Right Turn Clyde

Like I was sayin… most people wouldn’t like you if they knew what you really thought.  Apparently, Barack Obama feels the same way.

There have always been several things that bothered me about Sen. Obama, his total support for gun control, support for the “fairness” doctrine, commitment to pull out of Iraq without regard for thesittuation on the ground, and many other positions.

Not suprisingly, his support of these ideas and others allowed him to cater to the far left of the dem party and win the dem nod for the White House.  However, America isn’t far left even though I am afraid the left blinker is stuck on (which I will write about in a few days).  With his eye on the White House, Obama is singing a different tune on many past positions.

Dick Morris pointed out in a recent article many of these new-found convictions:

• He says he believes in a Second Amendment right to bear arms.
• He now opposes late-term abortion.
• He suddenly is a devotee of using faith-based institutions to deliver public services.
• He now says that he won’t raise Social Security taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. In the primary, he said he’d eliminate the threshold entirely, including on people making as little as $100,000.
• He recently opposed the Fairness Doctrine for talk radio.
• Now he says he’s going to consult with the military before pulling out of Iraq.

The upsetting thing is that this leaves many Americans wondering where does he truely stand.  Some of my friends on the left say that he is just saying those things to get elected (which many, oddly enough. think is ok).  The independents that I know that support him say that he only had far left leanings to get the nomination and now we see the real Obama (which oddly enough, they too, think this is ok).  The friends that I am still keeping aren’t voting for him anyway…

Over many years, a person can change their opinion on an issue, but most don’t change over the course of a few months.  I believe that Obama will govern from the far left (even if he doesn’t want to to so, see here).  This would leave America far weaker position in terms of the economy and our adherence to the constitution.

If you support or are leaning toward voting for Obama in November, you have to ask yourself which Obama are you voting for or even more importantly… which one will you get?

Bring Back Fairness by Shutting Down Both Sides?

(July 29, 2007) – Like I was sayin… if you can’t win, you might as well demand that everybody shut up.

An article I found this morning made an interesting point.  Philip Terzian points out that there WAS a fairness doctrine in place before being repealed in 1987.  Interestingly enough, you would be hard pressed to find political discussion on the radio before then.  Now it is everywhere, although be it mostly conservative in nature.

This is why people like Dick Durbin (D!) want to bring back the ‘fairness’ doctrine.  They know that forcing stations to carry viewpoints of Jim Hightower, Mario Cuomo, and Al Franken will pretty much bring silence back to talk radio.  The fact that there isn’t radio audience for the liberal viewpoint on talk radio doesn’t matter to people like Durbin.  Stations would be FORCED to include an hour of Al Franken for every hour of Rush, which in effect would cause the station to change formats as they couldn’t make any money during the Al Franken hour.

In an interesting exchange on the Senate floor, Norm Colman and Durbin discuss the issue.  Colman points out that we shouldn’t want the government to regulate the content of the media, especially since there are so many opportunities to get opposing viewpoints in the media for those of us who want to listen.

In 1987 the FCC said, “the intrusion by government into the content of programming occasioned by the enforcement of [the Fairness Doctrine] restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters … [and] actually inhibits the presentation of controversial issues of public importance to the detriment of the public and the degradation of the editorial prerogative of broadcast journalists,”.

And then there is another thorny issue about who gets to determine what is ‘fair’?  Does a radio station who carries Limbaugh also have to carry the views of liberals, communists, libertarians, christian right, the catholic church, green party, used car salesmen, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, and little ol’ me?  Who then decides what are the pertinent views to counter?

Anytime the government wants to regulate speech in any form, we all run the risk of losing out in the end.