Clearly, the White House hasn’t quite figured out the difference between the two.  Now, I will say that some many who complain about liberal bias in the media and quote Keith Olbermann to, in part, prove it also need this bit of education.  (Quoting Keith Olbermann to show he’s an unserious clown is an entirely different matter.)  But the White House ought to certainly understand the difference.

After spending the week declaring that Fox News Channel isn’t a real news organization because it has perspective (while at the same time ignoring perspective of a worse kind from so many other news organizations), Jake Tapper of ABC News got White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to determine what the standard was for “perspective”.

Tapper: “That’s a sweeping declaration that they’re not a news organization. How are they different from say, ABC, MSNBC, Univision?”

Gibbs: “You and I should watch around 9:00 tonight or 5:00 this afternoon.”

Tapper: “I’m not talking about the opinion programs or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying that thousands of individuals who work for a media organization do not work for a news organization. Why is that appropriate for the White House to say?”

Gibbs: “That is our opinion.”

On FNC, the 9:00 hour is Sean Hannity’s show, and Glenn Beck runs at 5:00.  So expressing viewpoints, on shows that are not news shows but are transparently and openly opinionated, by the White House’s lights, disqualifies you from being a news organization.

Well, apparently there’s more to that than just expressing viewpoints.  Else, why would the President himself have had MSNBC’s Olberman and Rachel Maddow as part of an off-the-record briefing?  Apparently it’s not just perspective that’s the problem.  It’s disagreement they’re trying to suppress.

Because you know that other news organizations are watching how this administration is treating FNC.  The message is clear, “If you want access, you will tow the line.”  True, other administrations have had issues with the press, and with specific networks or newspapers, in the past.  But Obama is taking this into uncharted territory.

Ostracizing a news network for it’s opinion shows critical of you is way, way out of line.  While it’s not technically violating the First Amendment, since there are no legal impediments being thrown up to Fox News, the spirit of the amendment is being violated.  This is either thin skin or something worse.  I hope it’s the former, but I’m watching out for the latter.

Update: A commenter on this post (which tries to make an equivalence between Obama’s general dissing of FNC to when Bush would try to get NBC to air unedited quotes of himself) make a great point.

All three networks to opinion after 5, what’s the big deal? I don’t think FOX has tried to hide the fact that Beck, O’Relly, Hannity or Greta are opinion. Hell, it’s not like any of those three were ANCHORING the presidential elections.

A la Olberman.  Ouch.

Shire Network News #172 has been released. Quite a while ago, actually.  The feature interview is with retired US Army special forces Colonel Gordon Cucullu about the effects of Obama Derangement Syndrome on the conservative side of politics in America. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!"

In order to pay some of the bills around here, we’ve decided to take money for advertising.  Yes, I know, it’s the whole "selling out" issue that free web sites, free games, and yes, even free podcasts eventually grapple with.  But to bring you the best in Anglospheric news, interviews and general jocularity, sometimes things start costing actual money.  Hopefully, this won’t be a regular thing.

Interestingly, our first on-air sponsor is the United States Food and Drug Administration.  The FDA is trying to get the word out on a new program of theirs, so I hope that this is informative, if a bit American-centric.

>ahem<

Food.  Necessary for all human life.  Source of nutrients, fiber, protein and all the things that keep us going and thriving.

Hi, we’re the Food and Drug Administration — the FDA — and we’d like to inform you of a new and generous program brought to you by the Obama administration.  We call it "Social Groceries", and we’d like to explain it to you.

Clearly, the profit motive in the food industry has caused untold damage to our culture.  Every day, children go hungry.  Adults, too, but we’d like to focus on the children, mostly because they’re more sympathetic.  The availability of food is often tied to employment; if you lose your job, you can no longer buy food.  Well, unless you have savings, but who saves money anymore? 

And yet there are huge corporations making mountains of money getting rich off of selling you the very staples of life; rice, corn, milk, Alaskan King Crab legs, and a Starbucks cafe mocha latte.  Supermarkets are filled with food while over 36 million Americans are hungry. 

You may say, "Well, there are programs like food stamps and WIC that allow the poor to buy food."  That’s like saying that the poor can go to emergency rooms for access to health care.  It’s true, but we think there’s a better way of doing things.

Enter "Social Groceries".  Under this new program, anybody who can’t afford food will be able to get whatever they want, and it will be paid for by the US government.  And by "the US government", we mean "you".  If you like your grocery store, you can keep it, but the minute you stop in to the nearby convenience store, you will then be required to shop only at stores providing a predetermined amount of coverage … er … selection.  Also, the government will open up grocery chains that will undercut prices at existing chains until they can no longer compete.  We won’t force any food provider out of business; we’ll let them decide when to do that on their own. 

But we think you’ll agree that when the government decides what to stock on the shelves, it will all be much more equitable.  No, you can’t decide what items to buy; you’ll have to choose from our menu.  Still, what’s a loss of freedom in exchange for the guarantee of "grocial security" for generations to come?  We’re the government; we can guarantee that.

It is true that we’ll all have to sacrifice for the good of the many.  Special nutrition panels will have to decide whether it’s worth feeding grandma that Porterhouse steak, or if she could get by on pork and beans.  But it’s all for the greater good.

And we should know.  After all, "food" is our first name.  We’re the Food & Drug Administration, where our motto is, "Isn’t food more important than health care?"  We think you’ll like "Social Groceries", just as soon as we can sneak it into the next emergency spending bill.  Thank you for your support.  Or not.  Whatever.

Well then, I hope you found that commercial at least informative, and we at SNN ask you to consider this.  (Perhaps we should stick with contributions on the website.)

So asks the BBC:

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

The article continues on, referring to to Sun output and ocean cycles, and how the climate models didn’t predict this, even though the guys who program the models say they took all this into consideration.

My point is not to debate what is or isn’t heating or cooling the planet, but rather to point out that there is so much that governments around the world want to legislate based on these climate models, while these models are failing in their near-term predictions.  But that doesn’t stop Al Gore from his itinerant preaching, nor the climate scientists from insisting that, never mind the past decade, now it’s going to get warmer, nor governments from trying to save us with new taxes based on models that aren’t predicting properly.

No, instead we’re pushing all our chips in based on buggy climate software. 

"The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike." – C. S. Lewis, The Poison of Subjectivism (from Christian Reflections; p. 108)

While his accusation was out of order and unseemly, again we see he was right.  Wilson accused the President of lying when Obama said that health care reform wouldn’t cover illegal immigrants.  Recently, Obama tipped his hand on that claim, saying we had to make more the existing illegal ones legal so they can get health care.  The impression was not that they’d go back to their home country and use the legal process.  The President wants to simply, vaguely, go about "resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all."

Poof, you’re legal!  Now, we still don’t cover illegal immigrants.

Except that any attempt to even figure out of someone is legal or not is being shut down by Democrats.

Senate Finance Committee Democrats rejected a proposed a requirement that immigrants prove their identity with photo identification when signing up for federal healthcare programs.

Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that current law and the healthcare bill under consideration are too lax and leave the door open to illegal immigrants defrauding the government using false or stolen identities to obtain benefits.

Grassley’s amendment was beaten back 10-13 on a party-line vote.

So they say that illegals won’t be covered, but they promise not to check.  Don’t ask, don’t tell. 

Accountability government at work.

When Joe Wilson said, "You lie!", when President Obama talked about not covering illegal aliens in the health care reform bill, he may have been both out of order and technically wrong.  But President Obama is now showing that there’s another way that Wilson was technically right.

President Obama said this week that his health care plan won’t cover illegal immigrants, but argued that’s all the more reason to legalize them and ensure they eventually do get coverage.

He also staked out a position that anyone in the country legally should be covered – a major break with the 1996 welfare reform bill, which limited most federal public assistance programs only to citizens and longtime immigrants.

"Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don’t simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken," Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. "That’s why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else.

Mr. Obama added, "If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all."

Republicans said that amounts to an amnesty, calling it a backdoor effort to make sure current illegal immigrants get health care.

If the President had said that during the original speech, Wilson could have smiled broadly.  Essentially the President is saying (if you take everything he says into account), "we’re not covering illegal aliens, but we’re looking for ways to rename them something other than ‘illegal aliens’, after which they’d be covered." 

That was a bit disingenuous.  I think Wilson is owed something of an apology.

From Steve Breen.  (Click for a larger version.)

Yeah, and racists.

Contrary to claims by the Obama administration, they don’t actually have the majority of doctors on their side.

Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors’ own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

Joe Wilson, call your office.  You may have spoken just a bit too soon.

Major findings included:

• Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration’s claims that doctors are part of an "unprecedented coalition" supporting a medical overhaul.

[…]

• Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.

[…]

• More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered "no" when asked if they believed "the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better."

If this passes, rationing, here we come.  The result would be fewer doctors handling more patients; how could you not wind up with rationing? 

And this really should be news to anyone who’s paying attention.  US states as well as other countries with socialized medicine already have this problem

A key reason for the doctor shortages, according to the study, is a "lingering poor practice environment in the state."

In 2006, Massachusetts passed its medical overhaul — minus a public option — similar to what’s being proposed on a national scale now. It hasn’t worked as expected. Costs are higher, with insurance premiums rising 22% faster than in the U.S. as a whole.

"Health spending in Massachusetts is higher than the United States on average and is growing at a faster rate," according to a recent report from the Urban Institute.

Other states with government-run or mandated health insurance systems, including Maine, Tennessee and Hawaii, have been forced to cut back services and coverage.

This experience has been repeated in other countries where a form of nationalized care is common. In particular, many nationalized health systems seem to have trouble finding enough doctors to meet demand.

In Britain, a lack of practicing physicians means the country has had to import thousands of foreign doctors to care for patients in the National Health Service.

"A third of (British) primary care trusts are flying in (general practitioners) from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland" because of a doctor shortage, a recent story in the British Daily Mail noted.

British doctors, demoralized by long hours and burdensome rules, simply refuse to see patients at nights and weekends.

Likewise, Canadian physicians who have to deal with the stringent rules and income limits imposed by that country’s national health plan have emigrated in droves to other countries, including the U.S.

So they’ll make up for poor coverage by making you pay more for it, whether directly or via taxes.  Lose-lose.

But good examples of what, exactly?

From Mike Ramirez (click for a larger version):

Is health care a basic human right?  Bob Lupton, writing at the Sojourners presumptively-named blog "God’s Politics", thinks so.  I created an account so I could post a comment that includes a question I’ll now formally pose here:

Is food a basic human right?

Food you need constantly in order to live.  Health care you only need occasionally.  (For some, very occasionally.)  So which is more important for life?

Clearly, food is more important for life, and thus shouldn’t we have universal food care before we have universal health care? 

(Before you point to food stamps or the WIC program, understand that they are nowhere near as invasive to the rights of all as ObamaCare would be.  Those programs for the poor do not place any restrictions on my food purchases; on what I buy or where I buy it or what sorts of foods are sold.  ObamaCare would force me to get a certain type of policy as soon as I cross a state line or change jobs.  And there are many other restrictions on people and employers all in the name of covering those not currently covered.  None of these kinds of restrictions come from food programs for the poor.)

So the questions before you are: If you support the health care reform that the Democrats are trying to pass:

1 – Is health care a basic human right?

2 – If your answer to #1 is "Yes", then is food also a basic human right?

3 – If your answer to #2 is "Yes", then why not universal food coverage?  And what, exactly, do you consider a "basic human right" in general?

4 – If your answer to #2 is "No", why isn’t food a right if it’s more important to life?

5 – And finally, if your answer to #1 was "No", then why do you support a program that restricts everyone in order to deal with a few?  Why not a program that just covers the poor, like food stamps do in the area of food?

Your comments appreciated.  And I’ll report back if Mr. Lupton answers my question.