When Sandra Fluke testified before congress on behalf women being treated equally by health insurance companies, she was viciously attacked by conservatives, and particularly Rush Limbaugh who called her a slut and a prostitute. Her argument that women should have access to contraceptive coverage, for which they would pay, was distorted into a repulsive characterization of her as a tramp who wanted taxpayers to finance her promiscuity.
Today there is a news story that Fluke is considering a run for the California congressional seat being vacated by Henry Waxman. When this story was posted on the Fox News community website, Fox Nation, it unleashed a torrent of misogynistic comments that reflect the mindset of the Fox News audience. Here are just a few (click to enlarge):
Whether or not Fluke decides to enter the race, this demonstration of how the Fox Nationalists regard women who seek to serve their country is revealing. And coming just one day after Fox News and the Republican Party made such a big deal out of a petty tweet that they thought was offensive, you have to wonder where their outrage is over these comments on their own website.
When you preside over a political party that is the subject of frequent criticism for the racist rhetoric of its members and supporters, it might be a good idea to avoid bringing attention to that gaping wound of oozing hatred. But never let it be said that the leaders of the GOP are capable of recognizing a good idea.
The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, went berserk today over a tweet by some anonymous social media intern at MSNBC. The comment that so furiously enraged him was a reference to a commercial for Cheerios that features a biracial family (video below). It is a sequel of sorts to a similar ad that played last year. Here is the offending tweet:
Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go aww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ bi-racial family. http://t.co/SpB4rQDoAR
That was all it took to send Priebus into a frenzy over what he perceived as a deplorable insult directed at innocent right-wingers. His response was to announce that he would order a boycott of MSNBC unless its president, Phil Griffin, made a personal and public apology. He sent letters to Griffin as well as an open letter to “all Republican elected officials, strategists, surrogates, and pundits,” that said that he was “banning all RNC staff from appearing on, associating with, or booking any RNC surrogates on MSNBC,” and asking anyone affiliated with the GOP to join the embargo.
And of course Fox Nation made this their top story.
Read Fox Nation vs. Reality for more tales from the loony side.
First of all, how would anyone know that a boycott had been initiated by the GOP against MSNBC? Most Republicans already refuse to go on the network simply because they know they will be challenged when they lie, unlike the friendly reception they get at Fox. But for the RNC chair to feign outrage over such a trivial tweet defies reason. The message conveyed by the tweet was simply that this heart-warming advertisement was likely to irk many conservatives whose intolerance for diversity is well documented. And where would the tweeter get an idea like that? Perhaps from the response that followed the release of the first Cheerios ad with the same biracial family. As reported at the time…
“A new Cheerios commercial that included an interracial family drew so many racially motivated hate comments on YouTube that the video-sharing website shut down the commercial’s comment section. […] some of the comments made reference to Nazis, ‘troglodytes’ and ‘racial genocide.'”
With that historical perspective, why would anyone doubt that the same right-wingers who spewed such vile hatred at the ad’s charming family last year, would react any differently today? Conservatives who are offended by the tweet ought to look at their own confederates to understand why everyone else regards them as hardened bigots who would hate the Cheerios ad. It isn’t MSNBC’s fault that conservatives openly express themselves in such a thoroughly reprehensible manner. However, the behavior of the rightists when this ad’s first installment was aired justifies the sentiment in the tweet. For some additional evidence of the unbridled bigotry on the right, have a look at…
These comments on the Fox Nation website following the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.
Or note the graphic racism by the Fox News photo editing department in a story about murdered teen Trayvon Martin.
And recall that Fox continues to disparage Latinos as “illegal aliens,” even when they are here legally.
And who can forget the time Fox distorted a poll so that they could feature the headline “Obama Has A Big Problem With White Women.”
The notion that MSNBC would be a target of a boycott simply because they recognized the bigotry that is inbred into much of the American conservative movement is especially ironic when you consider that Fox News, the mouthpiece of the rightist agenda in the media, is so brazenly racist. It’s a network that regularly demonizes minorities as criminals or moochers. What’s more, Fox feverishly advocates public policies that are detrimental to minorities, such as voter suppression laws and slashing benefits for low income workers. If any news outlet should be boycotted for insulting broad swaths of the American public it should be Fox
Which brings us to the subject of hypocrisy by the infuriated right. There actually have been efforts to embargo Fox News and persuade Democrats to avoid appearing on the network. During the Democratic primaries in 2008, the Congressional Black Caucus successfully shut down a Nevada debate that was to be broadcast on Fox. The response by Republicans was that the Democrats were either misguided or cowards, and would be afraid to face our enemies if they couldn’t face Fox. Fox anchor Chris Wallace said that “the Democrats are damn fools [for] not coming on Fox News.” Do these criticisms now apply to the boycotters of MSNBC?
This isn’t even the first time that Priebus has floated the boycott balloon. Just last year he sent similar threatening letters to NBC and CNN because they had plans to produce films about Hillary Clinton. However, he didn’t make the same threat to Fox, who also had Hillary projects in the pipeline. It seems that Priebus is just itching for a boycott, unless the offender is his PR department (aka Fox News).
The pitiful part of this story is that MSNBC has already caved in to the demand for an apology. Phil Griffin issued a statement calling the tweet “outrageous and unacceptable,” which it certainly was not. Even worse, he said that he had “dismissed the person responsible.” That is a monumental injustice and overreaction. This merely proves that the network that conservatives like to demean as unfailingly liberal is just a facade that will collapse at the slightest whiff of controversy. It’s why MSNBC issues apologies every other week and fires people for little reason.
Fox News, on the other hand, is far worse when it comes to offending liberals and Democrats, but they will never apologize, nor do they correct their many “errors” of fact. But if MSNBC keeps bowing down to competitors who seek its destruction, they will remain a perennial loser and shed any credibility they hope to maintain. This silly boycott threat should be cause for celebration by MSNBC. It serves as an opportunity to remind people of why Republicans are correctly perceived to be racist. It relieves them of the burden of making excuses for why the GOP is not represented on the channel. And it allows them to focus on expanding their audience among the key demographics that are most likely to tune in.
What this all comes down to is that Priebus is throwing a tantrum to attract attention and donations. The tweet that started the whole thing was provocative, but perfectly justified. But that doesn’t stop the disingenuous onslaught of phony rage that turns into a ludicrous threat that no one will notice should it be carried out. We are witnessing a drama that is more painfully shallow than the typical reality TV tripe that consumes way too many hours of broadcast time. And, sadly, “Keeping Up With The Republicans” has even less reality in it than you’ll find over at the Kardashians place.
[Update: 1/31/2014] Fox News is cashing in on this controversy. So far they have featured it on The Five, Fox & Friends, and the Kelly File. Greg Gutfeld of The Five injected the mandatory Nazi reference by calling MSNBC a “one-stop shop for master-race-baiting.” And Megyn Kelly asserted that liberals have a “kneejerk instinct to accuse conservatives of racism.” In her segment that featured uber-rightist flame-thrower Brent Bozell, she went on to say…
“They [liberals] saw this ad and said, ‘Oh the conservatives will hate it because it’s a black man and a white woman together in a family.’“
Wrong Megyn. They said “Oh the conservatives will hate it because that’s exactly the response they had to it when the first version of it came out last year.” What better evidence can you have of how someone will respond to something than their own prior response?
And this morning Fox’s media analyst, Howard Kurtz, called the MSNBC tweet “an outrageous and really disgusting message,” before excreting this BS:
“You do have to wonder about the culture there, and whether there is such a loathing for conservatives that things that are so clearly way, way, way over the line are somehow deemed acceptable.”
Once again I have to say ARE YOU FRIGGIN’ KIDDING ME? The outpouring of loathing by Fox of liberals (and African-Americans, and Latinos, and gays, and women, and the poor) is a daily – even hourly – occurrence. For Kurtz to say that with a straight face is proof of his total devotion to the dishonest promulgation of Fox’s propaganda, hate, and commitment to the corporatocracy they were invented to defend.
The biggest ego on cable news is fond of propping himself up and exalting his intellect and insight. Unfortunately, Bill O’Reilly is so often wrong that he becomes a parody of himself.
On his program Monday night, O’Reilly embarked on a mission to belittle President Obama and the State of the Union speech that would be delivered the following night. Consistent with the Fox News philosophy of disparaging all things Democratic – even before they occur – O’Reilly asserted that the American people wouldn’t care about the speech, but would be enthralled by Papa Bear himself.
O’Reilly: There is no question that President Obama’s first five years in office have been troubled. Tonight he will try to regroup, but Talking Points believes that few Americans will be paying close attention to him. In fact, I predict that this broadcast you’re watching right now, will be higher rated on the Fox News channel than the president’s actual address. We’ll see.
Yes, we shall indeed see. But first of all, isn’t it cute that O’Reilly refers to himself as “Talking Points,” as if it were an anthropomorphic entity with opinions separate from his own? Well, Mr. Talking Points might be disconcerted to learn that 33 million people watched the State of the Union speech. That is actually fewer than watched in recent years, but still a hefty chunk of viewers that exceeds all other conventional programming.
More to the point, O’Reilly’s prediction that his own show would outperform the speech has blown up in his face. The Factor drew only 3.5 million viewers, which means he was off by a mere 90 percent. O’Reilly’s broadcast didn’t even beat just the viewers who watched the speech on Fox (4.7 million). And since there was no rational way to spin his prognostication failure, O’Reilly simply ignored it last night in his first post-speech broadcast.
This is typical of O’Reilly’s pompous conceit as he strives to present himself as an omnipotent and infallible observer of human events. It recalls his dreadfully wrong prediction that the Supreme Court would overturn ObamaCare, when he promised to admit that he was an idiot if he were wrong. He was wrong, and he broke his promise. But that came as no surprise to those who pay attention to his daily blather.
New York Magazine columnist Frank Rich believes that the war on Fox News is over – and Fox News lost. His article published this week is titled “Stop Beating a Dead Fox,” and counsels liberals and media critics to retreat from the battle against Roger Ailes & Company because we have already won.
Rich is both right and wrong, but through it all he is clear-headed and thought provoking. But in the end his conclusion is faulty, and I will explain why along with some highlights from his article.
“The most interesting news about Fox News is that for some years now it has been damaging the right far more than the left. […] Democrats have won the popular vote five out of six times. You’d think they’d be well advised to leave Fox News to its own devices so that it can continue to shoot its own party in the foot.”
The fact that Fox has been a dead, stinking albatross around the wrinkled neck of the GOP is a point I made more than four years ago in an article with the understated headline “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” Finally, the mainstream media is catching up with me. Rich continues…
“The million or so viewers who remain fiercely loyal to the network are not, for the most part, and as some liberals still imagine, naive swing voters who stumble onto Fox News under the delusion it’s a bona fide news channel and then are brainwashed by Ailes’s talking points into becoming climate-change deniers. They arrive at the channel as proud, self-selected citizens of Fox Nation and are unlikely to defect from the channel or its politics until death do them part.”
This is another revelation I made when I exposed “The Cult Of Foxonality” five years ago and observed that “Fox viewers are married to the channel and couldn’t care less what’s playing down the dial.” The Fox audience are hardened partisans with a devotional attachment to their tele-church. And finally, Rich says that…
“Rather than waste time bemoaning Fox’s bogus journalism, liberals should encourage it. The more that Fox News viewers are duped into believing that the misinformation they are fed by Ailes is fair and balanced, the more easily they can be ambushed by reality as they were on Election Night 2012. […] we should start considering the possibility that it now works to the Democrats’ advantage that Fox News does manufacture its own facts.”
Here is where Rich and I part company. While there may be some entertainment value in watching floundering wingnuts desperately trying to make sense of a reality that contradicts their delusions, in the end it is bad for the nation to encourage ignorance. And even though the antics of Fox News have been proven to drive down the approval ratings of Republican politicos, we would still be better off if there weren’t a disinformation factory poisoning the minds of our friends and family and neighbors.
That’s why the need to be vigilant in exposing the lies and bigotry of Fox News and other rightist propagandists is still vitally important. It is crucial that the record be set straight because an unanswered lie can too easily become a perverse version of the truth. It isn’t a mission embarked upon out of concern that the Republican Party is getting its ass whooped in national elections. It’s out of love for those who do not deserve to be exploited and abused by the mouthpieces of corporations and nationless plutocrats. So laugh, if you will, at the dunces who spew their hate-filled rhetoric of greed and bigotry, but never surrender to it.
In case anyone has forgotten that last year Louisiana’s GOP governor Bobby Jindal called Republicans the “Stupid Party,” Tea Party radio screamer Mark Levin has generously volunteered to remind us.
In his response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech, Levin went berserk over what he perceived as a tyrannical usurpation of power by the President. In Obama’s speech he castigated our do-nothing congress for its relentless obstructionism and gave them this rather diplomatic warning:
“I’m eager to work with all of you. But America does not stand still – and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do.”
That’s all it took for the the right-wing outrage machine to get fired up and begin a frantic crusade against what they believe to be an unprecedented overreach. Of course, the truth is that every president has and uses his executive authority to proceed with initiatives that Congress fails to act upon. It is consistent with the constitutional jurisdiction of the executive branch of government, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans from bellowing about dictatorship.
Mark Levin’s post-speech rant took the form of advice to the Republicans in congress. He concluded that they were toO weak to do what he really wanted – which is to impeach Obama for some reasons he didn’t bother to specify. So he proposed an alternative in the form of a congressional resolution:
“Whereas the President of the United States has exerted executive powers not granted to him under the United States Constitution, the House of Representatives hereby asserts, as an equal governing institution, that all such acts by the President of the United States are null and void. The House of Representatives further asserts that no federal department, federal official, or federal employee is authorized to appropriate any sum of taxpayer dollars in furtherance of any unconstitutional act by the President of the United States.”
The Stupid Party (aka the Tea Party, aka the Republican Party) strikes again. First of all, no act by the President, or the Congress for that matter, is unconstitutional until the Supreme Courts says it is. The House of Representatives has no authority to unilaterally designate something the president does as unconstitutional. Secondly, any acts declared unconstitutional by the court are already null and void and don’t require a congressional resolution to be recognized as such. Nor is a prohibition of funding necessary for an act ruled unconstitutional. Since it cannot be carried out, no funds would be allocated to it.
What is laughably pathetic about Levin’s resolution is that it would probably fail the test of constitutionality itself were it ever enacted and challenged in the court. As noted above, the legislative branch cannot rule on the constitutionality of executive actions. And even more idiotic is the fact that Levin doesn’t seem to comprehend that his proposed law could not be enacted without the President’s signature. Does Levin think that Obama would sign this asinine bill?
So what does Fox News do with this utterly delusional rant by a crackpot who clearly doesn’t understand constitutional law? Well, they feature on their Fox Nation website along with all the other blatant lies and disinformation. And thus, the cycle of stupidity continues to flow from wingnut pundits to dishonest news outlets to an audience of willful dimwits.
By now no one should be surprised that Fox News, and the congregation of Tea Party conservatives they represent, would oppose legislation intended to benefit America’s working class. Fox has consistently fought against reforms that make it possible for people to take care of themselves and their families and to advance economically. Any policy that is viewed by their corporate benefactors as negative to their profit margins, or that might adversely impact their multimillion dollar compensation, is attacked by Fox News, and the rest of the rightist press, as anti-business or even socialist.
That is precisely the case with the current debate over whether to increase the minimum wage, which has not been done in seven long years. Raising the minimum wage is generally seen as politically popular, so in order to derail it, opponents have to pitch tortured arguments that have very little backing by knowledgeable, non-partisan economists. But the tactic being used by Fox today is particularly devoid of reason and is wholly unethical, even by the standards of Fox News.
In an effort to manufacture a false claim of hypocrisy, Fox News is presenting an absurd comparison. Their story asserts that “Most sponsors of minimum wage hike bill don’t pay interns.”So F**king What? Internships are temporary positions made available to students so that they can get some real-world experience in their field of study and credit for school. They are not intended to be employment for personal gain. They serve the same purpose as the classroom at their school, and they don’t get paid for that either. Internships generally have a fixed term of a few weeks during the summer or other school hiatus. To compare that to jobs where people are working in order to support themselves and their families makes no sense whatsoever.
That said, there may be some good arguments for compensating interns, particularly in business where the enterprise has sufficient resources to do so. But to assert that members of Congress who support raising the minimum wage are being hypocritical for allowing students to get an up-close look at how government operates is simply a wild and irresponsible attempt to obstruct progress on policies that bring tangible relief to struggling Americans, as well as a substantial boost to the economy.
What makes this story even more repulsive is that Fox is citing data from a disreputable source with a vested interest in the welfare of the corporations it exists to serve. According to Source Watch…
“The Employment Policies Institute (EPI) is one of several front groups created by Berman & Co., a Washington, DC public affairs firm owned by Rick Berman, who lobbies for the restaurant, hotel, alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries.”
So this organization is directly tied to the industries who are the most virulently opposed to a minimum wage increase. That should cause a legitimate news agency to steer shy of them if they are interested in unbiased information. But it doesn’t dissuade Fox, and a bevy of other wingnut “news” outlets, from eating up the self-serving tripe.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Berman & Company is also notorious for feathering its own nest. The bulk of the funds received by the organizations under its control goes right back into Berman’s pocket. For instance, the Employment Policies Institute reported $1,629,930 in total revenue for 2011, and $2,103,896 in total expenses. But despite running a half million dollar deficit, it paid Berman more than a million dollars that year. That alone should cast doubt on the quality of the economic advice they might dispense.
What we have here is a lobbyist who created a fake think tank so that he could raise funds from corporations to advocate on their behalf – and against the interests of average Americans. Then this fake think tank gets fake news enterprises (like Fox) to disseminate their tendentious opinions. That’s how the right-wing media machine poisons the public debate on important issues. And this particular article got spread to the the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Caller, Newsmax and other conservative mouthpieces.
To counter that, here is some more information on the benefits of raising the minimum wage. These articles explain in more detail why the nation should move forward with this legislation:
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis must be terrifying to Texas Republicans. Why else would they be resorting to some of the most asinine tactics and ludicrous lies in order to defeat her?
In recent days Davis has been attacked by Republican opponents and the conservative press for a variety of manufactured pseudo-scandals. Among them is a claim dug out of a profile of Davis that appeared in the Dallas Morning News. Apparently her official bio said that she was a teenage single mother who struggled to make a better life for her family through hard work and education, eventually graduating from Harvard Law School. The newspaper noted, however, that Davis was not divorced until she was twenty-one years old and thus not a teenager when she became a single mother. Wingnut media immediately jumped on that discrepancy and howled with outrage that Davis was a liar who fabricated her life history.
Setting aside the fact that the difference between nineteen and twenty-one has no relevant bearing on anything, Davis’ critics also ignore the possibility that she and her husband were separated and living apart for a couple of years prior to their divorce being finalized. This is the sort of trivialities that Texas Republicans find it necessary to distort and exploit in order to smear their foes.
Another example of the GOP’s desperation was displayed in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post where a headline declared that “Wendy Davis has no future in politics.” The article’s author came to this conclusion after learning that Davis’ second husband was granted custody of their children when that marriage ended.
The Post falsely wrote that Davis had “lost custody of her children to her ex-husband.” The truth is that Davis agreed to the custody arrangement for the benefit of the kids to minimize any disruption to their lives. What’s more, the media’s characterization of this made Davis out to be an uncaring mother who abandoned her suffering little babies. For the record, her daughters were 23 and 17 at the time. And they apparently were not scarred for life because they are currently working on her campaign for governor and have appeared in commercials supporting her (video below).
[Update: Davis’ daughters are speaking out against the lies, negativity, and hatred that has been directed at their family.]
One of the most ridiculous assaults on Davis came when she was responding to these phony attacks on her character. She released a statement saying…
“I am proud of where I came from and I am proud of what I’ve been able to achieve through hard work and perseverance. And I guarantee you that anyone who tries to say otherwise hasn’t walked a day in my shoes”
Unbelievably, the right-wing outrage machine fired up a charge that Davis was mocking her prospective opponent for governor, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, for the disability that put him in a wheel chair. It seems that old cliches about experiencing things from the perspective of others are too harsh for the tender sensitivities of the American Wingnut. No one with a functioning brain could interpret Davis’ comment as a slap at Abbot’s disability. Thus it says something about Abbott that he ran (well, he didn’t actually run) to Fox News where he whined about how wrong it is to belittle someone for their handicaps. Of course, not only did she not do that, she didn’t even refer to Abbott in her remarks.
Is this really all they have? Has the Republican Party of Texas exhausted every other means of communicating with their constituents? In Texas, of all places, you would think they would have a stronger case to make for their conservative brand of politics. If they will sink this low in Texas in order to defeat a liberal Democratic candidate, they are clearly frightened in a major way. They must be aware on some level that they are a dying breed. They have alienated so much of their base that they are finding it difficult to succeed in territories they used to take for granted. And with the demographic shifts taking place in Texas, and the rest of the South, there isn’t much that they can take for granted anymore. And that’s why we’re seeing this sort of desperation play out in a state where not many expected there to be much of a contest.
I came across this headline in my news feed this morning: “Inside the mind of Justin Bieber’s family.” It is an article by “Doctor” Keith Ablow, a member of the Fox News Medical “A” Team.
Ablow is famous for making the most absurd and surreal observations about people he has never examined, which is a violation of the Principles of Medical Ethics of the American Psychiatric Association (Section 7.3). These include advocating the political advantages of marital infidelity and his love for the Unabomber. However, the headline had a familiar ring to it, so I did a little research and found these:
Inside The Mind Of Dennis Rodman
Inside The Mind Of Ariel Castro
Inside The Mind Of How Race Divides Us: Zimmerman trial
Inside The Mind Of Aaron Hernandez
Inside The Mind Of Alec Baldwin
Inside The Mind Of Amanda Bynes
Inside The Mind Of Convicted Crime Boss Whitey Bulger
Inside The Mind Of Julian Assange
Inside The Mind Of Casey Anthony
Inside The Mind Of Todd Akin
Inside The Mind Of Navy Yard Shooter Aaron Alexis
Inside The Mind Of Joe Biden
Inside The Mind Of John Edwards
Inside The Mind Of Jerry Sandusky
Inside The Mind Of A Hacker
Inside The Mind Of Dr. Kermit Gosnell
Inside The Mind Of Kristen Stewart
Inside The Mind Of Rogue Ex-LAPD Cop
Inside The Mind Of Octuplet Mom
Inside The Mind Of the Octuplets’ Father
Inside The Mind Of the Fort Hood Shooter
Inside The Mind Of Josef Fritzl
Inside The Mind Of Clark Rockefeller
Inside The Mind Of Neil Entwistle
Inside The Mind Of The JetBlue Flight Attendant
Inside The Minds Of Rod Blagojevich And Bernie Madoff
Is there a double standard in the wingnut press for criminal activity? Well, whenever a Democrat is accused of littering, the conservative slander machine cranks up to full volume and escalates the crime to treason while insisting, without evidence, that President Obama masterminded the whole affair. However, if a Republican is found to have committed real and serious violations of the law, the Right Guard springs into action to either dismiss or deny the crimes, no matter how strong the evidence. The malfeasance in office of Republican governors Chris Christie of New Jersey, and Bob McDonnell of Virgina, are good examples of conservative lawbreakers who get taken under the protective wing of the rightist media when trouble arises.
Additional examples include a trio of conservative crooks who have recently been caught misbehaving, and in all three cases they have been treated as victims of a White House cabal determined to clamp down on the liberty of well-meaning patriots. The lie-riddled Fox Nation website went so far as to ask “Is There A COORDINATED VAST LEFT-WING CONSPIRACY?” They never bothered to answer the question or provide any support for the theory, but they did plant the notion into the minds of their already paranoid audience that these poor souls are suffering under the boot of tyranny:
As the director of the bitterly anti-Obama crocumentary, “2016 Obama’s America,” D’Souza has demonstrated his ego-soaked self-absorption by whimpering about not getting the Academy attention he so fervently believes he deserved. And if that weren’t repugnant enough, he also insulted the filmmakers who did get Oscar nods.
Yesterday D’Souza was indicted for breaking campaign finance laws. The allegation states that he solicited people to donate up to $20,000 to a Republican senate candidate in New York, then reimbursed them for the expense. Federal law prohibits any single donor to contribute more than $5,000 to a candidate in any election cycle.
Today D’Souza is whining about being harassed by the feds and Fox News led with a headline that asked whether he was the subject of “selective” prosecution. But if he doesn’t want to be bothered by law enforcement, he should try not breaking the law.
Friends of Abe
The Friends of Abe are a clandestine group of Hollywood celebrities who advocate on behalf of conservative politicians and issues. Many of them keep their identities secret because they fear being discriminated against by liberals in “The Biz.” Some of the conservative actors who claim to be victims of oppression include Kelsey Grammer, Bruce Willis, Tom Selleck, Patricia Heaton, and Clint Eastwood.
Now a report says that the group is being asked by the IRS to certify their non-political status in order to be granted a tax exemption for donors. That led the head of the group to the friendly studios of Fox News to complain that they were being targeted for their political beliefs. Well, that’s actually true. It is because of their obvious involvement in politics that the IRS is legally obligated to give them further scrutiny. There is ample evidence of their partisan activities, and if they don’t want to be challenged on that basis, they should not be so overtly partisan.
James O’Keefe
Fancying himself an investigative reporter, O’Keefe has made a career of lying about progressive people and organizations. His exploits already got him in trouble with the law when he was arrested and convicted for unlawful activity in the office of a U.S. senator in Louisiana. His infamous videos have been proven to be deceitfully edited in order to smear the reputations of his victims. His best known crusade against ACORN proved nothing and the group was never found to have broken any law. However, O’Keefe was forced to pay a $100,000 settlement to a former ACORN employee who sued him for defamation.
Typical of the whiny personality he exudes, O’Keefe is now complaining about a summons he received from the Department of Labor in New York to ascertain whether he was properly paying taxes for the state unemployment insurance fund. O’Keefe has called the request a witch hunt, but he has also said that he will be relocating to New Jersey. Is that his way of evading justice? If he is so certain that his finances are in order, he should simply provide the exonerating documents and go back to libeling the liberals he despises.
There was a time when Republicans were known as the “law and order” party. But when you have characters like these getting caught for unlawful conduct, and their accomplices in the media excusing and/or forgiving their behavior, it is impossible to take seriously their claims of innocence and purity. They have a deep aversion to taking accountability for their actions. And in avoiding responsibility, they resort to the most childish form of griping and blaming others for their woes. The GOP has flipped from being the “law and order” party to being the “whine and blame” party.
Posted by Mark NC on January 23, 2014 at 10:50 am.
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When it comes to America-hating rhetoric and bashing the values held by the majority of the citizens of the United States, Fox News takes a back seat to no one. Despite the diversity and tolerance of American society, Fox has made it their mission to inject bitter animus into the national family in order to create division and contempt. That’s why, in the Fox mindset, reproductive choice is murder, tax fairness for the wealthy is class warfare, affordable health insurance is communism, and an African-American president is a Marxist dictator who is unfit – even ineligible – to hold the office.
Nevertheless, it still comes as some surprise to find out what Fox regards as the utopian business model for the United States. In their feverish obsession for unfettered, free-market capitalism (which even the Pope recently condemned), Fox has long advocated the repeal of virtually every regulation they stumbled over. The Fox/Tea Party economic environment would be a chaotic anarchy where multinational corporations would rule with loyalty to nothing but their bottom line. It is that philosophy that is represented in their article that promotes, and distorts, a survey by the World Bank that ranked countries for their business friendliness.
The critical lesson from the data as analyzed by Fox, is expressed in their headline that laments that the “US ranks behind Rwanda, Belarus, Azerbaijan in ease of creating new business.” The inescapable conclusion is that the U.S. would be better off if it were more like Rwanda and the other third-world nations whose governments are too weak to provide any order or law or protection for its citizens who engage in business.
Setting aside the ludicrous notion that the U.S. should look to Rwanda for inspiration, the real problem with the analysis of the data is that it is comparing the U.S. to 189 other countries with which it has little in common. A more rational analysis would limit the comparison to other nations with large populations and high GDP. The World Bank’s website conveniently allows just such a comparison by filtering the list to include only those first-world countries in the Organization for Co-operation and Economic Development (OCED).
In the unfiltered list of all 189 countries, the U.S. comes in at 20th for “starting a business,” which isn’t really that bad out of 189. But when filtering the list to remove countries like Rwanda that tell us nothing about our place internationally, the U.S. jumps to number six. In fact, in the aggregate results for all eleven of the categories that the World Bank ranked (i.e. construction permits, credit, taxes, etc.), the U.S. is number two, behind New Zealand.
The question is: Why would Fox News want to deliberately misconstrue the survey to portray America as a third-rate loser in the world community? For the same reason they disparage everything else about this country that they despise. Contrary to Fox’s incessant whining about freedom and liberty, these are principles that they believe should only be available to corporations and the wealthy. It is in the interest of Fox conservatism to rebuke America as unfriendly to business in order to lobby for the elimination of the regulatory structure that they regard as impeding the liberty of the industrial class.
By misrepresenting the World Bank’s data, Fox has proven once again that they are more interested in advancing a rightist agenda than in informing their audience. And the direction in which they want to push America is one that will be distinctly unpleasant for most Americans, as demonstrated in this brilliant travelogue for the Tea Party vacation paradise of Somalia:
