BluegrassBulletin.com

Glenn Beck Has Mole In White House, Broke Secret Story Weeks Ago

Now THIS has to make the Obama administration a bit nervous.  Seems that weeks ago, Glenn Beck began talking about Anita Dunn's love of Chairman Mao and said he got a top secret tip that her husband was about to become White House Counsel.  Turns out, he was right.

In the first major shakeup among President Obama’s senior staff, CNN has learned that White House Counsel Greg Craig is being pushed out in favor of veteran Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer because of a dispute over the struggle to close the U.S. Military prison at Guantanamo.

A senior administration official and a senior Democratic source confirmed the move will be officially announced by the White House in coming days. The sources said it could be announced as early as Friday in Washington while the President will be in Japan starting a four-nation tour of Asia, which would make it likely the staff change will be overshadowed by other events.

Reached late Thursday evening by telephone for reaction, Craig told CNN, “I’m not going to comment” before hanging up.

Bauer is the husband of outgoing White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who recently led a so-called “war” on Fox News. Dunn earlier this week announced she is leaving her White House post [CNN]

Beck was having fun a few weeks ago when he pretended to let it "slip" that Bauer was headed for this post.  Since no other media source had confirmed the story Beck's report was held up as further evidence that he is just plain crazy.

Now, with CNN confirming that Beck's insider information was correct, the Obama administration has to be concerned over leaks.  This could become a whole lot of fun.

Drudge Report "Not Accurate" Says White House - Fox Interview Of POTUS In China Unconfirmed

Drudge is reporting that the White House has granted Major Garrett of FoxNews an interview in China.  This report was picked up on several other sites.

The interview has not yet been confirmed. When asked about the interview, the White House told Politico, “We’ve not committed to doing any presidential interviews during the trip to Asia with any outlets at this point,” and Drudge’s report is 'not accurate.'"[Examiner.com]

Eric Holder Subpoenas Web Server For Personal Identification Of Readers

In a shocking display of government power, the FBI has issued a subpoena to a web server in Philadelphia.  According to CBS the US Attorney's subpoena demands the production of

"all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008...to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on. 

Making this investigation more mysterious is that Indymedia.us is an aggregation site, meaning articles that appear on it were published somewhere else first, and there's no hint about what sparked the criminal probe.

This is not, however, the first time that the Feds have focused on Indymedia -- a Web site whose authors sometimes blur the line between journalism, advocacy, and on-the-streets activism. In 2004, the Justice Department sent a grand jury subpoena asking for information about who posted lists of Republican delegates while urging they be given an unwelcome reception at the party's convention in New York City that year.

"Our fear is that this kind of bogus gag order is much more common than one would hope, considering they're legally baseless," [Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation] says. "We're telling this story in hopes that more providers will press back and go public when the government demands their silence."

Keep an eye out folks for the increased efforts to silence the new media.  As Bill Withers might have said "Ain't no sunshine when we're gone.  Only darkness everyday."

OOOooooooo.... Obama Confidant The Target Of New Website

Do you know the name Valerie Jarrett?  You should, she is so much an Obama insider that she has been called, well:

The head of the pimple on the face of the Obama Administration.

Who is Valerie Jarrett? The brain of Barack and Michelle Obama. The alter ego, the “mind meld”. The head of the pimple on a rash of pimples infecting our executive branch. She’s the one who brought in Van Jones, and who knows how many other communist radicals. Read her background – her roots (Chicago tentacles) go way back and very deep into Obama’s background. An insider. In fact, she’s so inside, she’s at the center of it.

Mister Smooth and Cool in the White House is the window dressing to a nefarious bunch who’ll stop at nothing to enforce their regime of “hope and change” on all of us. And Valerie Jarrett is the General who’s planning the strategy and issuing marching orders. Familiarize yourself with this pimple.

There is a whole new website devoted to bringing her down on the grounds that she is a danger to  our republic.  You might want to learn more.

WWW.STOPJARRETT.COM

Risk/Benefit Analysis: The New Net Neutrality Rules

Editorial:

The FCC has announced that it wants to regulate the Internet.  The program is officially called "Net Neutrality".  Like the "Fairness Doctrine" the name is a bit deceiving mainly because there is nothing neutral in politics.

In order to understand the issue you must have a basic understanding of the Internet and the role of Internet Service Providers.

If you connect to the Internet, the large grid of interconnected data banks, you do so through a service provider.  That might be your local cable company, your telephone company or a satellite company.  Like phone service, somebody out there is on the other end of your connection sending you data and when you upload, sending your data on to others.  The short hand for these providers is ISP.

Not all users of Internet services are equal however.  You might use the web to get your email, read my blog, and maybe do a little shopping.  But guys like me are downloading live content, watching streaming television shows, uploading a ton of data, transferring mountains of images and in fact streaming our own programming (e.g.Tech Talk For Old Dogs; The Marcus Carey Perspective).  Other than people like me who use a dedicated T1 line, everybody else is sharing the same water pipe, so to speak. 

If the Net neutrality rules applied to your water usage, it would prevent the water company from charging the guy who needs a million gallons of water more than the guy who only uses 100 gallons of water.  So what is going to happen?  Either the company goes out of business, can't afford to fix its pipes and generally lets the system fail, or, the cost to the little guy becomes unaffordable, since he has to cover the expense of the bigger user.

In addition, Net Neutrality prevents your ISP from limiting access to sites on the web which cost more to transmit.  In other words, if you wanted to watch movies online and that consumed a ton of bandwidth, the amount of bandwidth available for your neighbors would drop.  Again using the water analogy, if your neighbor chopped a hole in the water main to fill his lake, you might not get enough pressure to take a shower.  Net Neutrality would prevent the water company from restricting the flow into your neighbor's lake.

But the real danger lies in the government's interference with the Internet which hasn't needed any government help to grow beyond any ones wildest imagination from just 10 years ago.  The free market, the free exchange of ideas, the expansion and reliance upon the Internet for the answers to millions of questions has made the World Wide Web the biggest and most comprehensive free lending library in history.  The real problem with Net Neutrality is giving the government control over that library and over this method of communication.

On one hand the supporters say that Net Neutrality will give everybody an equal voice and keep ISP's from sending down the pipe only that information which is most profitably delivered.  On the other hand, to the extent that what is being piped in is being delivered by private industry it is much like the information being delivered by FoxNews, CNN, Time, Newsweek or the Washington Post: A free press means freedom from government interference.

We all know that one of the biggest lies in the world is this "I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help".  And as Barry Goldwater said "A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away."

Perhaps the biggest concern of the Net Neutrality rules is that it allows the government to get it's camel nose under the tent.  The Web has done just fine without government interference, it is not likely to do better with government interference or the threat of censorship that comes with it.

No Big Deal, But Now If This Had Happened On Fox........

We all know that talking heads on television are reading their lines from a teleprompter.  And we all know that sometimes the words typed onto the teleprompter can get mixed up.  So it was when MSNBC's Contessa Brewer introduced Jesse Jackson as Al Sharpton, but then she said "I'm so sorry, ...I'm looking at your face, I know who you are Reverend Jackson, we all do. I'm sorry"

Personally I think it was an honest mistake, and probably caused by her script writer. But what if this had been a gaffe on FoxNews?  Wouldn't the Al Sharpton's of the world have been howling around on Oprah, The View and CNN claiming that the "I'm looking at your face" comment was "RACIST"?  Can't you just hear them saying this was all part of the "You all look alike to me" kind of attitude that those evil, racist white people secretly hold?

I'm not all that upset by Contessa's error, but I do think it provides us with a chance to examine the double standard at work in the media.

White House Directly Engaged In Chilling Free Speech

This from Gateway Pundit:

The Obama White House is not only isolating and targeting FOX News (see Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals) for reporting on the radicals in the administration and the destructive nature of the White House policies, they also are ordering other the state-run media outlets to alienate and isolate FOX News.
FOX News reported, via Free Republic:

The White House is calling on other news organizations to isolate and alienate Fox News as it sends out top advisers to rail against the cable channel as a Republican Party mouthpiece.

Top political strategists question the decision by the Obama administration to escalate its offensive against Fox News. And as of Monday, the four other major television networks had not given any indication that they intend to sever their ties with Fox News.

But several top White House officials have taken aim at Fox News since communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox “opinion journalism masquerading as news” in an interview last Sunday.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN on Sunday that President Obama does not want “the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox.”

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is “not a news organization.”

“Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way,” Axelrod counseled ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “We’re not going to treat them that way.”

Asked Monday about another Axelrod claim that Fox News is just trying to make money, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that while all media companies fall under that description, “I would say sometimes programming can be tilted toward accentuating those profits.”

INSERT LIBERAL NAME *HERE*

Okay, here is a paragraph with the name left out.  Now imagine how the left would react if you inserted a liberal's name in the blank, say, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Keith Olberman, Chris Matthews or, well, you get the picture.  Try it yourself and then read along as you watch the video below.  Hey lefties, still don't think there's a double standard?

You guys see Live and Let Die, the great Bond film with Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy, Mr. Big? In the end they jam a big CO2 pellet in his face and he blew up. I have to tell you, __*INSERT LIBERAL NAME HERE*__ is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we’ll be there to watch. I think he’s Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto. Are you watching, __*INSERT LIBERAL NAME HERE*__?

Okay, read along kids and watch this video.

Rush Limbaugh Considers Lawsuit Over Slander

Good for him.  In fact, I suggested that he take this action in a blog post just yesterday.  Now others are reporting that Limbaugh has said he is seriously considering this action.

In fact he said that any one who is being smeared by the claim that he/she is a racist sue as well:

Looks like somebody's gonna get a pucker factor real soon. Good for you Rush.

MSNBC Slanders Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh is apparently interested in purchasing a part ownership in the St. Louis Rams NFL football team.  As part of the discussion surrounding this news MSNBC had a "sports reporter" from the left leaning Nation Magazine, David Zirin, appear on their channel to call Rush an "unreconstructed racist" who the players know "views them with naked and open contempt because of the color of their skin".  He also went on to attribute to Limbaugh a made up quote saying Limbaugh was of the opinion that "slavery was a good thing because it made the streets safer."

Limbaugh responded and made it very clear that none of the statements which have been attributed to him as quotes were ever spoken by him and that the smear job does not reflect his beliefs.

I'm a little disappointed that otherwise responsible journalists are believing a bunch of garbage. There's a quote out there that I first saw it in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last week that I somehow, some time ago, defended slavery and started cracking jokes about it. And, you know, you say a lot of things in the course of 15 hours a week, over the course of 21 years. We've gone back, we have looked at everything we have. There is not even an inkling that any words in this quote are accurate. It's outrageous, but it's totally predictable.

The point is, when I talk about them, I tell the truth. I watch 'em, I listen to them, I report what they say and I tell them why they're wrong, and I play their own words. They have to go somewhere to find concocted quotes which are now bordering on slander, libel, whatever it is, that I never said, and they believe it, and even if they don't they use it on purpose.[Gateway Pundit]

I'm not here to defend Rush Limbaugh, but to point out that there used to be checks and balances in play even for the media.  The open and notorious use of libel and slander at one time in this nation was so offensive as to prompt violence, even in the United States Senate.

No, I am not advocating violence, but I do wonder how we have gotten so far away from the days when honor, integrity and truth were so highly valued that those who committed libel and slander didn't just get by with it.

Rush has the money to take MSNBC out in a lawsuit.  He should.