Scrubbing The News For Obama

Remember yesterday, I wrote:

Okay, show of hands, how many of you were surprised that this story saw the light of day: Dobson students question Obama’s plan

Yes, it was surprising to see the press report on students making negative remarks on Obama, wasn’t it?

So today per Instapundit:

AIRBRUSHING IN THE EAST VALLEY TRIBUNE? So I linked to a story on high school students skeptical about Obama’s stimulus speech. Now the story has the same headline, but the quotes are missing, replaced by a bunch of feelgood talk about how excited everyone was to have Obama in town. But you can find the original story here. And here’s the Google Cache. Some difference, huh? I emailed the reporter, Hayley Ringle, to ask what happened. (Bumped)…The Google Cache now shows the new story. No response to my email yet. I saved screenshots, though, and of course there’s the Drudge capture.

I guess we’re all going to have to learn how to do screen captures, and we’re going to have to copy things to our hard drives, because the press will clearly screw with the truth any way it can. If you go that article, now, there is a notice at top:

To our readers: Due to a technical error, this story was temporarily removed from our Web site. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Yeah, those technical errors…they happen. Sometimes computers and things just change data with no rhyme or reason, and without help from human beings.

Celebrate free speech; while you can.

If it’s all not 1984-enough for you, Mayor Daley wants surveillance cameras on every corner. It’s for your own good, your own safety, don’t you know, to have your every move watched. Cameras on every corner haven’t done a thing for crime or public safety in England, by the way. They do scold, though.

Speaking of Mayor Daley…

Obama is talking to the mayors and warning them that – if they are wasteful – he will “use the full power of my office,” to deal with them.

May I INTERPRET for you what President Obama actually just said to the Mayors? He said “you are no longer in charge of your towns and cities; my government is. You are not the mayors – I am the Mayors – you will be allowed to remain as titular figurehead for as long as you are following my orders.”

This is not, strictly speaking, an American President. This is something else. Do we care to name it? Welcome to a whole new country; it only took 4 weeks. Tony Blankley calls the president’s governing style detached and aloof. I suspect that is because he prefers not to show his heavy hand.

And by the way: Can you imagine the screaming of “Imperialism! He thinks he is the King” if Bush had used such rhetoric? But then, we’ve always known that Obama is more interested in ruling than in leading.

Meanwhile, the neglected little boy, Bill Clinton is trying to be relevant by pretending to “advise” Obama to “be more optimistic” (he’s only about two weeks behind the rest of us) and then takes the easy route and pisses on George W. Bush because he knows he can and no one will question it. But he should be called on it. Everyone lazily and conveniently blaming this disastrous economy on Bush should read this link and the last one. And put Bizzy Blog on your blogroll.

Did I say “Celebrate Free Speech”? I meant CELEBRATE FREEDOM WHILE YOU CAN:

Taxing by the mile. The old American tradition of taking a road trip somewhere for the hell of it? Gone.

Vaclav Klaus: tells Europe they’re like the old Soviet Union. Hey, Val, we’re catching up!

Liberal writer to America: We don’t need your stinking history!

Are we cowardly, or merely cowed? If our America is cowardly, and that seems to be what President Obama and his cabinet believes (and I never thought I’d write a sentence like that in a million years) then America will very quickly curl up under this assault on our economy and our freedoms and we will die.

But I do not believe that America is cowardly. But Americans are slow to anger, and we don’t particularly like to fight amongst ourselves. It’s time to get angry. There is only one way to stop the coup we are right in the middle of:

…we must repeat, over and over, that while illusions may well be all around us, some amorphous notions, like honor and freedom and truth, are still real. They are not just real, they are Eternal.

We must repeat again and again that America’s honor is no illusion. Imperfect as it may be this is still the land to which – in large or small ways – every free nation owes its current liberty. This is the nation that has routinely sent its idealistic young men off to foreign lands, to die there, not for empire, not for real-estate, but for the protection and advancement of that unseen thing that is freedom, the strengthener of the human spirit, the burnisher of human potential. First Children and their motley co-horts aside, this is still the nation to which millions of creative or industrious people wish to come, it is the nation to which the oppressed call out for rescue and relief.
…
We must repeat, over and over, that Liberty is the means by which we created creatures are meant to live and to grow and be. That Liberty lives in the Truth. That Liberty lives where people can speak freely, without fear of injury or reprisals. That Liberty lives only when the press is free and unencumbered – when it is detached from events instead of entwined in them. That Liberty lives when people refuse to be intimidated into silence or acquiescence, whether in the workplace or within the community. That Liberty is the fragile thing that diminishes whenever one refuses to acclaim it for oneself.

Acclaim freedom for yourself. Start today.

Related:

Rebel Yell: little coverage of taxpayer protests

Grassroots gathering momentum.

Victor Davis Hanson: We’re being battered by our own government.

Jennifer Rubin says: Mr. President, turn back while there is still time. He won’t.

ACORN: breaking into foreclosed-on homes in “civil disobedience”.

Grouchy Old Cripple: Dares to remind us who started this economic disaster:

Are you better off now than you were 4 weeks ago?

Here is Ezra Levant defending Free Speech

Does Free Speech and Transparency Make People Happier? Let me think!

Big Brother May be listening