The blog Hypnosis Control has this You Tube goodie that purports to show subliminal advertising for presumptive GOP nominee John McCain on a Fox News broadcast.

Is it real? Imagined? Intentional sublimal? Unintentional picture placement? A doctored video put on You Tube? Who knows (and if Fox denied it some people would say don’t believe them anyway). We embed, you decide…

FOOTNOTE: I could never understand all the fuss about subliminal advertising, despite the research. If subliminal advertising (intentional or otherwise) truly worked, we’d have heard a lot of it by now and banned or otherwise the government (any government) would use it to influence and manipulate the population.

It’s like expecting that people who listen to Rush Limbaugh would ever follow Rush if he suggested, for example, that voters should vote in Democratic primaries or change their party registrations to vote in and sandbag the primaries. It’s as SILLY an idea as that! (Never mind…)

And now it moves to media center stage: the trend of Republicans crossing over to vote in Democratic primaries. But the New York Times reports that many GOPers aren’t doing this because they’re “dittoheads” obeying the wishes of mega-partisan talk show host Rush Limbaugh, but disgruntled Republicans who feel their party has left — or is leaving — them:

INDIANAPOLIS - Until now, Shirley Morgan had always been the kind of voter the Republican Party thought it could count on. She comes from a family of staunch Republicans, has a son in the military and has supported Republican presidential candidates ever since she cast her first ballot, for Richard M. Nixon in 1972.

But this year Mrs. Morgan exemplifies a different breed: the Republican crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary. Not only will she mark her ballot for Senator Barack Obama in the May 6 primary here, but she has also been canvassing for him in the heavily Republican suburbs of Hamilton County, just north of Indianapolis — the first time she has ever actively campaigned for a candidate.

“I used to like John McCain, but he’s aligning himself too closely with what Bush did, and that’s just not what I want for this country,” Mrs. Morgan, who is 56, said when asked to explain her rejection of the presumptive Republican nominee.

This should be a warning flag to John McCain. As I’ve predicted many times on this site, there is a large segment of voters that aren’t going to look at political party at all this year — but want to take a big broom and sweep away the people who are in charge who have brought the United States a war seemingly without end (even if X voter originally supported the war), a decimated economy, a sagging dollar, an epidemic of home foreclosures and plummeting local property values, and an economy peppered by massive corporate cutbacks or failures and employment ills.

Seen from this perspective, the decisions of Democratic rivals Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to ignore Democratic progressives’ demand to boycott Fox News, makes political sense: Republican voters are in play in these primaries and they all can’t be dismissed as participating in Limbaugh’s call to basically sabotage the Democratic primaries.

This suggests that indicates that the potency of the Democratic party’s most progressive wing, is now being offset in some primaries by more conservative and centrist voters who are cross-over Republicans who feel their party has failed them. And they’re shopping around.

The Times confirms this:

Since the start of the primary and caucus season in January, Republican voters have been crossing over in increasing numbers to vote in Democratic contests — supplying up to 10 percent of the vote in states that allow such crossover voting — and they are expected to play a pivotal role in the fiercely contested primary here. What is less clear, however, is the motivation for their behavior: are they genuinely attracted by the two Democratic candidates? Or are they mischief-making spoilers, looking to prolong a divisive Democratic fight or support a candidate Mr. McCain can beat in November?

Local Republican Party leaders in Indiana concede the attraction of the Democratic candidates to some of their party members. And interviews with roughly a dozen Republican voters in central Indiana suggest that they are driven mainly by concerns about the economy, with discontent over Bush administration policies driving their involvement in the Democratic race.

What’s now happening between Obama and Clinton is competition for some of these Republicans — Republicans probably dismissed as “well-they-must-be-Rinos” by lockstep Republican partisans who will adjust their positions or jettison previous principles according to the latest pronouncements from the White House or EIB Radio Network. The Times again:
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The only good thing to be said about Faux . . . er, Fox News is that their ratings ain’t lookin’ so hot these days.

Neither are the ratings for other cable news channels, but at least you wouldn’t expect them to make a whopper of a mistake in promoting a Clinton-Obama debate based on the legendary Douglas-Lincoln debates and being so impaired as to believe that the Douglas was abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

Which prompted Hilzoy to note at Obsidian Wings:

“Legally, for a political party to run Frederick Douglass for federal office would have been on a par, not with running a citizen of another country, but with running a shovel or a cow: a piece of property whose nature precluded its being a citizen, let alone a Senator. The most Douglass might have aspired to, in 1858, was to be granted such rights in something like the way Caligula made his horse a Consul.”

A-freaking-hem.

Add to the increasingly long list of bad news for Senator Barack Obama in his battle for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination the latest Newsweek poll which shows him losing ground shockingly fast to Senator Hillary Clinton:

After an important primary win in Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton has reduced Democratic rival Barack Obama’s double-digit lead among registered Democrats and voters leaning Democratic by more than half, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. Plagued by controversies over Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s comments and the candidate’s own “bitter” remarks, Obama has seen his favorability rating slip significantly in the last week, the poll found.

The survey found that Clinton now trails Obama by seven points, down from 19 just one week ago. The previous NEWSWEEK poll, conducted on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, found that more than half (55 percent) of registered voters believed Obama was more electable, while 33 percent gave the edge to Clinton. The current poll finds Obama leading 46 percent to 38 percent.

The question becomes whether Clinton now has “Big Mo” or whether it’s a matter of Obama quickly losing it. But the Obama camp has received some bad news recently. Two key tidbits: his shrinking lead in the Gallup Daily tracking poll, coupled with signs that the news media narrative is now changing from “Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a chance” to “Hillary Clinton might actually be able to be nominated.”

Once again, polls fluctuate and trending is what matters…but the trending for Obama hasn’t been good this week and this poll contains little good news for his campaign:

One of the more problematic results for Obama was that four in 10 of registered voters (including Republicans and independents) now have an unfavorable opinion of him–and the same number said there is “no chance” they will vote for Obama if he becomes the nominee. Four in 10 registered voters (41 percent) say they have a less favorable opinion of Obama based on his association with his former pastor, Rev. Wright, whose racially and politically inflammatory sermons have been circulated on the Internet and covered in the media. A similar number (42 percent) say they will not vote for Obama because of comments he made about “bitter” small-town residents clinging to guns and religion.

There is, however, one ray of sunshine for the Illinois Senator:

Even so, the NEWSWEEK poll indicates that despite the political damage inflicted over recent weeks, Obama still edges out McCain in a trial head-to-head heat for the White House, 47 to 44 percent. That margin was only one point wider a week ago. Clinton—whose own favorability rating has not improved even as Obama’s has slipped—also holds a three point lead with 48 percent of the vote to the Arizona senator’s 45. Among all registered voters, more than half (53 percent) still hold a favorable opinion of Obama, compared to the 47 percent who view Clinton favorably and 51 percent who have favorable views of McCain.

But it’s clear the Obama camp is, at the last, on the defensive right now and, at the most, in a holding pattern. Note these developments:

1. Hillary Clinton is trying to press Obama to a Lincoln-Douglas style debate with no moderators. Since Obama has seldom gained from debates, it’s hard to imagine him agreeing no matter how much she tries to pressure him. And he is refusing. When candidates try to make another candidate not debating the issue, it usually fizzles unless the other candidate feels there is something to be genuinely gained. Her husband Bill Clinton is also demanding Obama debate.

2. Bill Clinton is now unleashed. The Clinton campaign feels he’s a plus. And BC has been pressing for the campaign to go more negative and faster.

3. Obama has agreed to go on Fox News – a sign that he is pulling out all stops now to steady his campaign. The question: if he thought the ABC News moderators were tough on him, is he fully prepared for what will face him on Fox News? The upside for Obama: he handles himself well and gets some headlines — and produces some good sound bites — it’ll get lots of air time and communicate that his campaign is not just on the defensive.

Polls should continue to fluctuate, but right now Obama has hit a rocky patch. What to watch for this week: can he stabilize his tumble or reverse it?

The repercussions of a recent New York Times article about how the Pentagon manipulated the American media have begun to be felt in the foreign press.

Serge Truffaut writes for Montreal’s Le Devoir,

“The old adage that “the first casualty of war is truth” is one to which the Pentagon has stuck to with unheard of will, strength, and consistency. Thanks to the Benedictine work a journalist from The New York Times - and there is no better word to describe it- we now know that the U.S. executive has applied itself to building a propaganda machine so powerful, that it highlights the disdain that Bush and company feed on with respect Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes marriages are made in heaven. And then there are the political marriages that are seemingly made further south, in hotter climes. Now there’s a report that the honeymoon may be over between Democratic Presidential nomination aspirant Senator Hillary Clinton and conservative mega-media-giant News Corp maven Rupert Murdoch.

For political and media junkies, its timing could not be more fascinating.

These are the days when Clinton, eager to pull out all stops to win the Pennsylvania primary, met with right-wing Pittsburgh billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife – the guy who basically went after her husband for years, funded op-research on Bill Clinton and ran pieces accusing the Clintons of dirty work in the death of Vince Foster — and won if not his heart than his personally-written endorsement.

So perhaps it’s exchanging one Democratic party nemesis for another — after all Clinton already WON the New York primary — but the New York Times notes that breaking up is hard to do:

A popular parlor game in political circles in recent years has been dissecting the shifting relationship between Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media mogul, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Two years ago, there were signs of a thaw, with Mr. Murdoch, who owns The New York Post, not only endorsing Mrs. Clinton’s bid for a second Senate term in his paper, but also organizing a fund-raiser for her.

Recently, though, the relationship appears to have taken a turn for the worse. Mrs. Clinton has been skewered in The Post throughout her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, and recently taken to task over her claim that she had encountered sniper fire in a visit to Bosnia as first lady (though she later said she had “misspoken”). The newspaper even ran an article, datelined Sarajevo, to debunk what one of its headlines labeled a “ ‘low blow’ lie.”

Now another sign has emerged offering possible clues to Mrs. Clinton’s Murdoch status: Mr. Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth is holding a fund-raiser at her London home this month for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

On the other hand, there are enough variables to suggest that this may be more of an inching away from a closer relationship than any kind of a divorce. For one thing, for several years the apparent Clinton-Murdoch alliance benefited both sides.

For another, the new NY Times article notes that:

…analysis of campaign contributions from employees of the News Corporation and its affiliates, including 20th Century Fox, Fox Sports and the like, reveals they skew heavily Democratic and toward Mrs. Clinton, who collected more than $100,000 in donations compared with about $80,000 for Mr. Obama.

The records show that the employees gave less than $20,000 to Republicans seeking their party’s presidential nomination.

Last year, even Mr. Murdoch contributed $2,300 to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. His son James contributed $3,450 to Mrs. Clinton. This followed The Post’s endorsement of her re-election in 2006, as well as Mr. Murdoch’s highly publicized fund-raiser for her.

So Murdoch’s employees are more prone towards Hillaryland versus Obamaland or even McCainland.

And then there are statements from the Clinton campaign about how unbiased Fox News is.

In reality, wooing the people who control the press is not new in American politics. What is new and surprising to some is Clinton’s desire (for those who considered her a polarizer) and ability (she wins them over) to in-effect court rich publishers who have demonized her and her husband and even in one case suggested they were involved with murder.

Yes, politics does make strange bedfellows. And Mrs. Clinton is hoping that 8 months from now the elections will give birth to a new title before her name (President-elect Hillary Clinton).

But is all of this this negative? Not necessarily.

To many Democrats, it’s jaw-dropping. But it shows that Clinton (a) can win over her most bitter foes, and, (b) is willing to take a deep breath and make peace with those who were out for her husband’s and her political scalps…if the peace treaty can advance the Clintons’ main goal.

It does raise a question: what next, a meeting and endorsement from Rush Limbaugh?

Here’s the latest Clintonian trend: suck up to the right-wing media. As if it wasn’t enough that Hillary herself cozied up to Dick Scaife (and was cozied back), top Clinton surrogate Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania — he who thinks whites may not be ready for a black president — thinks the world of Fox News, claiming it is truly the fairest and most balanced of them all:

I think during this entire primary coverage, starting in Iowa and up to the present — FOX has done the fairest job, and remained the most objective of all the cable networks. You hate both of our candidates. No, I’m only kidding. But you actually have done a very balanced job of reporting the news, and some of the other stations are just caught up with Senator Obama, who is a great guy, but Senator Obama can do no wrong, and Senator Clinton can do no right.

So he said yesterday on Fox & Friends (via The Politico).

I’ll let Steve Benen translate: “Rendell’s argument seemed to be that Fox News is more negative towards Obama than the credible cable news networks, which therefore makes Fox News ‘fair,’ ‘objective,’ and ‘balanced.’”

Now, Hillary herself may not believe this — Steve thinks not, and he’s probably right. But the fact is, one of her key surrogates — an all-important Pennsylvania surrogate with national standing, a party celebrity — said it (and may think it, who knows?). And, of course, what he said was both biased and stupid. Biased because he equates objectivity with attacking Obama and stupid because everyone knows Fox News isn’t at all fair or balanced.
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On Fox News Sunday the other day — C&L has the video and part of the transcript — host Brit Hume referred to McCain’s recent Iran/al Qaeda gaffe as “a senior moment”:

I think it’s probably just a blip, but it was a bigger blip than he wanted or needed at the time. I think the overall impression of the trip was this is a man welcomed by, knowledgeable of and comfortable with foreign leaders across a big part of the globe. But the mistake, nonetheless, raises questions not about his knowledgability — we all kinda believe he has that — the question, perhaps, about his age, which is an issue. You know, the feeling was not that he’s a dope, didn’t know his way around, that he might have had a senior moment there, and I think that’s unfortunate for him. But I think probably the trip was a net plus.

It was a fairly serious (and revealing gaffe), and not an isolated one. And it may not be so much a matter of knowledge — he is a smart man who knows a great deal about the world — as it is of competence.

What is interesting, though, is how the gaffe has been received, and how future gaffes will be received. McCain continues to get a free pass from the major media in terms of experience, knowledge, and general competence, and even in terms of judgment and his positions on the issues, especially on foreign policy, international relations, and military matters. Simply put, the media like him and don’t ask the tough questions. This gaffe seems to have punctured the bubble around him, though, and, for once, the media are taking a more critical view of their darling. At the very least, the gaffe got some coverage, and he looked bad. Perhaps it was a turning point.

Or perhaps not. The spotlight isn’t on him the way it’s on Obama and Clinton, and the media have yet to show that they intend to treat McCain like they will undoubtedly treat either Obama or Clinton as the Democratic nominee. He is still the avuncular, straight-talking wise man. While partisans like Hume will excuse his gaffes as reflections of old age, downplaying them into meaninglessness, it will be up to the non-partisan (or less explicitly partisan) in the media to do their jobs and act like professionals. It’s time to take McCain seriously — he is the Republican nominee, after all — and to revoke his free pass.
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At Think Progress
Bravo!

Last week’s Chelsea Clinton furor marks a low point in cable network competition for eyeballs and ears during the 24/7 news cycle and raises broader questions about their prime-time “journalism,” which has degenerated into a babble of idiot ids vying for attention.

David Shuster’s “pimped out” remark exemplifies a trend reported almost a year ago by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, that “cable news channels…are moving more toward personalities, often opinionated ones, to win audiences.

“The most strident voices, such as Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck, are among the biggest successes in winning viewers, as is CNN’s new crusader, Lou Dobbs. How much those individual shows affect a channel’s overall audience is harder to gauge. Their growth in 2006 was substantial, particularly among 25-to-54-year-olds, but those gains were not enough to stanch the overall declines.

“The shifts toward even edgier opinion are also probably a response to another change. Cable is beginning to lose its claim as the primary destination for what was once its main appeal: news on demand. That is something the Internet can now provide more efficiently.”

Something even more basic is involved as well…

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That’s what Howard Kurtz at WaPo calls it.

First we got Coulter promising with a straight face to campaign for Hillary if McCain wins.  Now Rush Limbaugh is saying that he’d rather see Clinton or Obama win the presidency than John McCain, despite Bob Dole’s plea for sanity on the party’s far right.  Too bad, Bob Dole.  That ship sailed a long time ago.

When it comes to the McCain mutiny, Limbaugh has plenty of company on the right side of the dial. Laura Ingraham endorsed Mitt Romney last week, saying, "There is no way in hell I could pull the lever for John McCain." Sean Hannity, who also endorsed the former Massachusetts governor, regularly rips McCain. Hugh Hewitt is urging the audience for his syndicated radio show to fight for Romney against what he calls a media-generated "McCain resurrection." But with a program heard on 600 stations, including Washington’s WMAL, Limbaugh is the loudest and brashest voice inveighing against the man he derides as "Saint John of Arizona." (New York Times)

Could it be that even some of the dittoheads have noticed that the far right has turned out to be wrong about every single thing it’s said every single time? Doubtful. Clearly, though, a certain number of sane Republicans have noticed.

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by Damozel |  Hurray!  Ann Coulter has semi-endorsed Hillary, sort of!  Ed Morissey asks "Has Ann Coulter jumped the shark?"He wonders if this will finish her off with anyone who still takes her seriously, assuming anyone still does. Jill Miller Zimon has the video right here. Is this the greatest campaign season ever, or what? It’s not exactly fair on Hillary, but I can’t help chortling madly as I watch it again and again and again.

So. Ann too is well and truly infected, as the Captain puts it, with “McCain Derangement Syndrome.”  You might be surprised by her extreme solution to it, but I’m not.  True, from Duncan Hunter to Hillary might strike some as something of a leap, but McCain has the power to drive neocons right over the jagged edge, bless him. This campaign season, liberal is the new conservative!  

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A year ago today, back when a surge was something that you didn’t want to fry your computer, extraordinary rendition was a stirring playing of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, people thought FISA was the federal agency that protected their bank deposits and a Huckabee was a . . . something or other, I posed a couple of questions:

Can we survive two more years of a Bush presidency?

Have we become a nation of sheep?

Looking back over the previous 12 months and ahead to a watershed 2008 election, the answer to both questions is an equivocal “yes.”

The ability of the most amoral presidency since forever to shock but not surprise ripened like cow pie in a pasture on a hot summer day during 2007:

* George Bush’s Forever War morphed into a business deal that merely forestalls the eventual collapse of Iraq: Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki gets coup insurance in the form of a long-term U.S. troop presence and the U.S. gets first dibs at Iraq’s vast untapped oil riches.

* In a fairy tale ending, the president commuted the prison sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff. Libby, of course, had been thrown overboard by his bosses as they lost control of the Wilson-Plame affair, which grew out of one of the administration’s bigger whoppers justifying the war.

* U.S. attorneys were sacked because they resisted becoming handmaidens for a Justice Department that had become a branch of the Republican Party with subpoena power.

* The shroud of secrecy was torn off the administration’s enthusiastic embrace of Nazi-like torture techniques, which so troubled the head of the CIA’s clandestine service — although not for the right reasons — that he ordered the destruction of terrorist interrogation videotapes despite being explicitly told not to do so.

* The administration’s bellicose Iran policy crashed upon the shoals of a report by the nation’s spymasters that Tehran apparently had shuttered its nuclear weapons program four years earlier, an inconvenient disclosure that did not dissuade the president and vice president from continuing to rattle their sabers.

* Two key administration players – presidential mentor Karl Rove and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – resigned after working tirelessly to suborn the rule of law while stonewalling a feckless Democratic congressional majority in its feeble attempts to call them out. Both men, and most especially Gonzales, face a perilous New Year because of their probable criminal culpability.

* Meanwhile, the U.S. economy increasingly looked like a house of cards as the gap between Wall Street and Main Street grew, the war became a half-trillion dollar albatross and the dollar tanked against major foreign currencies. A home mortgage meltdown long in the making was exacerbated by an administration that shamelessly continued to reward the rich and give the finger to a middle class in crisis through, among other acts, vetoing an expansion of the life-saving S-CHIP program.

Can we expect more of the same in 2008? Absolutely. But that does not diminish the importance of digging deeper into the rotten core of the Bush presidency.

This means bringing Gonzales and other perps to justice, demanding increased transparency in what the administration and Congress does, working to restore civil liberties lost in the unprecedented Bush-Cheney power grab, and insisting that the Republican presidential field either climb out of Bush’s bed or explain why voters can expect more of the same any of them become president.

Will the republic survive another year? Yes, just as the hundreds of terrorism suspects have survived another year without due process in Guantánamo Bay and other way stations in the Rumsfeld Gulag, but there remains the specter of a citizenry even more disenchanted with its president and other so-called leaders and the institutions they profess to represent then at the end of the Clinton presidency.

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Both ABC News and Fox News are running into a buzz-saw of political anger due to decisions bigwigs are making over limiting the number of candidates that they’ll allow in joint appearances or debates.

But the big raging issue is whether Fox News is taking special pains to cut campaign-contributions-rich Rep. Ron Paul out of the New Hampshire Republican debate when Fox is allowing actor Fred Thompson (who polls lower in New Hampshire) to participate.

At the heart of this issue are two bigger issues:

(1) In a democracy, shouldn’t voters have a chance to choose between different ideas and candidates — including some who may not have double-digit polling numbers or even get a double-digit percentage of the vote? What if a candidate has shown that he has incredibly enthusiastic supporters and a huge campaign bankroll. Does it smack of censorship?

–Washington Monthly:

I’m not even close to a Ron Paul fan, but I’m certainly willing to concede that Fox News shouldn’t stack the deck like this.

(2) How DO you set criteria in debates? Should debate and/or candidate group appearances have qualifying conditions that are applied unemotionally to see who gets to use the limited air time?

The candidate this will most impact is Republican Rep. Ron Paul, whose stands fly in the face of standard Republicanism, annoy the “mainstream” (read that “traditional”) Republicans in debates and whose small polling numbers are matched by wildly enthusiastic supporters and a big fat campaign bankroll. The AP:

ABC and Fox News Channel are narrowing the field of presidential candidates invited to debates this weekend just before the New Hampshire primary, in Fox’s case infuriating supporters of Republican Rep. Ron Paul.

The roster of participants for ABC’s back-to-back, prime-time Republican and Democratic debates Saturday in New Hampshire will be determined after results of Thursday’s Iowa caucus become clear.

Fox, meanwhile, has invited five GOP candidates to a forum with Chris Wallace scheduled for its mobile studio in New Hampshire on Sunday. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee received invites, leaving Paul of Texas and Rep. Duncan Hunter of California on the sidelines.

The network said it had limited space in its studio — a souped-up bus — and that it invited candidates who had received double-digit support in recent polls.

In a nationwide poll conducted December 14-20 by The Associated Press and Yahoo, Thompson had the support of 11 percent of GOP voters and Paul was at 3 percent. Paul’s support is at 6 percent in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll conducted in early December.

So if the criteria of double-digit in the polls is used here, Paul would not qualify. BUT:

Paul was tied with Thompson for fifth in New Hampshire in the most recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, each with the support of 4 percent of likely voters. Among all New Hampshire voters, Paul led Thompson 6 percent to 4 percent, but that was within the poll’s margin of error.

Jesse Benton, Paul’s spokesman, said it was a “big mistake” not to include Paul, especially given Paul’s recent success in fundraising. He said the campaign has been trying to reach Fox News to get an explanation for the decision, but its calls had not been returned.

“There very well might be some bias,” Benton said. “Ron brings up some topics that aren’t very popular with Fox News, as in fiscal responsibility and withdrawing from the war in Iraq … that does leave us scratching our heads a little bit about whether it was deliberate. Based on metrics, I don’t see how you can possibly exclude Dr. Paul.”

Some livid Paul supporters are distributing e-mails calling for a boycott of Fox advertisers.

A Fox representative did not immediately return calls for comment about the complaints.

Paul has been invited to a GOP forum that Fox News is sponsoring in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on January 10, Benton said.

So it is a ticklish subject.

But IS Paul being shafted?

Josh Marshall convincingly makes the case that in the case of the upcoming New Hampshire debate HE IS:

Paul’s supporters lay most of their claim to a place in the debate on his mammoth fundraising numbers. To me, the bigger issue is that Paul is consistently outpolling Fred Thompson, who is being allowed into the debate.

He shows a chart, then writes:

Paul’s support (red line — 6.2%) and Thompson’s (blue line — 3.1%) are both pretty anemic. But Paul isn’t that far off from Mike Huckabee (green line — 11.5%). And the key fact is that the excluded Paul is outpolling the included Thompson. So there is simply no objective criteria by which you include Thompson and exclude Paul, who by the way has vastly outraised Thompson.

It was unclear to me until just now whether the real factor here was the NH GOP or Fox News, the sponsor of the debate. But the state party is now calling on Fox not to exclude viable candidates. So, it’s not them. Or if it was, it isn’t now.

So, it’s all about Fox News. Paul’s out because he’s not a Fox News Bush-clone. Say whatever you want about the guy, Fox News shouldn’t be able to silence him because they don’t like his views.

The fact is, there have been few political movements like Paul’s — and Paul’s supporters and even some outside analysts argue that his support may not show up in traditional polls since he’s reportedly getting many first time voters.

In the case of ABC’s debate, Republicans and Democrats who want be on it should meet one of three benchmarks (this is still from AP story):

[Place]first through fourth in Iowa, poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major New Hampshire surveys, or poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major national surveys.

ABC News anchor Charles Gibson said the criteria were actually quite inclusive. He defended the network taking the initiative in effectively narrowing the field at a point when no actual voters had cast a ballot, except for Iowa caucus-goers.

“You will have had a year’s politicking,” he said. “You will have had, I think by count, about 641 debates. You will have had national polls and state polls and one state’s vote. I think that’s pretty indicative.”

But the question remains: SHOULD funding be a criterion as well? If so, what implications does it have? If not, what implications does THAT have?

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel about this debate. By early January, the extent of Paul’s support will be clear ….big or small.

The New York Times blog notes that Paul isn’t the only one being impacted by the new rules. It’ll also slice out two of the most outspoken voices in the Democratic Party:

The criteria could potentially sideline several of the Democrats, including Senators Christopher J. Dodd and Joseph R. Biden Jr.

David Chalian, the ABC News political director, said that the network was seeking to provide the “best conversation and debate between the candidates who really have a chance to become the nominee.”

According to the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire, Paul’s supporters are launching an organized campaign against Fox:

Republican Rep. Ron Paul and his supporters are targeting the Fox News network today after an Internet discussion spread during the weekend that the cable network wasn’t giving the Texas lawmaker a seat at the table for a New Hampshire forum scheduled two days before the state’s Jan. 8 primary.

The Associated Press reported last Thursday that the New Hampshire Republican Party would be sponsoring a forum at St. Anselm College in Goffstown, N.H., with Fox News host Chris Wallace moderating the discussion.

Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson were the only candidates listed as participants, and so the Paul supporters mobilized.

This morning, Washington Wire received a mass email from an independent Paul supporter calling on his considerable online organization to write to Fox employees and protest the decision. The email listed the addresses of about 60 Fox employees, from press contacts to hosts Bill O’Reilly, Shepard Smith, Neil Cavuto and Brit Hume.

“Has Fox News Excluded Ron Paul From the Pre NH Primary Forum?” the email said, “Fox News cannot just stifle public opinion. debate and impact a primary election by excluding Ron Paul just because they don’t like his message of freedom and liberty,” the email said (typos included). Some of the emails were posted on this Web site, and supporters are asked to “be respectful” in their email missives.

The key questions become:

–What are the criteria?
–Who’s being excluded?
–Is there anyone who is being included who does not meet the criteria?
–Should there be a clamor in the future for special consideration given to candidates who raise X amount of campaign funds?
What if someone just pledges to use his/her millions on a campaign? Should that count or should the criterion be money RAISED from voters?

But, as Marshall notes, Paul’s exclusion from the New Hampshire debate does raise some eyebrows.

Meanwhile, the LA Times blog, in a post that needs to be read in full (it has too many links to include here and is quite detailed) says some things about Paul’s supporters that have been noted by weblog owners:

Understandably, neither side apparently wants to incur the online wrath of Paul’s passionate parishioners, who scour the Internet around the clock and descend like locusts on any opportunity to praise Paul or right perceived wrongs on any website or blog they can find.

…..The mainstream media — or msm — are a particular target of Paul’s vociferous followers, an eclectic mix of libertarians and disaffected Republicans, Democrats and, until now, non-voters. Outspoken to say the least, they disregard stories like (HE GIVES LINKS)…. They believe that major newspapers and broadcast networks have conspired to pay insufficient attention to Dr. Paul, a 72-year-old ob-gyn and 10-term House member, citing his low numbers in polls, which Paulites believe are self-fulfilling frauds designed to cause voters to invest their votes in more traditional candidates with a seemingly more realistic chance of winning.

But no amount of attention seems sufficient for Paulites, who complain when there is no coverage and then complain again about any coverage they do get. Watch the comments section below.

They gather in chatrooms and more than 1,200 meet-up groups across the country to paint signs, write letters, organize marches and protests, support each other and otherwise promote the Ron Paul Revolution, which they believe will arrive when primary voting starts.

Read it in its entirety.

SOME OTHER WEBLOG OPINION:

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Alberto Gonzales, Monica Goodling and others of the Bush Brigade who worked so hard to subvert American freedoms are gone, but their mission is moving forward. After chipping away at our legal rights, next on the agenda is control of our minds through mass media.

A House Committee will turn the spotlight today on FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, who has been busy trying to concentrate ownership more than ever before into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and a few other corporate chieftains.

Like all loyal Bushies, Martin has not let legal niceties get in his way.

Citing “complaints from the public and professionals within the communications industry,” Rep. Bart Stupak, who heads the Energy and Commerce subcommittee that is investigating the FCC head, says, “It is one thing to be an aggressive leader, but many of the allegations indicate possible abuse of power and an attempt to intentionally keep fellow commissioners in the dark.”

Martin and other FCC members will testify about his efforts to bulldoze through the easing of rules limiting cross-ownership of newspapers and TV stations in the same city as well as “cooking the books” to push through regulations to crack down on cable TV which, outside of Fix News, has not been as servile as the Administration would like.

Read more here.

You can see the headline at Fox News, can’t you? Martial theme music, elaborate graphic, perhaps a mushroom cloud emerging from an about-to-be-carved turkey, an all-American family looking on in horror, white to the core, manifest destiny come undone, exposed at last, the pioneers of American imperialism obliterated by the revisionist blamers.

Wait… what?

Yes, there is war here, there, and everywhere on the American cultural landscape — and it ain’t just Iraq and Afghanistan. No, it’s Christmas and Easter and, yes, Thanksgiving.

So says Michelle Malkin. Which means it must be true.

Right? Right?

Mademoiselle Malkin claims to be “all for truthful, historically accurate lessons about Thanksgiving” — and that’s really something, because she isn’t for “truthful, historically accurate lessons” about anything else.

She just can’t stand the “‘diversity’-peddlers” — you know, all that “guilt-mongering and institutional racism indoctrination,” all that “Blame America” BS.

Oh. I see.
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Attention All Presidential Candidates and Networks!

There are voters out there like me who do not get MSNBC, CNN and Fox News! Not everybody likes to watch TV all of the time and or pay huge fees to cable companies or satellite networks for a service which used to be free to all (except the advertisers).

From now on, NO presidential debate should be on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News unless it is also broadcast to OTA (Over-the-Air) viewers. Yes, I can watch the MSNBC debate tonight on my computer but only because I pay too much for broadband Internet service. Many voters cannot afford to do this.

The Democratic Party needs MoveOn.Org like a bad case of diarrhea.

Yet there was the left-wing public policy group giving it the sh*ts this week because of its latest outburst of trash talk – a full-page ad disparaging General David Petraeus in the New York Times on Monday that carried the the big, bold headline “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?”

While there was merit to what the body of the ad said, because of the headline it accomplished nothing positive and plenty negative in giving congressional Republicans, their Fox News helpmates and the right-wing blogosphere something to rail about, as well as distracting attention from the Petraeus-Crocker dog-and-pony show.

I have a second problem with the ad, as well: President Bush certainly is fair game. But going after Petraeus, and by implication the brave men and women he commands, is out of bounds, and the ad is yet further evidence that this bunch of self-absorbed lefties have never been able to understand that while you can and should criticize the war, you don’t dishonor the warrior.

Then there is the sad news that the objectivity impairment in the Times newsroom has spread to the advertising department.

The New York Post reports that the open rate for an ad of the type and size of the MoveOn ad is $181,692, according to a Times flack, but MoveOn says that it only paid $65,000.

It’s easy to forget that MoveOn was formed in response to the Clinton impeachment debacle. Its fund-raising prowess has become formidable, but cheap shots like the headline on the ad merely serve to call attention to itself and further alienate folks like myself.

While I defend MoveOn’s right to be tone-deaf, which it expresses with feckless regularity, I fear that its ability to destruct far outweighs its ability to instruct and suggest that the Democratic presidential wannabes whom it holds in its slimy caress send it a back-channel message:

Thanks, but no thanks.

Shouldn’t they have called the show “Softball?”

Question: Did whoever decided to restrict General Petraeus to ONLY getting “interviewed” by Fox News after his remarks to Congress think most Americans fell off the turnip truck?

Generally, officials interviewed by professional journalists get tough questions with the interviewer often making a list of questions beforehand that they and their top editors believe are lingering out there.

The idea behind this is NOT that journalists are evil and out to “get” anyone (the easy explanation some on the right and left immediately use when a news organization runs something unfavorable to someone they like…and then when the same news organization blasts someone they don’t like, it’s a great organization), but the journalist is supposed to be the proxy for the public and ask questions that people are asking — not limiting questions so the really tough questions are not asked.

Limiting questions to make sure that sources don’t get the really tough ones, and keep them from being challenged vigorously about key assertions, is usually the work of public relations people (who do have an important function and role and do some great work but don’t generally interviews on newscasts).

The result, if the news source answers them head on, is an increase in the legitimacy of the person being interviewed – because the person addresses negative perceptions or information.

It’s like someone trying to sell a product or going for a job interview: the need is to overcome all objections.

A pablum feeding P.R. interview boomerangs: it gets journalists who were excluded mad (and they are then determined to get their tough questions out later on in other forums…but get them out), does NOT enhance the legitimacy of the news source and those who opposed or question the news source all along see the softball interview as an act of news control…and fear of tough questions.

Which this most assuredly seemed to be.

P.S. Most Americans did not fall of the turnip truck so all this will do — again — is be seen as an interview aimed at the Republican party’s base. And Petraeus lost the chance to immediately get his message out to non-Fox News fans via other outlets. He may talk to others later on (such as to a morning show…or will that be only on Fox, too?). But the damage to him and a chance at smarter PR has been lost.

In terms of understanding the value of having Petraeus make himself available to a wide variety of news organizations, and not play favorites by limiting his first interview to a company widely perceived as being the administration’s best bud, whoever set up the interview must have…fallen off the turnip truck.

With a loud thump.

UPDATE: Taylor Marsh watched the interview and calls interviewer Britt Hume “The Britney Spears of Journallism.” (Yes, some could consider what Mr. Hume was doing a lip sync of sorts…)

You’d think that tomorrow night after giving his report to Congress Gen. David Petraeus would try to maximize his message by not in any way getting enmeshed in anything that would appear as if he’s being political or trying to evade journalists who may have tough questions.

But the latest is that after his address tomorrow he and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will give — you guessed it — Fox News an EXCLUSIVE interview.

So much for a p.r. campaign that will extend beyond pulling out all stops to try and shore up more than just the Republican Party’s base.

The reality is even though Fox News does have some excellent journalists, it has the reputation of being essentially the administration’s favorite media outlet (along with appearances on Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity). Rightfully or wrongfully, it has the reputation of going easier on administration officials than newspeople of other networks do.

If the administration and Pentagon had political smarts, they would let the General talk to Fox and at least one other news network immediately after his talk.

But now they will be open to charges — rightfully or wrongfully — that they went on a network widely seen as “friendly,” a network skewed to Republicans once again indicating that the administration runs a government of the base, by the base and for the base.

That may be unfair, but just watch the reaction. By giving an exclusive interview to Fox, journalists from other outlets including the print media are going to conclude that the administration has some things to hide because they didn’t have the guts to send their key people out to talk to reporters who might ask tougher and more hostile questions and confront the toughest questions, challenges and even hostile attitudes head-on.

PS: I’m a former reporter and that’s my impression as well. They’re opting for a highly-controlled P.R. campaign and, if the goal was to win over independent voters and convince some non-progressive Democrats to give the administration the benefit of the doubt, many will conclude — rightfully or wrongfully — that Petraeus and the Ambassador were going to Fox to control the kind of questioning and also reward Fox for being such great buds to them in times of increasing media criticism.

The problem: they don’t only need to win over the choir.

UPDATE: Donklephant has the same reaction:

I won’t mince words here. They went with Fox because they are friendlier and they’re trying to appeal to their base. That’s it and there’s really no mystery about that.

However, this is the people’s government, not the Republican’s government, and Petraeus shouldn’t be granting exclusive interviews to ANY network, let alone one that has taken a stance on where they fall in the political spectrum. Bush should know better by now, but he’s more interested in trying to salvage his legacy at this point, and holding his decisions up to increased scrutiny isn’t in the game plan.

UPDATE II: Andrew Sullivan is on the same wavelength as well:

If Drudge is right and the general and the ambassador are going to give Fox News’ Brit Hume an exclusive hour-long sit-down, then it seems to me they forfeit any pretense of neutrality. They really need either to stick to the Congressional testimony, or appear on more outlets than a purely Republican network. It’s extremely important for the integrity of the US military - and the credibility of Petraeus - that it remain above partisanship and even the appearance of partisanship. Here’s hoping Drudge is wrong. They couldn’t be that stupid, could they?

UPDATE III: For a completely different take on this, be sure to read Blue Crab Boulevard.