The more things change the more they stay the same.  "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" was the way Jean Baptiste Alphonse Karr, a French journalist, wrote it more than a hundred years before Barack Obama was born.

While I don't care to see the USA become even as Europeanized as the far left envisions, the French version of Karr's quote was thrown in so the fairness checkers won't think I'm some kind of monolingual American dope when they shake out my dossier and say "No change for you!"

Oh, so you don't think censorship is likely to happen when the troika presidency (Obama/Pelosi/Reed) takes over?  What about those hardball journalists from the Washington Times and a couple of other newspapers who, after asking a few professional journalist questions about the "change" to come, were kicked off Obamaforce One while the rest of the softball lobbers were allowed to stay on and sip Kool-Aid with the boss when the plane landed?

What about those TV stations in Pennsylvania and Florida that were marginalized and boycotted after their anchors asked a few pointed questions of Joe Biden regarding his running mate's qualifications and political philosophy?

What about the national mockery made of "Joe the Plumber" for daring to query Obama about his previously undefined wealth redistribution policy when the candidate unexpectedly showed up in front of the would-be plumbing contractor business owner's Toledo home?  When humiliation failed to do anything but extend Joe's fifteen minutes, Democrat partisans in the Ohio state government accessed Samuel J. Wurzelbacher's computer files and leaked information to the press about the assistant plumber's tax, marital, motor vehicle, police and licensing records.

Perhaps you remember the last administration that punished critics for their remarks by using such water-boarding devices as IRS audits and media smearing? 

For starters, there were those four women who had accused President Clinton of sexual crimes while he was governor of Arkansas.  Paula Jones and Juanita Broderick were the two best-known targets of IRS harassment but there are newspaper archives and websites full of the names of Clinton enemies whose lives were made miserable as a result of this kind of intimidation.

"A veritable who's who of Clinton administration adversaries have been targeted for audit during his [then] six years in power. They include: the Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association, Concerned Women of America, Citizens Against Government Waste, National Review, American Spectator and, of course, my own organization, the Western Journalism Center..." Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily wrote in 1999.

Will talk radio be censored under the guise of the Fairness Doctrine when the troika comes to power?

Will conservative columnists and bloggers be the subjects of investigations by Obama goon squads when they exercise their constitutional rights? 

Will whistleblowers and critics of the administration be audited by the IRS using a catch-all excuse like "we're trying to make sure that all of the taxes are being collected during these difficult economic times"? 

It is abundantly clear, after beating back a vastly more experienced Clinton smear team and convincing the media to ignore every controversy unleashed by the right (Obama's associations with Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, ACORN, Tony Rezko, Franklin Raines plus the gap in his early resume, to name a few) that media manipulation is what Team Obama does best. 

How else could a woefully un-vetted, under-qualified candidate possibly have been elected on a one-word campaign slogan? 

Media manipulation campaign tactics will certainly be a large part of the next administration.  Unchecked and with the power of the federal government behind them they will "get better" with practice -- especially when the Supreme Court slants left after a couple of Obama appointments.

If you want your media soup you better line up in an orderly fashion and remain silent while you wait your turn.  And don't forget to grovel when you get to the head of the line.

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