Free Press

From Obama's May 2nd Michigan Graduation Speech:

Today's twenty-four seven echo chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before. It has also, however, given us unprecedented choice. ...we now have the option to get our information from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows.

This development can be both good and bad for democracy. .. if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

This of course requires that we all agree on a certain set of facts to debate from, and that is why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads.

The White House's "I Love you back!/(Laughter)/(Applause)" version of this speech is also available. H/T to the hubby.

Happy 4th of July.

President Obama has taken complete control of the First Amendment in an around the Gulf of Mexico region; the physical breadth of the BP oil spill will now work as a map, where 65 feet beyond the borders of this oily map, America's freedom as we know it has ceased to exist.

Not even the President's media lapdogs can tell the Truth if they want to.

With this latest development, the Obama Administration has effectively given us a clue of what's in store for America: we don't need a free press when the government can supply all the information we need, via whatever medium is available. As you read this, realize that this is a pre-cursor to Obama's plans to equalize the internet -- where complete government control of the internet will guarantee that content will be regulated and restricted, and we can anticipate he will pipe unfettered, "unbiased" government information into homes across America. Something like what Neil says has been enacted in Finland.

He's fulfilling his campaign promises to "connect and empower all Americans through technology and innovation" .. and "to help unprecedented numbers of citizens take back the political process" like he did with his use of the internet "to transform presidential politics."

What we are seeing is Obama's "Journalism Re-invention" in action -- his piping a speech to kids without parental permission during classtime is pigeon compared to what he's trying to pull now.

We already know the White House controls the media. Now the Obama Administration is using the BP oil spill to restrict access and information to completely control the message that is broadcast to the public.

This is NOT THE FIRST TIME he has shut out the media's access to a news event.. First he excludes and evades -- repeatedly, then he shuts out media access, and now he's passed enforceable law.

Under threat of being charged with a Class D Felony and a $40,000 fine, journalists, bloggers, and photographers cannot come within 65 feet of response vessels working the BP spill or booms floating in the Gulf or laying on beaches.

This 65 foot "exclusion zone" had been reduced from 300 feet and is yet another restriction placed on photographers and reporters. At the end of May, the FAA and Coast Guard would not allow private charter planes carrying media to fly below 3,000 feet to better document the BP disaster.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported Thursday that ["the [65 foot "exclusion zone"] order was a Coast Guard-wide directive from the top."

CNN's Anderson Cooper reports on the impact this will have on holding the federal government accountable -- by documenting and ensuring timely responses to boom removal, animal rescue and just getting the local's version of the BP story out:

*See the VID at Redstate

Locals in the Times-Picayunne also reported that the 65-foot restriction could "block photographers and reporters from accessing some waterways altogether."

So, absolutely no one would have access to anywhere the federal government deemed it necessary to lay a boom. Too many snoopy photographers? Lay a boom. Too many journalists accessing a waterway? Lay another boom.

What an effective "corralling" of the BP narrative without public oversight.

The Obama Administration will be whitewashing bad PR-damaging images like this that read "Look, a poor bird near the boom those government crews haven't cleaned up yet! They are so damn slow and inefficient!" --

with sanitized pics like this that scream "Not a moment to lose! Your Taxdollars hard at work!!" directly from their "Been There Since Day 1" Official Deepwater Horizon Joint Command Site:

The Obama Administration is well-aware of the power of the internet. Without reporters and bloggers providing clear pictures and descriptions of the events as they happen, where they happen, when they happen, readers and the rest of the media will flock to the information that is readily accessible.

The Obama Administration is ready.

Taking the lead from the Obama's massive BarackObama.com site that still stands at the ready, the DNC's populist-persuasion website and other propagandist sites the left has used to swindle the American people, Federal Deepwater, Inc. has some very cool apps that will help conceal, cover up and camouflage the federal government's lackadaisical response to the nation's worst environmental disaster that hit the Gulf on Obama's watch. It includes:

• A Flickr link
• a YouTube Channel
• a Twitter feed
• a Facebook page
• SMS alerts
• live webcam feeds
• an RSS feed, complete with email subscripts that will pipe photos and media blips directly to your browser and mailbox

• oh -- and a cool widget for your blog, website or page so you can be linked to THE primary source of news and information coming out of the area via a permanent Twitter, News and Links update (complete with ShareThis plugin).

Remember, this 65-foot restriction under pain of felony charges and $40K in fines, will black out media giants CNN, MSNBC, ABC, FOX, CBS -- everyone. Where will America get our our news about BP now? How long before America becomes bored of hearing regurgitated press releases and sanitized photos taken by a federal employee?

I'd rather have the candids of the Free Press than staged pics ("Wait! Go back and do that again!") that would rival the boredom generated from watching Obama's useless flickr photostream.

Obama knows that we will tire with whatever comes from the official federal government newsfeed, because he'll be using the same drone-inducing spell progressives have used for generations: it's fake. Fraudulent. People can only take so much lying to before they turn away and tune out in disgust.

And now, it's a federal crime to tell the Truth.

Sometime in the future, the only "truth" America may "officially" know will be what the government tells the public through the internet; nationalizing parts of the media will not be the only way for the federal government to indoctrinate, spread propaganda, and garner votes.

What the Obama Administration proves with this 65-foot restriction is that "transparency" is a gimmick, a buzzword as useless as Obama's "hope" -- but as lethal to America as his radical, socialist sort of "change," because he's used the word "transparency" to create a false sense of security and reframe the public's image of the quintessential corrupt, calculating politician.

Transparent.

This fraud is killing Free Speech and Freedom of the Press.

How long will you and I have a right to say that?

"Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control." ~Calvin Coolidge

If you build your house on sand….President Obama is getting some of his karma back. His unmitigated arrogance and self-aggrandizement is going to come at a terrible price to the country…to him and those around him. But they can’t see that yet. Now we even see the First Lady politicizing breast cancer, to advance what is very probably going to be a health care bill which is going to arrive DOA. From my lips to God’s ears. The House bill, should it pass, would cost this country ONE TRILLION DOLLARS and counting. Nothing the government EVER does comes in at anywhere close to the wild imaginings of the authors of these nutzoid  creations. As we speak, there appears to be an insurrection in the House which will stop “Nancy with the Smiling Eyes” bill dead in its tracks. A group of 40 pro-life Democrats has joined with Republicans to pledge to VOTE NO on any bill which has provision for funding for abortions… which it does. This would ensure that the bill in its present form would never leave the House floor. Nothing this President, or the Marxists he’s imported to his government have done, has been with the interest of the American people, the economy, or our military services who are engaged around the world fighting an implacable enemy who would see this country destroyed. It has been done to further an only slightly less onerous ideology, whose goal is control over every aspect of American life and values. The assault by the administration on the first amendment, as exemplified by the attack on Fox News, has been (at long last) met by a unified group of major network editorial chiefs who must have finally woken up and smelled the skunk cabbage that is the Obama White House. They saw, belatedly, but they saw that they would invariably be next. They have drawn a line in the sand. Now we get to see if they have the strength of their convictions. This fight has only just been joined. The White House’s FCC lapdogs are after the freedom of the internet also…resistance is mounting to that assault as we speak. A FREE PRESS IS A FREE SOCIETY… the internet is part of that press, free and unrestrained it is a priceless resource for instantaneous delivery of information. True it is incumbent upon the user to filter through the mists of sometimes wildly inaccurate and fanciful stories that are available out there, but this is freedom of expression and the press also. Keep your hands off our Net. Keep your hands off our radios, keep your hands of of our televisions. The communist leftists cannot compete in the arena of ideas, so they have to co-opt it through stacked courts and regulatory agencies which are not subject to the crucible of public scrutiny, whose examination they cannot withstand. Darkness and secrecy were ever their way. The Free Press and the Free Internet cast a light upon them which shows them for what they are. Enemies of America…and Enemies of the American people.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

Adam Theirer, a scholar at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, notes that the Fairness Doctrine was part of a regulatory paradigm being pushed by the left and, in particular, the group Free Press. This fight is not over. Adam's piece is worth reading:

Of course, the radicals at the (Un)Free Press weren’t about to let one of the Left’s old favorite regulations go so away without asking for something in return.  One of the reasons that Silver and Ammori are suddenly willing to give their blessing to the Doctrine’s burial is because they want to get on with the more far-reaching agenda of micro-managing media markets using a variety of less visible regulations.

Indeed, in their paper, Silver and Ammori go to great pains to try to show that the Fairness Doctrine supposedly has nothing to do with all the other regulations that they want Congress and the FCC to continue to enforce, or even expand.  These goals include media ownership restrictions, diversity mandates, local programming regulation, and so on.  Recognizing that the Fairness Doctrine was not only ineffective but also a useful tool for many on the political Right to whip their base into action, the Free Press moved to preemptively divorce their other pet projects from the Fairness Doctrine.

It’s a brilliant tactical move by Free Press; lull Limbaugh and other conservatives into a deep sleep by throwing them the bone of a Fairness Doctrine win, and then push a far more radical regulatory agenda through the back-door once they’ve stopped paying attention.  Of course, these things cannot be as easily divorced as the Free Press radicals want us to believe.  The Fairness Doctrine was just one part of a much grander regulatory paradigm that so-called progressives have pushed for under the banner of “public interest regulation.”