It looks like Al Sharpton will get the permanent hosting job from 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM on NBC News’ cable station MSNBC. This is a curious move for NBC News for a couple of reasons. First, and foremost, Al Sharpton is just plain awful as a host. He can’t read a tele-prompter, he can’t speak extemporaneously, and he is awful at interviewing guests. You don’t have to take my word for it, see for yourself:

But his lousy on-camera performance isn’t the only strange thing about NBC News’ move (they hired Cenk Uygur, after all). It’s also strange because putting the NBC News brand on the line by associating it with a polarizing figure like Sharpton is dangerous and potentially devastating to NBC News’ journalistic reputation. Sharpton is accused of being a race-hustler and an anti-Semite, and worse for NBC News he is a known liar with a major defamation conviction on his record.

Why would a news organization like NBC News risk further tarnishing their brand by honoring someone with this record by giving him the honor of hosting a show, especially considering he has vowed not to criticize President Obama as we enter a presidential election season? The answer appears to be found at the highest levels of Comcast/NBC.

The Comcast/NBC merger would not have occurred if not for the approval of the FCC. One FCC commissioner, Democrat Michael Copps, voted against the merger saying that it would “erode(s) diversity, localism and competition”. The “diversity and localism” issue is something that had been a key concern for newly appointed FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn when she took her position early in the Obama Administration. And she held out her approval until she was certain that it would not be an issue.

She was swayed by a “diversity memorandum of agreement” signed by Sharpton and developed with help from his National Action Network. Clyburn, daughter of South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, said the diversity memorandum “will serve to keep the new entity (Comcast/NBC) honest in promoting diversity.”

As The Daily Beast reports:

Sharpton has a long and well-documented history of leveraging his civil-rights profile for his own benefit. Grabbing a prime-time anchor spot in exchange for cheerleading for a controversial merger would be the capper on that career. It’s gone remarkably unnoticed that Sharpton was the first major black leader to endorse the Comcast merger, which met fierce resistance.

It’s not like Sharpton was an early champion for the mega-media-merger out of the kindness of his heart. His political organization National Action Network (NAN) has received $190,000 since 2009, when the merger was first announced.

Also, Sharpton and NAN ferociously fought on behalf of James Clyburn in his struggle to retain a leadership position in the House when the Democrats were consigned to the minority earlier this year. The Democratic leadership created a position called “Assistant Minority Leader” so that he could retain the #3 position, something that does not usually exist for the minority party in the House. Subsequently, Comcast has donated over $10,000 to Rep. Clyburn’s political committees further assisting the father of the key FCC vote in favor of the merger, Mignon Clyburn.

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Once in a while a purported news report is so biased that it simply must be highlighted. Today’s award for the most biased report goes to National Journal for its left-slanted piece on Obama’s warning to the House GOP that he will veto any budget that cancels his FCC attempt to take control of the Internet away from private industry.

In his very first paragraph for the National Journal, Josh Smith dives straight into the left side of the pool — and in at the deep end yet — by accepting the left’s premise of what the FCC’s net neutrality regulations are meant to do.

The White House threatened on Monday to veto any bill from Congress that would scuttle new rules aimed at keeping internet access free and open. (My bold)

Keeping the Internet “free and open”? That is the left’s fanciful contention of what net neutrality does, sure enough, and National Journal parroted that line as if it is a truthful, straightforward description of what the rules do.

Smith then went on to further bolster the left’s case in favor of net neutrality by claiming that the FCC’s power grab was merely, “designed to prevent Internet carriers from blocking websites that use too much bandwidth.”

Worse for any fair reporting on the issue, the right side of the argument against net neutrality was given not a single word of explanation for the reader. After reading Smith’s piece all one comes away with is some vague notion that Republicans are against a “free and open Internet” for some reason and must be for big business being allowed to shut individual Internet users down on a corporate whim.

But what is the truth? Why are Republicans against the FCC’s attempt to take control of the Internet? Well, since neither Josh Smith nor National Journal want to give an unbiased report, I’ll tell you a few of the reasons that conservatives stand against Obama’s FCC net neutrality rules.

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Rep. James Clyburn (D- SC) went on government-funded radio Monday to advocate for censorship and government controlled “restraint on speech”.    He positively yearns for the romantic time of the 1960’s, before the internet, when the government’s “Fairness Doctrine” controlled the free-flow of opinion in our country.  Bizarrely, Rep. Clyburn concedes that the 1960’s had some “unfortunate” murders (some would call them political assassinations) but maintains that our society would be better if the government took on the role of censor.

We’ve grown accustomed to high-ranking Democrats calling for restraints on political speech.  They always seem to cite Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck and always seem to overlook the far more incendiary rantings of Ed Schultz, Randi Rhodes and the odious Mike Malloy.  But in Rep. Clyburn’s NPR interview, two chilling new wrinkles to the speech-squelching movement are revealed.

Number one, why did Rep. Clyburn mention the internet as part of his tirade against free political expression?  The “Fairness Doctrine” was created to control the content of radio and television stations.  Newspapers and periodicals were never affected because, unlike TV and radio, they are not licensed by the Federal Government.  The internet (and the content that appears on it) falls under the same guidelines as newspapers.  Or, at least, it did.

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I’ve said before that the media is so invested in this administration because their very survival depends upon its success. The only people who consume mainstream media anymore are the people who are part of the ideology that the MSM blatantly supports. They’ve bet all their chips on the success of the Progressocrats, the new amalgam of socialists and Democrats which saw the progressive caucus bubble up within the DNC before eating it away from the inside.

You won’t see the stories below in the pages of the NYT or on the screens of NBC. You won’t hear them discussed at the water cooler. They’re the stories that show without any doubt the cards held by those who wish to enslave the masses to the god of government. A theocracy, to be sure, but one that holds up the state above all else.

Each of these stories have been chronicled across the Bigs sites over the past year. These stories are what progressives are trying desperately to erase from the annals of history, an effort that the new penny press, new media, refuses to allow.

1. The Pigford Case

You have a finite number of black farmers discriminated against by the USDA. They are awarded a settlement. You have over 73,000 more applicants, more than the number of actual farmers or people related to farming, all claiming a piece of the settlement. The settlement is billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Over 36% of the claims were already rejected due to fraud. Instead of vetting the claims and awarding to those who were truly wronged, elected officials decide to increase the size of the settlement so everyone can get a check. People who farmed their whole lives got the same size check as someone who never farmed.

If you think that sounds wonky, then you may be someone who doesn’t believe that the Pigford case was on the up-and-up. Also, you are probably a racist, since this case involves black Americans and even the original black farmers who are raising concern about this case are also racists, according to INSERT SOROS OUTLET HERE.

Related:

Pigford Investigation Resources

Credit Where It’s Due: HuffPo Blogger On Pigford Fraud

2. Journolist

Long story short: a bunch of editorial geniuses decided to gather in an email distro and share ideas about how to inject their socialist narrative into mainstream media. They also talked smack about conservative political leaders because takes balls to talk cruelly about people with whom you disagree in a private email thread full of glee club members. These people all still write for the same publications that they did before, with the exception of the whistleblower, and these are the folks who tell you that media is not progressively biased.

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While appearing on Ed Schultz’s MSNBC show November 17, 2010, Al Sharpton joined Schultz in criticizing Rush Limbaugh for “race-[baiting]” and using “federally-regulated airwaves to malign people.” Sharpton was bothered by the fact that Limbaugh dared talked about the racism inherent in the Democrat Party, particularly the racism white Democrats like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) and former Majority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md) displayed in pushing a black Democrat, Jim Clyburn (D-Sc), to the back of the bus” in order to preserve their own prominence.

It seems that when the Democrats restructured their positions in the House after losing control of it on November 2^nd, they made sure that the top two positions went to white people (Pelosi and Hoyer) even though Clyburn, who happens to be black, already held the position Hoyer wanted. Because Limbaugh dared point this hypocrisy out, Sharpton pounced and equated Limbaugh’s monologue on Clyburn with “race-[baiting.”

Two things need to be pointed out here. First, Limbaugh has the Democrat Party (and particularly Pelosi and Hoyer) dead to rights, and that’s why men like Sharpton are using accusations of racism to silence him. But no matter what Sharpton says, Pelosi and Hoyer did move Clyburn to the back of the bus in order to guarantee that they, two white folks, would hold the key positions on the Democrat side of the House.

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Al Sharpton is on a censorship mission to abridge the free speech of anyone who would dare criticize the platform that keeps him in the realm of relevancy. His sight is set upon Rush Limbaugh and recently on MSNBC he made his case for why the government should shut down Limbaugh, getting so carried away that he refers to him as “Rush Lumbar” at one point:

What Sharpton purposefully omits is that “Barack the Magic Negro” was the title of a column authored by a progressive, David Ehrenstein.

Limbaugh read it on air as an example of the leftist double-standard when it came to race and progressives lied and purposefully misrepresented it to pass Limbaugh, not themselves, off as the racist. I guess they forgot about Al Gore’s Internet and the way in which people can Google for actual sources. Sharpton perpetuates this to stoke the racial fires and shore up his own political capital.

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The blogosphere is all abuzz over yesterday’s comments from Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, in which he opined about the annoyance of today’s cable news television programming.  Apparently cable news gets in the way of his desire for American citizens to do nothing but worship our government, rather than challenge it.

We need new catalysts for quality news and entertainment programming.  I hunger for quality news.  I’m tired of the right and the left.  There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to FOX and to MSNBC: Out. Off. End. Goodbye. It would be a big favor to political discourse; our ability to do our work here in Congress, and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and more importantly, in their future.

Many are making this solely about the issue of the Fairness Doctrine or of Net Neutrality.  And to some extent, this is true.  But there really is a much larger picture at play here – a transition period to government-run media.

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How has the increasingly marginalized demand for Internet regulations been dramatically amplified, despite the American people’s clear disapproval of just this kind of federal government overreach? You guessed it, the liberal media, who can always be depended upon to do whatever they can to promote and legitimize the latest bad idea coming from the left.

Armed with the freshest copy of the far left’s talking points, outlets like NPR, the Seattle Times and the Washington Post Business Section have concluded that the Internet will only be safe if the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates it under Title II of the Communications Act – designed for monopoly Bell telephone companies in the 1930s.

NPR recently ran a story on broadband policy and the leadership of FCC Chairman and Obama friend Julius Genachowski. Reporter Joel Rose interviewed two people for the story: a professor from the University of Pennsylvania, who reminded the FCC that “they have to adopt something that is enforceable,” and the president of Free Press, who warned about the end of “the Internet as we know it” and whined about how “terrified” Genachowski is of following Free Press’s reckless demands to regulate the Internet.

Quotes from Congressmen Henry Waxman and Jay Inslee, both liberal Democrats who openly support the FCC unilaterally – and probably illegally – imposing Title II regulations, were also included in the report.

What did NPR leave out? At no point did NPR’s Rose interview or quote one – not one – expert or advocate who opposes Internet regulations. Neither did he quote one member of the bipartisan majority in Congress who publicly opposes an FCC takeover and Title II regulations. (more…)

Progressives are up in arms after Google appears to have caved on Net Neutrality by partnering with Verizon to abandon their core aims. Writing at Huffington Post, Josh Silver of the ironically named Free Press laments:

For years, Internet advocates have warned of the doomsday scenario that will play out on Monday: Google and Verizon will announce a deal that the New York Times reports ‘could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.’

Let us, as the postmodernists say, deconstruct this.

What a shocking thing it would be if people were allowed to get higher speed service by being — gasp — “willing to pay for the privilege.” Why, that’s almost like — bigger gasp — voluntary trade nudged by price signals. Last I checked, a Ferrari costs more than a Hyundai and paying more for the first was still legal.

What is an “Internet advocate” anyway? Since the Internet is not a cause, and — Chicken Little pronouncements aside — is in no danger of disappearing, one has to wonder what Silver had in mind. Could it be along the lines of “homeless advocates,” i.e. those who wish to use the power of government to violate the property rights of some in favor of others? (more…)

My friend and thriller-writing colleague, the great Andrew Klavan, writes in City Journal:

Take the e-mails that the Daily Caller obtained from the now-defunct lefty Web service Journolist. Never mind the personal or psychological implications of a radio producer who lovingly imagines Rush Limbaugh’s death or a law professor who doesn’t know that the FCC has no power to deprive Fox News of a license or a reporter who wants to smear Fred Barnes and other right-wing commentators as racist in order to distract the public from the hateful radicalism of Jeremiah Wright, then Obama’s pastor. The point is not these people’s animus or ignorance or wickedness. The point is that what they desired was not victory in open debate but silence—the silence of censorship, intimidation, or the grave.

When has Rush Limbaugh ever wished a liberal’s mouth closed forever? Really, who can deny that Rush would happily argue a point with absolutely anyone anywhere? When has Fox News ever done anything to its rival cable stations but trounce them in a free competition for ratings? When has Fred Barnes ever tried to bully or intimidate someone into shutting up?

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Washington, D. C. (AP) – Shades of Michael Steele.  Two days after the Justice Department filed suit against Arizona for criminalizing illegal behavior, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean is under fire over unscripted remarks he made last week at a University of Mexico symposium on immigration.

The event was sponsored by the National Council of La Raza [The Race] and Reconquista, a loose affiliation of groups whose goal is to reclaim the southwestern United States for Mexico.

Surreptitiously filmed, Dean’s appearance was posted on YouTube Monday afternoon and pulled Tuesday morning, hours after President Obama ordered the FCC to put its boot on YouTube’s neck until it takes down all the anti-Alinksy videos currently posted and replaces them with fawning, misty reminiscences of the good old days of the class struggle.

A high-ranking administration source told ABC News that President Obama dissociates himself from Dean’s comments for the time being. “We sent him as an observer, not a participant.  The chairman should not have revealed private discussions he had with the president about how to make the border with Mexico more porous while appearing to secure it.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs weighed in at his briefing yesterday, calling Dean’s comments a Republican dirty trick designed to muddy the immigration waters.  “It’s fishy,” Gibbs said.  “Who really organized the conference?  Who invited Dean?  Who gave him the floor?  This smells, my friends.”

Transcript follows: (more…)

Basement-rated CNN announced yesterday that disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and “conservative” columnist Kathleen Parker will co-host a new political talk show at 8 p.m. Regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, CNN should hold its airways to a higher standard and not give an open platform to an admitted john and sex trafficker.

Eliot Spitzer, aka “Client No. 9,” broke numerous state and federal laws, but has never taken responsibility for his actions, nor shown any real remorse. The once-dreaded “Sheriff of Wall Street” was reduced to droning his resignation in front of a microphone while his long-suffering, grim-lipped wife looked on — a familiar trope for those involved in Democrat politics.

Joe Klein, President of CNN and Spitzer’s close friend, demonstrates an utter lack of morality by putting Spitzer on the national airwaves at all, much less during the family hour at 8 p.m. How can parents teach their children about consequences to their actions when Spitzer breaks laws and gets his own TV show? (more…)

The President’s recent commencement address to Hampton University students in Virginia counseled the young minds about the dangers of being bombarded by too much information, but who knew that Joe Lieberman was listening when the President said:

Meanwhile, you’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter. With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations; information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment. All of this is not only putting new pressures on you; it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.

The President also schooled the kids on how difficult it is to sift through all of the information on the web.  Perhaps he thinks the government should help us by winnowing out some of the inconsequential information?

All of that mind-boggling information and the new pressures on our country and our democracy must have triggered a response in this “independent senator” from Connecticut (who caucuses with the Democrats of course, just like the other “independent senator,” Bernie Sanders of Vermont), as Joe Lieberman has offered legislation that he claims will “protect” America during an emergency by giving the President power to shut down the Internet. (more…)

Leave it to the Obama administration to come up with yet another bald power grab, in the guise of “helping” us: now the FCC, invoking an ancient  law designed to regulate the telephone industry, wants to lay its heavy hand on broadband:

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to begin the controversial process of reframing broadband service under communications law, a move aimed at clarifying the commission’s regulatory authority over the sector after a major legal setback.

By a three-to-two vote split along partisan lines, the FCC approved a notice of inquiry asking for comments from the public on how the agency should proceed with Chairman Julius Genachowski’s proposal to reclassify broadband as a regulated telecommunications service, while enacting checks against the commission’s oversight authority.

Naturally, in the emerging American version of Italian fascism, major cyber-players are on board with this in order to let the government do their dirty work for them, and stamp out potential competition before it can gain a toehold in the marketplace — all, of course, in the guise of “protecting the consumer.” From My Way News: (more…)

Various lefty organizations have petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to start monitoring “hate speech” on radio and on the internet. According to this story, the groups include:

Free Press, the Media Access Project, Common Cause, the Prometheus Radio Project, and the League of United Latin American Citizens. Their statement, filed in the Commission’s Future of Media proceeding, comes in support of a petition to the agency submitted over a year ago by the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

“Hate speech against vulnerable groups is pervasive in our media—it is not limited to a few isolated instances or any one media platform,” NHMC warned the FCC in 2009. “Indeed, many large mainstream media corporations regularly air hate speech, and it is prolific on the Internet. Hate speech takes various forms, from words advocating violence to those creating a climate of hate towards vulnerable groups. Cumulatively, hate speech creates an environment of hate and prejudice that legitimizes violence against its targets.”

Such anti-First Amendment nonsense — one could argue that “hate speech” is precisely what’s protected by the First Amendment; the difference between freedom of expression and incitement to violence seems to elude these people — is just part of a larger front war against free speech that the left seems determined to open up, and which the right must oppose vigorously. To give even an inch on the bedrock principle of the First Amendment is to admit defeat, since there can be no compromise on “no law.” (more…)

ABC News is being publicly slaughtered by its own staff at the The New York Observer website, giving specific accusations of an ABC executive’s illegally hiring and firing without just cause, promoting based on whims, discriminating against homosexuals, blacks and sexually harassing of employees.

In reaction to these public allegations of a widespread, 20-year long hostile work environment by its executives, ABC News has launched a two-front defense: keep any other media outlets from reporting the story and refuse to launch an internal investigation.

Meanwhile executives at The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, are monitoring The Observer website constantly. “ABC’s own soap opera ‘General Hospital’ has nothing on this daily unfolding drama of ABC on this website. They click on it hourly to see the latest shocker,” a close source tells me.

The anonymous but public whistle blowing by ABC staff started last week in reaction to a puff piece in The New York Observer about ABC News Vice President Mimi Gurbst’s retiring to become a high school guidance counselor. The story enraged ABC staff past and present for, in their opinion, misrepresenting Gurbst as “cherished.” They commented on the story with riveting details about her reign of terror while running ABC’s news coverage operation. The anonymous allegations about Gurbst include: (more…)

Just what the media needs:

Now it’s the Federal Communications Commission’s turn to examine the future of journalism and the media industry.

“We are at a critical juncture in the evolution of American media,” FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement. “Rapid technological change in the media marketplace has created opportunities for tremendous innovation. It has also caused financial turmoil for traditional media, calling into question whether these media outlets will continue to play their historic role in providing local communities with essential news and civic information.”

Yeah, I know: you’re all broke up about it.  So let’s hear your diagnosis and prescribed course of treatment. Especially as it relates to this inconvenient little truth: (more…)

Bow-wow. You can call me Bo. I’m President Shoutout’s family mutt, a Portuguese water dog with curly black hair. My real name isn’t Bo, but I’m not telling you my real one. Bo is fine. It’ll do anyway. Took the White House brain trust four months to come up with it — you wouldn’t believe the names they actually considered. Let’s just say that “Alinsky” was a contender until Axelrod said “why don’t you just name it ‘Arafat’ and kiss off flyover country for 2012?” Yeah, he called me “it.” Axelrod’s a real sweetheart. Barry’s chief political advisor, which means he spent the whole presidential campaign sending candygrams to the press corps so they wouldn’t do their job. He could have accomplished the same thing with a Hershey bar stolen from an orphan’s Halloween bag. I got his number. Axelrod smells like cabbage and tries to kick me when Barry’s not looking.

Right now, I’m sitting in the Oval Office with Barry, Axelrod and Chief of Staff and resident kneecapper, Rahm Emanuel, while the three chumps cool their heels in the waiting room. Barry’s staring out the window, going JFK on us, trying to figure out which precise upward angle of the chin registers that weary-but-resolute toughness that the press corps laps up. If he sticks that jaw up any higher he’s going to drown in a drizzle if you ask me, but the pose does seem to bring a flush to the freshly sculpted cheeks of Andrea Mitchell. (more…)