Washington Times, “I’m glad President Obama finally confirmed his opposition to the Fairness Doctrine … but many Democrats in Congress are still pushing it.  With the support of the new administration, now is the time for Congress to take a stand against this kind of censorship.”

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The evidence is mounting day by day that the left is getting ready to use the new power they have in the Obama Administration and Congress to reinstate something similar to The Fairness Doctrine.  Two Senators recently expressed an interest in providing government mandated “balance” to talk radio.  Liberal Democrats are preparing to use the full force of the federal government to attack conservative talk radio, especially leaders like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Matt Drudge, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham and other conservative/libertarian leaders.  

Liberal Senators will use the roadmap written by the left wing Center for American Progress I refer to as the Fairness Doctrine on Steroids that would implement a comprehensive stifling of conservative talk radio. The lefty’s idea is different from the fairness doctrine, yet it would be a more effective tool to stifle conservatives on the radio. So much for the First Amendment.

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