WILL THE CORPORATE MEDIA BE ABLE TO SABOTAGE BARACK OBAMA?

I'll tell you how much the hidebound corporately-owned media fears the promise of change they sense Obama represents. The two worst of the far right extremists out of all the billionaire media moguls, Rupert Murdoch and Richard Mellon Scaife, are both backing Hillary Clinton. Scaife basically funded the impeachment of Bill Clinton and is more responsible for the hatred and discord our country has suffered in the past decade and a half than any other individual. His privately owned newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review endorsed Hillary Sunday. Virtually every other paper in Pennsylvania has endorsed Obama.

Some people are saying that Scaife is following Rush Limbaugh's lead and doing what he can to get a fatally flawed candidate as the Democratic nominee, one McCain has a chance to beat. It's possible, but I'm not so sure that is his motivation. I think he recognizes that a President Clinton will serve his interests just fine. The man who Hillary held up as the head of the "vast right wing conspiracy" personally wrote an OpEd earlier called "Hillary, Reassessed," in which he claimed to have changed his mind about her. Sunday's editorial is more of a garden variety wingnut diatribe against Obama than a real endorsement of Hillary and it is clear that between McCain and either Democrat the American version of the Völkischer Beobachter will revert to form and push for McCain.

Many of her views on domestic issues are too liberal for us, but on others she seems to have moderated. She told the Trib she opposes raising the cap on Social Security taxes, and she is less eager to raise income taxes than Obama.

More important, she is extremely knowledgeable on crucial foreign issues. Meeting with Trib editors last month, she ticked off an impressive list of international challenges and the solutions. (In Wednesday's Philadelphia debate, Obama praised George H.W. Bush's foreign policy-- apparently not realizing that one of its architects was then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, a man he regularly excoriates.)

As we noted at the time of that meeting, Clinton's decision to sit down with the Trib was courageous, given our longstanding criticism of her. That is no small matter: Political courage is essential in a president. Clinton has demonstrated it; Obama has not.

She has a real record. He doesn't.

She has experience of value to a president. He doesn't.

Clearly, she's the wiser choice to represent Democrats this fall.

Like I said, though, the rest of the editorial was just one smear after another against Obama, things most respectable newspapers wouldn't print. But even if respectable news papers won't, there's always the lowest or the low, Fox News and the host of broadcast imitators. Rather than describe how they're systematically doing all they can to destroy Obama, let me play you a short video that puts it all in living color: