Mark it down.  President Obama’s “make or break” speech, as the media is portraying it, will be widely viewed as a success among the chattering class.  It will be groundbreaking, visionary, full of clarity, and a “game changer,” as CNN has already labeled it.

But sit tight, that’s just for a while.  Patrick Rufini had it right on Twitter last night.

Tmrw’s speech will be widely praised for resetting the debate on #hcr. And then everything will go back to exactly how it was within 96 hrs

Exactly.  What Patrick realizes, that the MSM does not, is that short term gain is all the president’s speech is intended to do.  If the speech was to be anything like what the media is previewing, the White House would not be making it known that Obama does not plan to offer any real specifics, and plans to be “non-committal” on the central question of the whole debate, the so-called “public option.”

No, the speech is nothing more than an “operational pause,” to borrow a military term of art.  The aftermath is meant to be the calm before the storm.  Next week, the real advance begins.

So as you read the headlines tomorrow, and watch the tingling commentators tonight, remember that it’s all just part of the plan.  And steel yourself for the coming fight.

You gotta hand it to E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post.

Really, the town hall angst is really just a media conspiracy to make Obama and liberals look bad.

But what if our media-created impression of the meetings is wrong? What if the highly publicized screamers represented only a fraction of public opinion? What if most of the town halls were populated by citizens who respectfully but firmly expressed a mixture of support, concern and doubt?

Uh-huh. So are the tanking poll numbers, I guess.

Failing that, he’ll just have Organizing for America use them as a fundraising foil.

Yes.  Foil. Greg Sargent:

This has to be the Obama camp’s most direct and premeditated shot at the media yet: His outside political operation just blasted an email to supporters directly faulting the press for falling down on the job of debunking health care “lies.”

The email from Organizing for America, which was forwarded by a reader, is obviously not addressed to the media and explicitly focuses blames on the press for the traction that reform foes have gained. Hitting the media riles the base, and the email also asks for donations to fund OFA, because “stepping in where the media fails is a daunting challenge.”

(Copy of email here)

Glenn Reynolds (H/T) thinks this is the current administration running through the arc of the last administration’s second term at double speed: I think that it’s a natural result of the Democrats going out and finding a left-wing duplicate not of George W Bush, but of their flawed and partisan perception of George W Bush. The two views are probably not incompatible, of course. It’s also kind of funny to see Sargent’s self-consciously understated disapproval; reading between the lines, he’s as affronted as a cat being served kibble instead of tuna - but his own comments section is highly sympathetic to the ‘right-wing media’ fundraising ploy, so he can’t show it too plainly…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

I realize you are all very busy cashing enormous checks from health care lobbyists and engaging in mob activity at town halls (with your old people and your sandals and whatnot), but please allow me to interrupt briefly with a story far too delightful to allow its passing unremarked.

This is a tale of Keith Olbermann: sportscaster, eye-glasses wearer, living comedy routine and, according to multiple left wing sources of late, a blatant liar. Actually, I believe Keith’s favorite way of saying it is ‘bald-faced’ liar. Just what is it (this time) this bald face is lying about? Oh, this is so where it gets fun. It’s not even one of those, ‘get the popcorn’ moments. This is like, you write in to popcorn forum … “Dear Orville, I never thought these stories were true until it happened to me.”

Wait, before we go on, I just want to throw this out there. Clark Kent was the worst secret identity ever. Right? He looked just like Superman, they were never in the same place at the same time, and just like Supe, Clark was a goody-two-shoes boyscout. But with glasses. Right? Obvious. See, if I were a super-hero, I would make my secret identity like, the biggest douche in the world. Like, the hugest. So no one would EVER think to suspect him. Plus he’d wear glasses. See where I’m going? Hey, I’m just trying to find some kind of balance in the universe, you know what I mean?

Anyway, back to the story. It all starts with an article that ran in the New York Times a few weeks ago. In it, a supposed truce between MSNBC and Fox News, and in particular between O’Reilly and Olbermann, was said to have been arranged by the network bigwigs. You see, Keith had been accusing Bill of being responsible for the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller, a sentiment cheered by the 23 people in Keith’s audience. In return, Bill led an effective campaign of boycotts and letter-writing against MSNBC parent, GE. I would say things got ugly, but considering the participants in this fiasco it should go without saying. Ergo, at last, the truce.

Not so fast, said Keith to three different cameras. No doubt out of fear of being seen as a “sell-out” by his kostituency, Olbermann went on the air with a worst persons in the world segment blasting the article, Bill O, and Fox News. He declared his independence, presumably from MSNBC not Kos, and then posted about it at, yes, DailyKos. Keith blogged that “there is no ‘deal’ between MSNBC and Fox over what we can and cannot cover. This is part of a continuing strategy of blackmail by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, that reaches back to 2004, and has as its goal the cancellation of ‘Countdown.’”

So. Definitive? Yes. Problem Solved? Not so much.

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Actually, the first half of this article from Peggy Noonan is not all that bad.  But Ms. Noonan goes astray somewhere in between blaming Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for everything from all the ills of the Republican Party to the Kennedy assassination.

This is the part I cannot abide:

“Here’s why all this matters. The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think.

Here are a few examples of what we may face in the next 10 years: a profound and prolonged American crash, with the admission of bankruptcy and the spread of deep social unrest; one or more American cities getting hit with weapons of mass destruction from an unknown source; faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate.

The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.”

Just how are the Democrats meeting these standards, Ms. Noonan? How is the boy-wonder president that you were so infatuated with not so long ago doing on that score? Not so great, eh?

Ms, Noonan, if you are so concerned all these catastrophe coming to be, try concentrating fire on those in power right now who are acting to bring them about as a matter of policy.

I guess he’s getting a good rate of return. Accuracy in the Media notes:

Barack Obama’s White House is spending more than $80,000 a week to staff its old and new media offices. Add the price of speechwriters and the White House communications tab reaches nearly $100,000 a week, or nearly $5 million a year-and that is for salaries alone.

That is a significant increase from the Bush Administration.

Then there’s this:

Obama also quadrupled the size of the public liaison staff. According to the last Bush administration staff salary report, President Bush employed three people in his liaison office at a cost of $335,500.

In other words, Obama is not just staging press events and staging questions, he’s bought his own media operation to bypass the press altogether.

And their response?

Fawning adoration. He is, after all, making their job easier by writing the articles for them.

The fallout from David Lecherman’s raunchy and sexist attack on 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her daughters has yet to settle, but already a silver lining has appeared around the mushroom cloud lingering over such attacks, which have become common from the left.

Until Gov. Palin stood her ground and declared that Creepy Dave apologize to young girls everywhere, liberal feminists had remained silent in the wake of attacks on conservative women, their children and their values. Now an increasing number of them have been pushed to the point where they can remain silent no more. Those women who truly believe in the principles of feminism have been forced to choose between their feminist ideals and the sort of political tactics taught by Saul Alinsky and other radical leftists.

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Moe wrote about Hiram Monserrate back when the story broke about his Christmas-time attack on his girlfriend with a broken beer bottle for having another man’s business card in her purse. The woman needed 20 stitches around her eye.

In reaction, the brand new incoming NY Democratic Senate Majority closed ranks around their man and one of their number, State Senator Eric Adams, went so far as to criticize the police for trying to “humiliate” the State Senator-Elect by making such a fuss of his girlfriends bottle-carved face.

Anyway, after a little flash-in-the-pan coverage of the entire incident, the rabidly Democratic/liberal New York media conveniently “forgot” all about Hiram “Slasher” Monserrate and his girlfriend. In case one doesn’t know, the Democratic media and its journalists are very capable of strategically ignoring violence against women for political ends. (see Kopechne, Mary Jo and one Kennedy, Edward Moore).

In other words, given a choice between weakening the Democrats’ hold of the NY State Senate - finally achieved after several long frustrating decades - and not risking that by ensuring that justice is done for a battered woman (as they certainly would have if Monserrate was a Republican), they predictably went with the former.

Which is why Hiram Monserrate just made a big mistake. The only reason his face and that of his erstwhile girlfriend’s with the twenty stitches have been largely off the radar in the NY media, and he hasn’t been hounded into stepping down before he spent a single day in court, was because of the ‘D’ he wore behind his name.

He just exchanged it for the hated ‘R’ - and now the journalists, their editors and all the liberals who have hitherto been all-too-happy to ignore his legal troubles so long as he was a vote for a Democratic Majority Leader are going to suddenly - very conveniently - rediscover their outrage.

Oh well … can’t say I feel sorry for him. I do feel sorry for his girlfriend and I hope she’s fully recovered and carried on with her life. But I feel even more sorry for the people of New York.

Last May, in the heat of the Democratic primary and coming off of a disastrous showing in the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama reversed course and publicly denounced his controversial pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, after refusing to do so the month before. In his now famous Philadelphia speech on race relations, Obama said he could no more disown Wright than he could disown the black community. Wright then made an appearance at the National Press Club on April 28th, one week after the Pennsylvania primary, in which he refused to recant his controversial sermons, the revelation of which had brought pressure on the Obama campaign. Soon after, Obama would disown him, using the pretext of Wright’s affirmation of his sermons as the reason for his change of mind.

Wright disappeared from the campaign after that, disproving speculation that he was out to destroy Obama’s campaign out of anger at his former charge’s repudiation. At the time, I questioned whether it was all a set up. Did Obama and Wright conspire together to get Wright and the controversy surrounding Obama’s 20-year attendance at his Trinity United Church out of the news in advance of the crucial North Carolina and Indiana primaries? Now, there may be proof.

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Despite taking place in the Information Age, very few of the heroic exploits of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines since September 11, 2001, have made their way into the living rooms of ordinary Americans — at least in any lasting way.

Whether this is the result of changing values among the American people, the general population’s perpetually dwindling attention span, or because there are so many things closer to home our nation is choosing to focus on instead of our service men and women’s gallant deeds and efforts (whether that be a rocky national economy or the latest season of American Idol), the fact is this generation has failed to identify and treasure its incarnations of historic military heroes like Audie Murphy, Jimmy Doolittle, Pappy Boyington, Bill Pitsenbarger, Bud Day, and countless others.

This disappointing reality is not unique to the current decade. Who, for example, can name the most recent pre-global war on terror (GWOT) recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor? The names of Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon — two Army special operations sergeants who received the nation’s highest award for their heroic actions in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993 — are utterly foreign to the vast majority of the same American population that can name the latest movie star to file for divorce, the latest starlet to have borne a child out of wedlock, or the latest teen sensation to enter alcohol rehab.

Part of the problem is a lack of reporting on stories of true heroism among the men and women serving this country in war zones around the world. After all, how can people know of the deeds being done by our best and brightest if the news media — whose sole raison d’être is to report on deeds and events — doesn’t the job it exists to do?

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Promoted by Caleb … Why aren’t Sheehan and the like called extremists for protesting but veterans are? GOOD QUESTION!

It’s really too bad that the media won’t cover this video from Midnight Blue.

But hey, it’s probably for the best with him being a “right-wing extremist” (translation-veteran) and all, right?

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

From the department of pathetic ignorance or willfully not getting it (not sure which to file this one in yet) comes this clip of a CNN reporter shouting down a Chicago Tea Party attendee for not displaying the appropriate appreciation and gratitude to President Obama for his gift to the state of Illinois of billions in borrowed money and trillions in new debt.

These people simply don’t get the fact that these modern-day tea parties aren’t simply about taxes.

They’re about increased taxes and even more greatly increased debt, yes. But they’re also about the punishment of hard work and success through confiscatory government policy; about the replacement of age-old American equality of opportunity by government-mandated equality of outcome, and — perhaps most importantly — they are about current attempts by liberal politicians to interject government into the daily life decisions of ordinary American citizens.

CNN reporter Susan Roesgen can try to control the focus of these tea parties all she wants by shouting at participants to talk only about taxes, but that just shows she’s missing the boat as badly as folks like Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill (Democrat), who posted to Twitter this afternoon that she was “confused” why people were fed up with trillions in government waste.

It’s okay; these people can not get it all they want. Those who participated (and are participating in) any of the thousand modern-day tea parties being held around the country today get it — and when this movement grows through 2009 and into 2010, and when its momentum is felt at the polls next year, they’ll start to get a clue just what magnitude a sleeping dragon they awoke with their profligate spending, their spreading of the wealth, and their encroachment into people’s personal lives and decisions.

The left and the press (but I repeat myself) are falling all over each other in their haste to congratulate Obama and his manly response to the pirates. A retch-worthy visit to the comments section of left blogs reveals revolting mission-accomplished-gasms and endless reposts of photo fakes featuring Obama being cool or hip with the words “I Got This” adoringly emblazoned upon the savior of the West. To say the fawning adoration is grotesque would be a dramatic understatement and an insult to the merely grotesque.

There is little surprise in adoring Obamatons rewriting the story to evoke a man of action yelling “Charge!” After all, we’re in the midst of an “overseas contingency operation” and this hostage taking was a “man-caused disaster”. So it makes perfect sense to change Obama voting “present” into “come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” That’s how newspeak works. It’s not reality, however.

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Isn’t it just a pain in the neck when there’s an alternative media that prevents strict message control by a staged-photo-op of an administration and its willing mouthpieces in the MSM?

It’s painless for us, of course; rather, that pain is being felt in the necks of those who want to insist that a bow to a Saudi king isn’t a bow, that an omnibus spending bill with 9,000 earmarks is the beginning of earmark and fiscal reform, that indecisively waiting four days while an American ship’s Captain is held hostage on a rubber raft by four Somali pirates (before being bailed out by swift action by the hostage and a SEAL team) is bold, new leadership — and that a staged event with Obama voters only and a bunch of cameras handed out as props is a real sign of soldiers’ devotion to the new, inexperienced, non-military-friendly Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces.

That’s right: courtesy of our friend Dave Hinz at The Minority Report comes the true story of a staged photo-op between a president who cares only about controlled and contrived appearances, and the component of a deployed military that was hand-selected to give him the contrived appearance he and his handlers desired.

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Get Palin! That’s Job One for The Left and its media allies, says Gary Larson at Intellectual Conservative. And to accomplish the mission, they have gone far beyond the pale. The governor’s children are considered fair game by the same people who would scream bloody murder if either of the president’s two young daughters were unfairly attacked.

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Imagine that the President of the United States is sending personal representatives to the homes of private citizens and asking them to sign a “pledge of support” for his Administration’s policies.  Imagine that those representatives are asking citizens for their names and e-mail addresses so that the “post-election” organization set up by the president can follow up with them; perhaps taking the addresses of those who refuse to sign. Imagine what the reaction of the online left would be to such activity.  Cries of “Fascism!” “Police state!” and “Voter intimidation!” would ring out from the online left in opposition to the Republican Administration’s tactic.

Now imagine that the president doing this is not a Republican, but is President Barack Obama.

President Obama’s appearance on “The Tonight Show”…was only a small part of the president’s so-called permanent campaign. A bigger move comes Saturday, when Obama will ask 13 million people on his campaign e-mail list to go door-to-door to raise support for his agenda.

The Pledge Project Canvass is an unprecedented effort by a president to reach beyond Congress and tap grassroots supporters for help. Volunteers recruited online by Obama’s Organizing for America, a post-election group, will ask citizens to sign a pledge in support of the president’s policies on energy, health care and education.

Those who pledge will be asked for their e-mail addresses so the Obama-ites can keep in touch.

“This is just the beginning for us,” said Jeremy Bird, deputy national director of Organizing for America, in an online video to Obama supporters this week.

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The Ministry of Hope invites all members of The Party to celebrate Two Minutes’ Hate against the following enemies of the people:

Hates will begin promptly at 6:30 p.m. (5:30 Central) on central feeds NBC, CBS, CNN, and PBS.

We are at war with the Private Sector. We have always been at war with The Private Sector

Below is a video we’ve all seen: Speaker Pelosi, in February 2007, denying that she or anybody in her office demanded the DOD provide her with a larger plane than the ones already provided to meet her personal-use demands.

“I have never asked for any larger plane….We’ve never asked for a larger plane, this is a myth that they are talking about on the floor,” she said. “No we haven’t asked for any larger plane. …this is not my request, it is a request of the Sergeant-at-Arms…

“We didn’t ask for a larger plane. Period.”

Unfortunately for Speaker Pelosi, her Clinton-esque outright denial of the charge that she demanded the DOD provide her with planes for personal use on the spur of the moment didn’t end the matter altogether. Instead of letting it die, Judicial Watch put in a FOIA request for the email traffic surrounding this issue — and, through that, found that the Speaker was (surprise!) lying.

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The Politico takes a look at the current trend of reporters leaving their jobs to go work for politicians. Naturally, they go pretty uniformly for Democrats.

On Tuesday, Cox’s Scott Shepard joined Sen. John Kerry’s office as a speechwriter, becoming the second journalist this year to take a job under the Massachusetts Democrat. Investigative reporter Doug Frantz is now chief investigator under the Kerry-helmed Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

A week before Zuckman announced that she’s headed for Obama’s Transportation Department, her Tribune colleague Peter Gosselin signed on as speechwriter for Obama’s treasury secretary, Tim Geithner.

In December, Jay Carney relinquished his perch as Time’s Washington bureau chief to become Vice President Joe Biden’s communications director. Warren Bass left the Washington Post’s Outlook section to write speeches and advise Dr. Susan Rice at the United Nations. Daniel W. Reilly left Politico to become communications director for Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) Linda Douglass left the National Journal for the Obama campaign back in May, and is expected to become assistant secretary for public affairs in the department of Health and Human Services.

Al Hunt does his best to spin this as a matter of economic circumstances. He says these journalists didn’t go with Bush in 2001 because back then no one thought about the newspaper industry going under.

That’s crap. He knows and we know that when you go work for a politician, you work for the party you align with. That’s what these reporters are doing. They would not have gone to work for John McCain had he won.

The more troubling question though is what happens to these people in four or eight years. Will they cross right back over into reporting? I would not be surprised. But we should be concerned.