The Obama Crackdown on the Jewish Media Begins

Call it Scenes from the Obama Revolution Part 2. It's happening quietly and under the radar but there is a pattern to it is a bit similar for it to be completely random. Editors and staff working for local Jewish papers that have run articles critical of Obama have been receiving hostile phone calls.

While critical phone calls are not unusual when you're working on a newspaper, these phone calls are not from random readers, they are coming from lawyers and sometimes doctors who wield influence in the community and may often be advertisers. Typical talking points for these phone calls typically warn against running any further critical articles of Obama "now that he is President", emphasize that most Jews voted for Obama and emphasize that "we must unite behind him" or there may be "consequences to our community."

The phone calls are conducted with a brashness and rudeness that smack of Rahm Emanuel. A not atypical closing section from a phone call received by the editor of a Jewish newspaper not too far away from Obama's home base ran like this.

Caller: Who the hell does he think is writing things like this about Obama?

Editor: He is a respected journalist who is a Holocaust survivor and has been appearing with us for many years.

Caller: As far as I'm concerned he's garbage! You can't run any articles by him again, not until he moderates his position.

Editor: This is a free country, you can have your opinion and he can have his opinion.

Caller: No he can't!

The objectionable article was a fairly mild piece that pointed out Obama's lack of experience. The caller was not some random reader, but a fairly influential local figure. One or two such incidents could be put down to random moonbattery trickling up, but I'm hearing of more and more similar phone calls. And I'm seeing more and more Jewish papers that had formerly criticized Obama "moderating" their position.

To what extent is this an orchestrated campaign to silence opposition in Jewish newspapers, those that at any point did oppose Obama, there is no way to know. But the outcome can nevertheless be seen on many editorial pages, and with Carter talking about Obama's plan to tackle the middle east early on, it can be seen as clearing the decks and intimidating the Jewish press at large into remaining silent.

All this makes the function of the Jewish blogsphere all the more vital in the months ahead, to maintain our function as a voice of opposition to Obama's Pro-Hamas and Pro-terrorist policies. Hamas has already admitted that Obama's advisors were meeting with them, and there will no doubt be much worse revelations to come.

This situation is not unique to the Jewish community. The Cuban community will likely find itself similarly intimidated in preparation for Obama's coming change of policy on Cuba. Israel may top the list of free countries that Obama intends to stab in the back on behalf of his pro-terrorist policies, but Columbia is on the list, and the list includes what's left of the free world.

But the Jewish community's influence in American politics is an obstacle for Obama. The Obama junta's approach to dealing with that, has been to maintain the illusion of a Jewish consensus backed by the widely circulated phony high 70's figure of Jewish votes for Obama. This is being followed by a quiet campaign of intimidation intended to silence anyone who isn't on board. Dissidents will be branded as "racists" with stories already running on this theme and numerous more set to go.

The way is being cleared for Obama to take power and begin the destruction of Israel. Silence only serves his agenda. Blogs have an independence that the print media does not have. We don't have advertisers that we answer to or community organizations whose cooperation we need. We are not owned by families with vested business interests. We can speak out and join our voices together against the growing night.

The Cowardly Character Assassination of Sarah Palin

By Michelle Malkin

Sunken ships loosen bitter lips. The failed McCain campaign, for all its high-minded talk of honor, duty and courage, is now teeming with unscrupulous gossipmongers. Seems the dishy staffers forgot to crack open their copies of Sen. McCain's bestseller, "Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember."

Rest assured: Their cowardly character assassination of Sarah Palin won't be forgotten.

The finks turned to Newsweek and Fox News to spread petty rumors about Palin's intellect and character. The magazine peddled anecdotes from sources horrified that Palin greeted top advisers at her hotel room -- gasp! -- "wearing nothing but a towel" and "wet hair." Fox News reporter Carl Cameron breathlessly reported that his unnamed McCain sources told him Palin lacked "a degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate" because, they claimed, she didn't know which countries were parties to the North American Free Trade Agreement and "didn't understand that Africa was a continent, rather than a series, a country just in itself."

Let's assume for a moment that the McCain rumormongers are telling the truth about Palin (and I don't believe they are). Who would it damn more: Palin, or McCain and his vetters, who greenlighted her for the vice presidential nomination? Don't need a fancy Ivy League degree to figure that one out.

In introducing her to America, McCain praised her independence and backbone: She "stands up for what's right, and she doesn't let anyone tell her to sit down." The inside snipers are now roasting her for that very attribute -- redefined as "going rogue" -- because she had the nerve to try to schedule media interviews on her own. The nerve of her!

Palin's response to the campaign fragging? At a late Wednesday night airport press conference in Anchorage, immediately upon landing home after the election defeat, she smiled cheerfully. The Alaska governor shrugged off the "foolish things" said by the McCain saboteurs, and simply said, "It's politics. … It's rough and tumble and you've got to have a thick skin just like I've got."

Hollywood savaged Palin. Journalists mocked her. Liberal blogs slimed her. Opponents cursed her, Photoshopped her, hacked her e-mail, hanged her in effigy, called her bigot, Bible-thumper and bimbo, and attacked her husband and children. But nothing Palin endured during the election season compares to the treatment she's receiving from these backstabbing blabbermouths who worked on the same campaign she poured herself into over the last three months.

Sarah Palin worked her heart out. She energized tens of thousands to come out when they would have otherwise stayed home. She touched countless families. I didn't agree with everything she said on the campaign trail. But she vigorously defended the Second Amendment and the sanctity of life more eloquently in practice than any of the educated conservative aristocracy. And she did it all with a tirelessness and an infectious optimism that defied the shameless, bottomless attempts by elites in both parties to bring her and her family down.

Liberty needs a virtuous people to survive; self-governance requires virtuous leaders. "Knowledgeability" is a necessary trait in political life, but it is not sufficient. The elitist critics of Palin, so blindly enamored of Barack Obama's ability to hold forth for hours on theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, ignored the Founding Fathers' counsel: Character counts. In times of adversity and crisis, it counts more than IQ points, instant trivia recall and bloviation skills.

"The most important thing I have learned, from my parents, from teachers, from my faith, from many good people I have been blessed to know, and from the lives of people whose stories we have included in this book," John McCain wrote in "Character Is Destiny," "is to want what they had, integrity, and to feel the sting of my conscience when I have risked it for some selfish reason."

John McCain not only failed to make that message stick with the electorate, he apparently couldn't persuade his own staff to heed his advice and practice what he preached.

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