ledeagenda.com

From Live Feed:

Fulfilling their scheduling civic duty is starting to seem increasingly cumbersome to broadcasters, however. Between a struggling economy and ratings sagging in midseason, every interruption costs networks advertising dollars and momentum. 

“At a time when we’re struggling not only financially but to build audiences, this doesn’t help on either front,” one network executive said. “These repeated interruptions — and the rumor of even more to come — really make it difficult to build audience flow and loyalty. We will all lose one or two million dollars for this.”

The presidential election resulted in a fall season regularly interrupted by political news coverage, followed by primetime inauguration coverage, then two primetime speeches about the economy. The White House requesting yet another primetime slot, during sweeps and right after several shows dropped to new lows in last night’s ratings, has some executives exasperated.

“I believe in the president and his policies, and as broadcasters we have a responsibility to provide the airtime,” said another network insider. “But these frequent primetime requests are wreaking serious havoc with our schedule and our advertisers. Ratings are down everywhere and the airtime is costing us all significant dollars when we can least afford it.”

From Yahoo:

Obama’s comments near the market close rattled investors when he said financial institutions that pose a serious risk to markets should be subject to serious government supervision.

“Whenever there is a question about how large the government role will be … the market doesn’t like that,” said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Equity Markets in Jersey City, New Jersey.

“As we came close to the bell we got the curveball: our president came on TV,” he said.

Trade was choppy on Wednesday, with stocks buffeted by uncertainty over Washington’s plan to shore up the banking system and weak housing sales. The market had turned briefly positive after the government gave details on stress tests of banks’ capital levels, with investors betting that banks would be able to withstand the news tests with relative ease, before finally falling in late trade.

These two articles highlight perfectly what is going on- the MSM being in the tank for Obama while pushing us down a self-destructive national path. Wonderful.

As reported on Drudge:

The Mason resident was one of thousands who showed up Sunday at Fountain Square for the Cincinnati Tea Party, an effort designed to show disapproval for “wasteful government spending.” The group wants Congress to repeal the $787 billion stimulus package that President Barack Obama has championed as a way to create jobs and give the economy a boost.

“The thought of all this spending makes me angry,” Frost said. “I’m tired of being angry.”

…

I’m frustrated with the way things are going in Congress. They need to remember that they work for us, and right now, we don’t approve,” Lynch said as he propped up a sign for his son Charlie, 2.

“This is not a Democrat thing or a Republican thing,” he said. “It’s a government thing.”

The Sunday rally was one of dozens that have taken place across the country in recent weeks.

The anti-bailout protests started last month when Rick Santelli of CNBC complained about Obama’s $75 billion mortgage-relief plan. Santelli accused the government of promoting bad behavior and sarcastically asked people at the Chicago Board of Trade whether they’d like to pay for their neighbor’s mortgage. His rant was picked up on the Drudge Report and posted on YouTube.

His call for a Chicago Tea Party along Lake Michigan spread rapidly via the Web, and people started planning mini-versions of the Boston Tea Party, a 1773 revolt where colonists dumped tea into the harbor in protest of what they considered unfair taxation from England.

Cincinnati police said unofficially that about 4,000 protesters showed up Sunday, less than the 6,000-plus people lead organizer Mike Wilson had projected.

Bailouts.

Nationalization.

Government expansion.

Hiding health care socialization in the bailout bill.

Threating free speech and the second amendment.

Voting on 1,000 page bills with less than one hour to read the piece of legislation in its entirety.

Enough is enough.

It’s time for the New American Tea Party.

We will be having a rally on April 15th at noon on the Idaho Statehouse steps in coordination with the Nationwide Tax Day Tea Party protests.

Click here for our Meetup group.

We even have a Facebook page. 

Suggested signs to bring:

Perhaps you’re not the “protesting type”. I get that, I really do. But we are talking about the taxes that our children and our children’s children will pay for today’s nationalization. What we are handing our children is immoral, unconstitutional, and downright selfish. We are talking about government ownership of nearly all financial sectors. Once they own the banks, they own us all.

You are not alone, there are others out there who feel these bailouts are wrong. Not just wrong, but evil, unconstitutional and a danger to our republic. If we don’t rally now we may be forever changed as a country.

Join us for the Tax Day Tea Party protest April 15th. This country is ours too.

More info: taxdayteaparty.com

Click here to watch Alex Jones’ “The Obama Deception”

I wonder how many quaterbacks have had their careers shorted by injury under his system?

Still, you have to respect the man, from KTVB:

Since his elevation to head coach in February 1995 Bellotti has guided Oregon to a No. 2 ranking in the country, a Fiesta Bowl win following the 2001 season, 11 total bowl appearances and 106 wins, the second-most victories of any Pac 10 conference football program, according to the university.

The Ducks have finished among the nation’s Top 25 college football teams five times in the last nine seasons under Bellotti, and are poised to do so once again this year.

This is great news for the Broncos. We get the Ducks at home this year with a rookie coach.

Still, you have to wonder if the quaterback injury curse will continue, from the KTVB article:

Ducks offensive coordinator Chip Kelly was named to replace Bellotti last December. He will take over as head coach at the beginning of spring practice on March 30, the university said.

…

“I am pleased we are able to announce (Bellotti) will remain at Oregon once his storied coaching career concludes,” Kilkenny said. “I am confident (Kelly) will be a highly successful leader of our football program.”

Kelly has served as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach the last two years.

/smirk

He started off by arguing that the Republican party needs to modify its positions to market itself to inner-city hip-hop youths, then goes on a self-destructing attack on Rush Limbaugh and releases a badly written RFP showing just how out-of-touch the GOP is on technology issues. And now this….

From AOL News Political Machine:

If this GQ article is quoting him accurately, Michael Steele has just admitted he is, by definition, pro-choice.

Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?
Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.

You do?
Yeah. Absolutely.

… Then, he goes on to sort of backtrack from that, essentially making an argument that it is, in fact, not an individual choice, but a state’s choice:

Are you saying you don’t want to overturn Roe v. Wade?
I think Roe v. Wade-as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was a wrongly decided matter.

Okay, but if you overturn Roe v. Wade, how do women have the choice you just said they should have?
The states should make that choice. That’s what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide.

Do pro-choicers have a place in the Republican Party?
Absolutely! I’m not sure if it is more concerning that Steele is pro-choice — or that he is unsure of his position on the Life issue.

This is relevant because during the campaign, Steele’s Pro-Life credentials came under question (from bloggers like me) for his service as co-chair of the Republican Leadership Council, a pro-choice group affiliated with Christine Todd Whitman. Steele’s line was essentially that he is a “Pro-Life Roman Catholic Conservative” …

Michael Steele needs to go. Period.

The Republican Party base is sick to death of this reach-out-to-everyone-but-the-conservative-base bull crap. You either want to shrink government, lower taxes and demand personal responsibility or you don’t. We don’t need this pandering to supposed moderates [Democrats] by compromising our core values.

Listen up GOP- you think you had fundraising troubles with McCain? Keep this clown at the helm for another year or two and see how many conservatives you have left.

If you want to appease the abortion lobby and the the inner-city community organizers, be my guest. Just don’t expect me to donate my time, labor or money. The Heartland doesn’t listen to Fifty-Cent.

In a huge turn of events, banks now seem to be fighting back against the stealth nationalization of our financial system.

From NYTimes.com:

The list of demands keeps getting longer.

Financial institutions that are getting government bailout funds have been told to put off evictions and modify mortgages for distressed homeowners. They must let shareholders vote on executive pay packages. They must slash dividends, cancel employee training and morale-building exercises, and withdraw job offers to foreign citizens.

As public outrage swells over the rapidly growing cost of bailing out financial institutions, the Obama administration and lawmakers are attaching more and more strings to rescue funds.

The conditions are necessary to prevent Wall Street executives from paying lavish bonuses and buying corporate jets, some experts say, but others say the conditions go beyond protecting taxpayers and border on social engineering.

Some bankers say the conditions have become so onerous that they want to return the bailout money. The list includes small banks like the TCF Financial Corporation of Wayzata, Minn., and Iberia Bank of Lafayette, La., as well as giants like Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.

They say they plan to return the money as quickly as possible or as soon as regulators set up a process to accept the refunds. On Tuesday, Signature Bank of New York announced that because of new executive pay restrictions in the economic stimulus package, it notified the Treasury that it intended to return the $120 million it had received from the government only three months ago.

Other institutions like Johnson Bank of Racine, Wis., initially expressed interest in seeking bailout funds but have now changed their minds. Bank executives told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that one reason they rejected the government money was to avoid any disruption in the bank’s role in the local community, including supporting the zoo or opera company if they chose to.

One of the biggest concerns of the banks is that the program lets Congress and the administration pile on new conditions at any time.

The demands to modify mortgages or forestall evictions are especially onerous, some bank executives and experts say, because they could prompt some institutions to take steps that could lead to greater losses.

I was hoping this would happen. Quite simply, we cannot let the government have ownership interest in nearly every bank in America. Finance, money, is ultimitaly the root of all ownership, of all commerce, of the free market. Once government is allowed to dictate the terms of a loan, it’s only matter of time before the rest of society must follow suit.

That banks, mind you big and small ones, have stepped up and said, “no” is impressive. I have a higher respect for Wells Fargo out of this financial mess than I did before. They fought having to take the bailout monies, and being forced to, are seeking to return it as quickly as possible. It is becoming clear which institution’s in America have outlived their products (GM, Chrysler) and which ones will not resort to mooching and rely instead on their own innovation (Wells Fargo).

This is the audacity of NOPE. This is what I talked about in yesterday’s post. We can restore Liberty, Freedom. We need only say, “thanks, but no thanks” to the tyrannical hand of Uncle Sam. It all starts with opting-out.

Civilian National Security Forces. Centralized educational oversight. Ballooning deficit with no regard for the constitution. Increased police and regulatory aggression. Nationalization of nearly every financial sector in America- the root of all true American ownership. Hope and change, it seems, is but a cruel moniker for overwhelming, crushing government rule.

 But we need not despair, we merely need to exercise our civil [economic] rights. Yes, they will try to tax and regulate our options to their pre-determined worldviews. The free market, our most sacred principle, is our solution.

Consider this, they will not be able to indoctrinate you if they have not even been able to “educate”you.

I would like to put this idea out there: conservatives, constitutionalists and libertarians need to empower their own rights by empowering their home.

I am talking about home-schooling, home-based churches and even the most basic property-right principle of homesteading. I am talking about the sacred principles of family, freedom of speech, religion and association.

Ok, maybe not strictly “home-school” per se- private, charter or otherwise free-market principles can easily offer much higher quality of education than that of state-run government indoctrination schools. And think about it, even if private school is out of reach or otherwise unavailable, that doesn’t mean that you, as a parent, can’t educate your children on what the Declaration, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights means. By empowering ourselves, we can re-root the Tree Of Liberty.

And consider this: by empowering our homes, our property, we can set up our lives to avoid having to turn to the government for help. That is the trap that the New World Order wants. They want you to forget that your rights, your family are sovereign. They want to create an artificial system were you have no choice but to turn to the government when times go bad.

I am not saying it will be easy. But Liberty doesn’t have to die. In the face of overwhelming government amplification of its own significance and self-worth we can take back what is rightfully ours. Our rights are not given, they are loaned, by us with the most strictest of conditions- that we can dissolve these bands when government ceases to exist for the purpose of protecting our rights.

By re-learning what it means to be free we can stop incessant, debilitating and nefarious government growth.

If no one turns to their solutions, they will have to re-tool their approach.

Quite simply, it is peaceful social protest. We will not live outside of our principles.

It’s the spirit of 1776. Reborn.