First the DISCLOSE Act and now this.

I suppose it will not be too long before anyone looking to run advertisements on their site to make a few bucks will be forced to only run Democrat-friendly ads that will not pay you directly, but instead whose funds will be in a Social Security-like “trust fund”, that can only be drawn upon to make campaign donations to committee-picked candidates.

From SF Gate – (Hat Tip: Make No Law):

Politicians’ tweets and status updates should be held to the same standards as paid advertising that voters see on television, hear on radio or find in their mailboxes, California’s campaign watchdog agency says in a report being released Monday.

The Fair Political Practices Commission is considering how to regulate new forms of political activity such as appeals on a voter’s Facebook page or in a text message.

It’s become necessary as politicians in California and elsewhere announce their candidacies and major campaign policies through Twitter, YouTube and a host of social networking sites, said FPPC Chairman Dan Schnur.

He said California’s 36-year-old Political Reform Act needs rewriting to keep up with the times.

“Our goal here is to meet the new challenges of 21st Century technology,” Schnur said. “There’s no way that the authors of the act could have anticipated that these of types of communicating a campaign message would ever exist.”

A rather amusing justification. I can just imagine this person saying the same thing 20 years after the printing press was invented.

Of course, this will go beyond what is considered “paid advertising” and extend to anyone supporting a candidate via their blog or any other online presence they might have.

Bloggers who accept payment to present their opinion in favor of or against a candidate but do not disclose their ties to a campaign are becoming increasingly common in California, but the report does not recommend regulating them — for now. The subcommittee urged bloggers to voluntarily disclose on their websites if they are being paid.

If that doesn’t work, it said regulators or lawmakers may need to step in.

Like California’s current regulations, federal campaign watchdogs regulate only paid political advertising, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Other states also are just beginning to consider whether their disclosure laws are sufficient to cover modern communications.

Who wants to bet $50 that when all of the dust has settled that unions of all stripes and any phony front-group (ala Media Matters) will be exempt from any of these regulations or prohibitions?

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The stench of Youth Dew has not even faded from Helen Thomas’ seat and already the usual leftist suspects and their Soros-funded groups are clamoring for and sending out mass mailings to have one of their pet “networks” butts be placed in that seat.

I would strongly advise whoever gets that seat to check underneath it and made sure there are not any love letters from Yassir Arafat stashed under there. You just never know.

From News Busters:

For anyone who does not think National Public Radio is a taxpayer-funded propaganda organ for the left, consider that the radical leftists at MoveOn.org are conducting an e-mail campaign to assign the “Helen Thomas seat” in the front row of the briefing room to NPR a “real, public” news organ, not that Fox “propaganda machine.” They think NPR can offer a better cloning of Helen Thomas:

Dear MoveOn member,

As early as Sunday, the White House Correspondents’ Association will decide which news organization will be awarded a recently-vacated front-row center seat in the White House briefing room. The contenders? National Public Radio, Bloomberg News—and Fox.

Yes, Fox—which we all know is actually a tool in the right-wing propaganda machine, not a legitimate news organization. They simply don’t deserve the best seat in the White House briefing room—a seat held for years by journalist Helen Thomas until she retired recently.

So we’re joining our friends at CREDO Action to petition the Correspondents’ Association to award the seat to a real, public news organization: NPR.

Can you sign the petition today? Tell the Correspondents’ Association to give the best seat in the briefing room to NPR, not Fox.

The petition says, “Give Helen Thomas’ former briefing room seat to NPR, which has provided public interest coverage for decades—not Fox, which is a right-wing propaganda tool, not a legitimate news organization.”

Then, please forward this email to your friends and post on Facebook and Twitter so we can spread the news faster. Already 140,000 people have signed onto this call through CREDO Action. Help us get up to 250,000 before the meeting on Sunday!

Winning this seat would give Fox legitimacy it simply doesn’t deserve—not after years of race-baiting, smears against progressives and Democrats, and spreading right-wing propaganda 24/7.

So instead we’re calling on the Association to award the seat to one of our nation’s premiere news organizations, which has served the public for years and currently reaches an audience of 27 million.

Also, no surprise that the criminal front group, Media Matters is also involved in this ridiculous exercise. But would you expect anything less from such an outfit?

Media Matters is encouraging the petition, naturally, and reports “They have collected more than 80% of their targeted 200,000 signatures. Read the petition text below and add your name to the more than 162,000 signers”.

Amazing that Media Matters could find that many ObamaBorg who can sign their own names.

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Well, this was inevitable as Obama taking the weekend off for another 18 holes.

Over the last 25 years, the news media, both of the print and broadcast varieties, have suffered a massive loss of readership and viewership. Network TV viewership, which peaked in the mid 80’s has lost more than 55% of it’s viewership since then. Many papers across the nation have closed and even long-standing stalwarts in the field, such as The New York Times, have instituted massive budget cuts and staff layoffs. (up to 90% in some sections of the paper)

To quote from “Cool Hand Luke”, “Gentleman, what we have here is a failure to communicate.” Only this applies in sort of a reverse order. The communication is not the problem. It is the message. Compared to just 25 years ago, when the news was dominated by the Big Three networks and large newspaper such as the Times, the Washington Post etc., today the news consumer has more choices for getting their news and other information from then there are brands of cola. And what we really have here is a rejection of the old-style, leftist/liberal slant that has so dominated the industry for the better part of a century.

Now we have the FTC coming up with a “Drudge Tax” in order to bail out (read: redistribute wealth) from the taxpayer to the usual Leftist House Organs.

From The Washington Times: (Hat Tip: Free Conservatives)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking ways to “reinvent” journalism, and that’s a cause for concern. According to a May 24 draft proposal, the agency thinks government should be at the center of a media overhaul. The bureaucracy sees it as a problem that the Internet has introduced a wealth of information options to consumers, forcing media companies to adapt and experiment to meet changing market needs. FTC’s policy staff fears this new reality.

“There are reasons for concern that experimentation may not produce a robust and sustainable business model for commercial journalism,” the report states. With no faith that the market will work things out for the better, government thinks it must come to the rescue.

The ideas being batted around to save the industry share a common theme: They are designed to empower bureaucrats, not consumers. For instance, one proposal would, “Allow news organizations to agree jointly on a mechanism to require news aggregators and others to pay for the use of online content, perhaps through the use of copyright licenses.”

In other words, government policy would encourage a tax on websites like the Drudge Report, a must-read source for the news links of the day, so that the agency can redistribute the funds collected to various newspapers. Such a tax would hit other news aggregators, such as Digg, Fark and Reddit, which not only gather links, but provide a forum for a lively and entertaining discussion of the issues raised by the stories. Fostering a robust public-policy debate, not saving a particular business model, should be the goal of journalism in the first place.

That is, when they are not trying every tactic, smear and unconstitutional trick in the book to shutdown FOX News and talk radio.

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The dominoes continue to fall. First ABC News cuts their staff by 25% (and not all of them gofers and paper-pushers) and now Newsweek is put up for sale.

My question is who even reads that magazine anymore? Or has since the 1970s?

From FOX News: (Hat Tip: Free Conservatives)

The Washington Post Co. says it is putting Newsweek up for sale, another stunning moment for a struggling magazine industry.

The company says it has retained the investment bank Allen & Co. to help find a buyer for the money-losing weekly.

Can TIME be far behind?

If I were Katie Couric and Brain Williams, I would start looking for beachfront property in France. Your services will not be needed for much longer.

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Bloomberg: “Times Square for $200, Alex.”

“The answer is:

Grainy footage of possible man (being NYC, who can tell anymore?) walking 20 yards from a smoking car that was found to be filled with explosives.”

Bloomberg: (Via CBS News)

“There is no credible evidence so far that this attack was more than at least one person, the driver,” said Mayor Mike Bloomberg. “After that there is no evidence that anyone else was involved. It may be, but we can’t say that it is.”…

“If I had to guess, twenty five cents, this would be exactly that,” Bloomberg said. “Homegrown maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.”

Maybe he was driven insane by those lack of foot baths at the local Urgent Care.

From Hot Air via Michelle Malkin:

Could be. Since we’re pulling theories out of our ass, let me try a few. Maaaaybe … it’s a liberal amnesty shill upset at Nazi America’s tolerance of Arizona’s immigration law? Maaaaybe … it’s a gay-rights supporter irate at the slow pace of progress on “don’t ask, don’t tell”? Maaaaybe … it’s a nutritional fanatic angry that the City hasn’t completely banned salt yet? (Actually, that would make Nanny Bloomberg a prime suspect.) Maaaaybe … it’s the president’s old pal Bill Ayers reliving his glory days? Anything’s possible, so why not have the mayor of the country’s largest city speculate idly on the national news about it?

Mark Steyn:

Whenever something goofy happens — bomb in Times Square, mass shootings at a US military base, etc. — there seem to be two kinds of reactions:

a) Some people go, “Hmm. I wonder if this involves some guy with a name like Mohammed who has e-mails from Yemen.”

b) Other people go, “Don’t worry, there’s no connection to terrorism, and anyway, even if there is, it’s all very amateurish, and besides he’s most likely an isolated extremist or lone wolf.”

Unfortunately, everyone in category (b) seems to work for the government.

And even if there is a terrorist connection, the “lone wolf” will be lawyered up, read his rights and given a TiVo box filled to the brim with Obama and Rev. Wright’s speeches. (what, you think only the Queen of England is worthy to receive that?)

Meanwhile, some media skank named Contessa Brewer, who works at the Pasty-White Hate Factory disguising itself as a “news” organization, MSLSD, lifts her skirt to show her political STD’s:

Hat Tip: Hot Air:

BREWER: I mean the thing is is that and I get frustrated and there was part of me that was hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country because there are a lot of people who want to use this terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way. I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry.

And so there was part of me was really hoping this would not be the case that here would be somebody who is not the defined. I mean he’s accused he’s arrested you know I don’t want to convict him before it’s time to do so. He’s the guy authorities say is involved. But that being said I mean we know even in recent history you have the Hutaree militia from Michigan who have plans to let’s face it create terror.

That’s what they were planning to do and they were doing so from far different backgrounds then what this guy is coming from. So, the threat is not just coming from people who decide that America is the place to be and you know come here and want to become citizens. Obviously this guy did.

And you people wonder why your ratings are in Keith Olbermann’s toilet and why ABC News just axed a good 25% of it’s workforce? And most of all, why the media is held in lower regard than a serial puppy killer?

Hypocrite, thy name is Liberal.

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Bill Press, that old fossil who you might remember used to have his clock cleaned by Robert Novak on the old CNN “Crossfire” show, has emerged from the grave (I am sure a lot of people did not know that he was even still alive) and has shown himself to be the latest Good Little Mao Red Book carrying soldier to smear any and all who “oppose” the census.

From BillPressShow.com (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin)

Why is Mr. Erickson still at large? He is as dangerous as any member of any armed militia who threatens the life of federal agents….

Two things to remember: One, the census is no threat to anybody, and it IS required by the U.S. Constitution.

Two, I’m all for freedom of speech, but threats to assassinate government officials is not protected by the First Amendment.

Lock Erick Erickson up – and throw the key away.

However, as is usual when it comes to the faux outrage of clueless Leftists, there is a problem with the facts. The fact being that Erickson never said those words about the census. In fact, quite the opposite:

From Human Events:

At Tuesday’s White House press briefing, Bill Press, a former California Democratic Party chairman as well as a former CNN contributor who no longer works for the network, said, “Erick Erickson’s a commentator for CNN. A couple of days ago, he said he was not going to fill out his census form and if a census worker came to the door, he said he would quote ‘pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little twerp likes being scared at the door.’”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, under the delusion that Bill Press was telling the truth, replied, “It should concern CNN, if — probably first and foremost. It probably concerns his wife as well.”

Here’s the real story: Last Thursday, filling in on a local radio station in Georgia, Erickson launched into a ten minute defense of filling out the census, delving into its impact at the local level, and ridiculing those who claim the information requested by the census is unconstitutional. You can listen to the audio here. It is quite clear that Erickson strongly urges his listeners to complete the census. No one who listened to Erickson’s broadcast could have concluded otherwise.

Among the choice bits, Erickson said, “It’s a constitutional obligation. How can a 21st Century society function without knowing how many people are actually living in the country, legally versus illegally for that matter? What’s the harm with filling out the census? The Constitution — for those of you who say I’m not filling out the census — it’s in the freaking Constitution. You got to fill out your census.”

About nine minutes into his radio monologue, Erickson switched gears and began to discuss the American Community Survey (ACS), a survey carried out by the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau. Many conservatives say the ACS is an overreach of the Commerce Department’s authority to conduct the census. Among other things, this survey, which is not the census, requires individuals to tell the government details about their finances, whether they have a flush toilet in their home, their commute to work, and other matters in a clear invasion of privacy.

Still waiting for Press and his ilk to be just as outraged about the author and moviemakers spewing their hate about assassinating George W. Bush or Dick Cheney or those who burned down Sarah Palin’s hometown church, or fired a shot into Rep. Eric Cantor’s office or the recent brick throwing through…and uh…

Oh forget it, I will hurt myself listing all of the recent Terrorist Left attacks if I keep going like this.

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As the old saying goes, Karma is a female dog. An angry and ironic one, that is.

Well, the self-anointed closet racists at NBC (home of the All-White Network, MSLSD) have stepped into that dog’s societal poop yet again. and in a deliciously ironic way.

Needles to say, if this has been any GOP, conservative group or even FOX News for that matter, we would never hear the end of it. Al Sharpton would need a Port-a-Potty to keep up with all of the time he would be spending outside of the company offices of said organization, and probably a Sucrets as well, while he was spouting out his racial Allah-Akburs.

From Mediaite: (Hat Tip tp the Mark Levin Show)

So who at NBC thought it would be a good idea for the special today to be, among other things, fried chicken, “in honor of Black History Month”?

Because, spoiler alert – it wasn’t a good idea at all. And now NBCU employee Questlove is bringing it to the attention of his 1 million plus Twitter followers.

Questlove, the band leader and drummer for The Roots (the house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) tweeted this picture from the NBC Commissary at 30 Rock, with the comment: “Hmm HR?”

They might as well have added watermelon to the menu and a minstrel show.

Best comment – Southpaw @ Michelle Malkin

Do they serve pinnekjøtt,fenalår, svinneribbe or Julskinke on Scandinavian Day?

Wait….they don’t have Scandinavian Day, do they?

Racists

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