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FCC to police media, BLOGGERS THAT’S YOU

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this new step will eventually give the FCC the power to take out websites like TheBonfireMedia, TheBlaze and many others. Your VOICE must be stopped because it’s harming Obama and the Big Govt. Libs.

The Federal Communications Commission is planning a broad probe of political speech across media platforms, an unprecedented move that raises serious First Amendment concerns.

The FCC’s proposed “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” which is set to begin a field test in a single market with an eye toward a comprehensive study in 2014, would collect a remarkably wide range of information on demographics, point of view, news topic selection, management style and other factors in news organizations both in and out of the FCC’s traditional purview.

The airwaves regulator would also subject news producers in all media to invasive questioning about their work and content.

A methodology worked up by Silver Spring, Maryland-based Social Solutions International (SSI) says that in addition to its general evaluation of news content, the survey will include a “qualitative component” featuring interrogations of news organization owners, management and employees.

Among the questions federal contractors will be asking of private media companies:

For media owners:

“What is the news philosophy of the station?”

For editors, producers and managers:

“Do you have any reporters or editors assigned to topic ‘beats’? If so how many and what are the beats?”

“Who decides which stories are covered?”

For reporters:

“Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers (viewers, listeners, readers) that was rejected by management?” (Followup questions ask the reporter to speculate on why a particular story was spiked.)

According to a May article in Communications Daily, Social Solutions International will be paid $917,823 for the study, which also questions news consumers about their habits and numerically codes news content according to how well, in the FCC’s view, it meets the “critical information needs” (CIN) of particular “communities.”

“The FCC has a duty to make sure that the industries it regulates serve the needs of the American public no matter where they live or what financial resources they have,” acting FCC chairwoman Mignon Clyburn said in a May announcement of the survey. “The research design we announce today is an important next step in understanding what those needs are, how Americans obtain the information critical to their daily lives in a dynamic technological environment, and what barriers exist in our media ecologies to providing and accessing this information.”

Other observers take a less sanguine view of the proposal.

“In this study, the FCC will delve into the editorial discretion of newspapers, web sites and radio and TV stations,” Hudson Institute Fellow Robert McDowell, who served as an FCC commissioner from 2009 to 2013, told The Daily Caller. “This starts sticking the government’s nose into what has traditionally been privileged and protected ground. Regardless of one’s political stripes, one should be concerned.”

via FCC to police media, question reporters in content survey | The Daily Caller.

Kerry Says World Leaders Mocked Him

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Kerry Says World Leaders Mocked Him Over Shutdown

Im sure it’s not over the shutdown John it’s that they’ve seen The Addams Family and their making jokes behind your back or to your face as i would. 

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Just how bad was the shutdown for America’s image on the world stage? So bad, says Secretary of State John Kerry, that foreign officials joked about buying him meals.

“I have seen how our allies, our partners and those who wish to challenge us or to do us harm are all sizing us up every day,” Kerry said at an event hosted by Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “What we do in Washington matters deeply…that’s why a self-inflicted wound like the shutdown can never happen again.”

Kerry added that the shutdown delayed security aid to Israel. “The dysfunction and the shutdown and the simplistic dialogue that came with it didn’t impress anyone,” he said.

The federal government was mostly shuttered for 16 days after House Republicans refused to sign off on a budget unless it stripped away funding for President Obama’s health care law. The impasse was condemned repeatedly by the Democratic leaders and progressive policymakers at the conference.

“I do love this country, damnit, and this country is in deep trouble,” declared former Vice President Al Gore. “What happened down there on Capitol Hill was pathetic.”

The shutdown sent the GOP’s approval ratings spiraling downward, leading some Democrats to think they might be able to take over the House in the 2014 mid-term election. “If they stay on course Democrats have a good chance,” said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former congressman who led the Democratic Party’s House campaign committee. “If they reverse course than it’s a district by district scenario.

Gerrymandering by GOP-led state legislatures, however, have left few competitive seats. “This is a map that the Republicans designed nationwide,” Emanuel said. “If you want to win it back, you have to pick the lock nationwide.”

Senator Cruz returns to Texas welcome after shutdown battle

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By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a favorite of the conservative Tea Party movement, returned home to a rousing welcome in Texas on Saturday after his attempt to derail Obamacare with a shutdown of the federal government led to sharp criticism of his tactics as reckless and futile.

“After two months in Washington, it’s great to be back in America,” Cruz joked in speaking to a crowd of about 750 people in a packed downtown San Antonio hotel ballroom.

Cruz was greeted with an eight-minute standing ovation in an appearance organized by the Texas Federation of Republican Women. People in attendance, many of them wearing red to show their support for keeping Texas a conservative-leaning state, lined up to greet him.

The speech and another talk earlier in the day at a panel in Austin marked Cruz’s first public appearance in his home state of Texas since his part in the showdown in Washington over the rollout of Obamacare that resulted in a 16-day shutdown of the federal government that ended on Thursday.

A related stalemate over the debt limit threatened to lead to a default on U.S. government debt until the Senate on Wednesday voted 81-18 to end the crisis and the House of Representatives followed with a vote of 285-144 to approve the plan, allowing government to open without defunding Obamacare.

Cruz in his speech in San Antonio blasted Senate Republican leaders for “failing to stand with House Republicans against the train wreck that is Obamacare.”

He declined to criticize any Republicans by name.

While he said the agreement to end the shutdown and extend the debt ceiling was a “lousy deal for the American people,” Cruz said the battle he and other Republicans waged will end up helping his party.

Cruz became a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and even from key Republicans when he staged a 21-hour filibuster-style talk on the floor of the Senate last month, as part of his attempt to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Texas senator, who has been in office for 10 months since his election last year, received scathing criticism from Democrats, the White House and even some of his fellow Republicans in the Senate during the shutdown and the debate leading up to it.

Senator John McCain from Arizona, a former presidential candidate, and Representative Peter King from New York have been two of the most vocal Republican opponents of Cruz’s tactics, with McCain calling Cruz and his allies “wacko birds.”

Cruz also took a hit in the polls. A Gallup poll released on October 10 found he had gained significant name recognition, but the percentage of Americans with an unfavorable view of him has jumped to 36 percent from 18 percent in June.

But the welcome Cruz received in Texas demonstrated his popularity among many Republican activists has grown.

In an interview with Reuters after his speech, Cruz said there is “a lot to be encouraged about” after the battle in Washington.

“We saw what can happen when the American people unite, when the American people stand up,” he said. “What the American people want is economic growth and job creation. They are crying out for something that fixes all the enormous damage that Obamacare is causing.”

(Additional reporting by Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Missouri; Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Eric Walsh)

(treachery, treason, knavery, dishonest, ASSWAGON) McConnell: No More Shutdowns Over Obamacare

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear on Thursday that repealing Obamacare would never be used by Republicans again to bring the federal government to a halt.

“One of my favorite old Kentucky sayings is there’s no education in the second kick of a mule,” McConnell told The Hill. “The first kick of a mule was when we shut the government down in the mid-1990s — and the second kick was over the last 16 days.”

“There will not be a government shutdown,” the Kentucky Republican added.

Urgent: Should the House Have Agreed to Debt Deal? Vote Here 

The Obamacare strategy was pushed by several young congressional Republicans backed by the tea party — including freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, who spoke against the healthcare plan for more than 21 hours on the Senate floor last month — which led to a 16-day partial shutdown of the government and jeopardized the nation’s borrowing authority.

“I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is,” McConnell told The Hill. 

The federal government reopened on Thursday after a battle-scarred Congress approved a bipartisan measure to end the shutdown and avert the possibility of an economy-jarring default on U.S. obligations.

President Barack Obama signed the measure early Thursday after the House and Senate passed it late Wednesday.

The legislation funds the government through Jan. 15 and extends the nation’s debt ceiling through Feb. 7. It ended a brawl with Republicans who tried to use the must-pass legislation to mount a last-ditch effort to derail the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and demand concessions on the budget.

The White House directed all agencies to reopen promptly and in an orderly fashion. More than 350,000 furloughed federal employees across the country were expected to return to work on Thursday.

Standard & Poor’s estimated the shutdown has taken $24 billion out of the economy, and the Fitch credit rating agency warned on Tuesday that it was reviewing its AAA rating on U.S. government debt for a possible downgrade.

McConnell told The Hill that the fight to stop the healthcare law would not take place in January, either, even though he and many other Republicans “hate, detest, and despise Obamacare.”

Noting that some Democrats would like to repeal the 2.3 percent medical-device tax that is used to finance the healthcare law, McConnell said Republicans are out of luck on ending or altering Obamacare before 2017 “unless Democrats get so shaky about parts of it.

Urgent: Should the House Have Agreed to Debt Deal? Vote Here 

“They may, depending upon the amount of heat they get from their constituents because of rising premiums, because of job loss, because of the chaos of the exchanges, they may be open to changes,” he said.

“But full-scale repeal is obviously something that’s not going to be achievable until I’m the majority leader of the Senate and we have a new president,” McConnell said.

In several exclusive interviews with Newsmax in recent weeks, McConnell related the “math problem” Republicans face in the Senate in trying to repeal Obamacare.

The GOP holds 46 seats in the upper chamber, versus 52 for Democrats. The Senate also has two independents, and they caucus with the Democrats.

“We demonstrated once again that every single Republican is in favor of defunding Obamacare,” he told Newsmax after senators backed a measure to temporarily fund the government that Obama later rejected. “We had a solid party-line vote. Our difficulty, of course, in achieving that has to do with simple mathematics.”

Meanwhile, McConnell told The Hill that he took over the negotiations leading to the final agreement after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and the White House rejected the latest offer from House Republicans.

“By the time I came in [Wednesday], it was clear to me that it was up to me to get us out of the government shutdown and make sure we didn’t default,” he told The Hill.

He said he related the party’s untenable position to fellow Republican senators privately via football analogies, looking toward being in a better position to seek cuts in spending and entitlement programs next year.

“So I met with my members. I said, ‘Look, I think we all know I have a weak hand here,'” McConnell told The Hill. “I’m on my own two-yard line. The offensive line is a little shaky, and what best I think we can do is get off a punt here to try to get into a better field position.”

But his requirements for the deal were that it not raise taxes nor jeopardize the spending cuts imposed through sequestration.

“We didn’t raise taxes and we didn’t bust the caps, but we’ll be back at it in January and February, which is why I call it a punt, with better field position to fight again another day,” McConnell told The Hill.

McConnell: No More Shutdowns Over Obamacare.

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