links for 2009-03-31

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the Obama administration has indeed abandoned the term "global war on terror."

Clinton says that while she hasn't seen any specific orders, the new administration in Washington simply isn't using the phrase.

The term was a rallying cry for President Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But the use of the term "global war on terror" is widely disliked overseas.

Reporters asked Clinton about the phrase Monday as she headed to Europe for a week of diplomatic meetings.

She said the absence of the "war on terror" language speaks for itself. Pundits have noted the absence, but top administration figures have had little to say on the subject.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin continues to suffer growing pains as she attempts to build a national political operation in hopes of positioning herself as a viable presidential candidate in 2012.
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What political problems, Chris? Been on Olbermann too much?

The latest bump in the road comes in the form of a Politico article — headlined "Staff Infection: Allies Rip Palin Team" — that features any number of juicy quotes that all point to one fundamental problem: there appears to be a significant disconnect between Palin's official governor's staff and the group of advisers that have grown up around her new leadership PAC.

The latest attempt to marginalize Bill O'Reilly is to pretend his "ambush interviews" are unethical, unacceptable, or even dangerous. That of course means one has to avoid mentioning that Mike Wallace, Chris Hansen, and Michael Moore have built their careers on unethical, dangerous "ambush interviews". Fox haters have no problem maintaining that pretense, but sometimes we get a glimpse behind the curtain. Talking Points Memo has been promoting the jihad against O'Reilly's ambushes. So it was ironic, and revelatory, when one of their writers chose the highlight of the week: a New York television reporter engaged in–you guessed it–an ambush interview! Because ambushes, you know, are only wrong, and only constitute "stalking", when O'Reilly does them.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is in a strong position should Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) try to challenge her in a Republican primary in 2010, according to a new Hays Research Group poll.

A stunningly high 72% of Alaska residents view Murkowski favorably while 60% view Palin the same way.

Is the Rush Limbaugh strategy giving way to the Sarah Palin strategy?

Multiple Democratic strategists say the party plans to increasingly elevate Palin in the same manner it has employed Rush for weeks, using her high-visibility, her social conservatism, and memories of her harsh attacks on Obama during the campaign to tar the GOP as partisan, obstructionist, and backward-looking.

James Carville, a key architect of the Limbaugh strategy, says Dems will be seeking to elevate Palin more and more, because she’s “an identifiable person who has a hook,” unlike GOP leaders like Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell.

“Her name conjures up all kinds of reactions in people’s minds,” Carville told me, adding that her association with the campaign will be used to portray the GOP as hidebound and to alienate moderates. “She’s an uncomfortable figure for a lot of Republicans,” Carville says. “They want to move beyond her. We like her.”

North Korea's state-run news agency says two American reporters detained earlier this month will be tried for illegal entry and hostile acts.
Current TV's Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained March 17 near North Korea's northeastern border with China. The two work for former Vice President Al Gore's San Francisco-based online media venture Current TV.

The Korean Central News Agency said in a report early Tuesday that an initial investigation confirms the two entered the country illegally.

The report says an investigation continues and that preparations for indictments and trial are under way.

Some of you newbies may not realize it, but these troll tricks are merely updated online versions of the tactics the Communist Party used in its decades-long subversion campaign. Breitbart and most other conservatives won't say this in so many words, because it sounds like McCarthyesque conspiracy theory, but it's nonetheless true: If you want to understand how the American Left operates, you need to spend time studying how the old CPUSA operated.

Even more so than Marxist ideology itself, Ronald Reagan said, it was the dishonesty of CPUSA tactics, which he encountered as the leader of the Screen Actors Guild in the '40, that turned him from a "bleeding heart" liberal into a fierce anti-Communist. Honorable causes do not routinely resort to dishonorable tactics, and the despicable ends-justify-the-means behavior of the Reds convinced Reagan that their ends — their supposedly "idealistic" objectives — were anything but honorable.

A digital war has broken out, and the conservative movement is losing. Read the comment sections of right-leaning blogs, news sites and social forums, and the evidence is there in ugly abundance. Internet hooligans are spewing their talking points to thwart the dissent of the newly-out-of-power.

We must not let that go unanswered.

Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy – us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency – and the humanity – of George W. Bush.

Global stock markets dived on Monday as fresh woes for the global auto sector and extremely weak economic data triggered a rush to dump shares and cash in on a recent rally, traders said.

After the White House unveiled plans for an auto industry shake-up and kicked out General Motors chief executive Rick Wagoner, the Dow Jones index plunged 3.71 percent and the Nasdaq fell 3.37 percent in afternoon trading.

You can't deny Bill O'Reilly's success. On Tuesday, the fiery host of Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor" will mark his 100th consecutive month as the No. 1-rated cable news show. A former schoolteacher who first gained national prominence as the host of "Inside Edition," O'Reilly boasts three Emmys and several best-selling books.

The Hollywood Reporter: What's the most fun you've had on the air?

Bill O'Reilly: That's a tough one. I think it's the three interviews I did with President Bush. That's the hardest interview for any journalist, to interview a president, because you can't cross a certain line, and presidents all come in with what they want to say. To get them out of that rehearsed deal is very hard. The three interviews I did with Bush were instructive because I went up to that line. And then my interviews with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the campaign were fun because it was a chess match.

"You are not alone," Glenn Beck likes to say. For the disaffected and aggrieved Americans of the Obama era, he couldn't have picked a better rallying cry.

Beck, an evening host on the Fox News Channel, is suddenly one of the most powerful media voices for the nation's conservative populist anger. Barely two months into his job at Fox, his program is a phenomenon: It typically draws about 2.2 million viewers, more than any other cable news host except Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity, despite being on at 5 p.m., a slow shift for cable news.

With a mix of moral lessons, outrage and an apocalyptic view of the future, Beck, a longtime radio host who jumped to Fox from CNN's Headline News channel this year, is channeling the feelings of an alienated class of Americans.

The Obama administration used the threat of withholding more bailout money to force out General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner and administer harsh medicine to Chrysler LLC, marking one of the most dramatic government interventions in private industry since the economic crisis began last year.

Rick Wagoner = Ngo Dinh Diem? Discuss. After visibly defenstrating GM CEO RIck Wagoner, and moving to replace the board of directors, won't Obama now "own" the GM problem? If the company shuts down in the near future, costing tens of thousands of blue collar jobs, it will be under executives implicitly or explicitly chosen by Obama. It will be Obama's failure, not simply GM's failure, no? A public sector failure, not just a business failure. Doesn't that make it harder, not easier, for the administration to walk away and force the company into bankruptcy (if, for example, the company's plans for "viability" continue to fall short after the new 60-day deadline)? And doesn't that, in turn, make extracting the necessary concessions (by threatening bankruptcy) more difficult as well? … This wouldn't be the first time that financier-turned-autoczar Steven Rattner's tendency to talk to the press–and maybe emphasize his own role–proved counterproductive. … 2:23 A.M.