Tastes Like Watergate: An Illustrated Guide To A Fox News Obsession

Posted by on February 18, 2014 at 1:30 pm. 6 Comments :

If there is one thing you can credit Fox News with, it is their tenacious determination to stand by even the most ludicrous figments of its overactive and politically twisted imagination. Once they sink their teeth into a story, nothing – and certainly not exculpatory facts – will dampen their resolve to peddle their delusions to their dimwitted viewers.

The string of pseudo-scandals that Fox has nurtured for most of the past six years has not produced a single shred of evidence of any wrongdoing by President Obama or his administration. Even with the aid of a bitterly partisan and hostile Republican majority in the House of Representatives conducting dozens of hearings, issuing subpenas, calling witnesses, compiling thousands of pages of documents, and staging theatrical press events, they have still failed to make a case against the President or any of their other targets.

What they have done is to compile an impressive record of psychotic obsession with prosecuting the White House for whatever they thought might stick if rubbed in hard enough. And in an effort to make the slander even stickier, they stirred in a generous heap of Watergate analogies. For instance…

Fox News Watergate Obsession

Never mind that none of these alleged scandals were ever proven in any way, despite hundreds of hours of congressional hearings and investigations by the right-wing press. It’s interesting that Fox is fixated on aligning Obama with disgraced former president Richard Nixon. The only thing they are succeeding at is reminding people that it is Republicans who are responsible for this sort of criminality. But that won’t stop the folks at Fox. Look for them to dig up some new affair that they will equate with Watergate. Maybe he has been covering up his actual golf score, or perhaps the scandalous revelation that he has been dying his hair gray to garner sympathy (oh wait, that one has already been done).

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Fox Business Network Debunks Fox News/Koch Brothers ObamaScare Story

Posted by on February 17, 2014 at 1:58 pm. NO Comments :

From the very first days of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) Fox News and other right-wing media have work their butts off trying to frighten people away from it. Their ultimate goal is to sabotage the program by suppressing participation. But with more than three million enrollments, and millions more covered by Medicaid or parental plans, the Fox strategy appears to be failing miserably.

That, however, has not dampened their resolve to do damage to the program and the millions of Americans who are already benefiting from it. Recently an ad that was produced by the Koch brothers-financed Americans for Prosperity, featured a Tennessee woman who suffers from Lupus. In the ad Emilie Lamb claims that she was forced from a state-sponsored insurance plan (which conservatives usually oppose) that cost her $57.00 a month, to an ObamaCare plan that cost $373.00. On the surface that sounds pretty awful. But as usual, there is much going on just below the surface.

Fox News

Consumer Reports health care expert Nancy Metcalf, writing for the Fox Business Network, added some necessary context to this story. Her article titled “Don’t be fooled by another ‘Obamacare horror story,'” spells out why Lamb’s claim that her previous policy satisfied her needs may not have been entirely true. For instance, Lamb’s CoverTN plan had a cap of $25,000, but Metcalf notes that most Lupus patients spend far more than that each year for routine medication and doctors visits. If she has a flare up or requires treatment for more severe symptoms, Lamb’s medical expenses could easily exceed six figures. Metcalf writes that…

“Under her old plan, they would not have been covered. Under her new plan, they will be. I used HealthCare.gov’s window-shopping feature to identify what she purchased: a Platinum plan with a $1,500 out-of-pocket limit. There is no deductible, 25 percent coinsurance for pretty much all services, and, most critically, no upper limit on what the plan will pay out for medical care. So if she ever has a complication of her disease, or needs one of those expensive drugs, the most she’ll have to pay out of pocket in a year is $1,500. The insurance company will pick up the rest of the tab, no matter how costly.”

One of the incentives for implementing health insurance reform was the number of bankruptcies filed by working Americans whose insurance failed to cover them after they had the audacity to get sick. While Ms. Lamb is understandably disturbed by the higher premiums she is facing now, it is preferable to a financial (and health) disaster should her disease take a turn for the worse. In addition, the evidence actually suggests that Lamb’s costs will be lower under ObamaCare due the $1,500 annual out of pocket maximum, and the absence of any lifetime cap. Under her previous policy she would be responsible for much more over time.

The Koch brothers and Fox News have been relentlessly hyping this story as proof that ObamaCare has not served patients like Lamb. They have featured it on the air with reports that provide no opinion counter to that of the Fox angle. They have posted it on their lie-riddled community website, Fox Nation. They published an op-ed by Lamb in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. So it is somewhat curious that they permitted their hype to be debunked on their little-viewed Fox Business Network website.

This may be their way of buying a little insurance of their own. When the bottom falls out of their propaganda machine, they can claim that they were “fair and balanced” after all. Even though their blurb on the FBN blog can never match the magnitude of their attacks on ObamaCare throughout the rest of their media empire. And don’t expect to see Nancy Metcalf providing Fox News viewers with her analysis anytime soon. She’s not likely to be invited onto the O’Reilly Factor given the factual nature of her reporting.

To Fox, it’s best to keep people like Metcalf segregated to the FBN web ghetto so the Foxbots aren’t exposed to the sort of truthful information that contradicts conservative spin and rattles right-wing media.


Fox Nation vs. Reality: ObamaCare Is NOT Recruiting Undocumented Immigrants

Posted by on February 15, 2014 at 3:08 pm. 7 Comments :

Fox News has labored vigorously to establish its reputation as America’s whites-only cable news channel. Simultaneously they have distinguished themselves as the nation’s foremost purveyor dishonest and politically biased “reporting.” But every now and then they manage to score extra points by melding these two achievements into a single story. That goal was realized today by Fox’s community website, Fox Nation, with help from their disreputable pals at Breitbart News.

Fox Nation

Read Fox Nation vs. Reality for more documented lies from Fox World.

The headline declaring that “ObamaCare [is] Recruiting Illegal Immigrants” is absolutely, provably false. As is the content of the article that says in the opening paragraph that “Covered California–the flagship of state Obamacare exchanges–is recruiting illegal (“undocumented”) immigrants to sign up for the program, regardless of their eligibility.”

There is no truth whatsoever to that claim. But adhering to factual reporting has never been the mission of Fox News. It’s especially humorous that Joel Pollak, the BreitBrat author of the article, attempts to align his bogus assertions to Republican congressman Joe Wilson who, you may recall, shouted out “You lie,” during President Obama’s 2009 State of the Union speech when the President stated that the Affordable Care Act would not cover undocumented immigrants. Pollak believes that Wilson is due an apology based on his deeply misconstrued interpretation of a page on the Covered California website.

The shoddy news sleuthing by BreitBrat Pollak turned up a page that informed readers that they did not need to worry if they were “undocumented and want your family to enroll in health insurance. That was the spark that set fire to Pollak’s active imagination. Without wasting any effort on reading further or trying to understand the context, Pollak concluded that this was an attempt to enroll undocumented immigrants in ObamaCare, which the law explicitly prohibits. This is what the very first paragraph on the page actually said:

“According to the laws and implementing regulations, the information provided by individuals for coverage can not be used for purposes other than ensuring the efficient functioning of the insurance market (Covered California) or administration of the program, or to verify certain eligibility determinations including verification of the immigration status of these people.”

If Pollak had the comprehension skills to grasp this, he would have noticed two things: 1) The page is assuring applicants that the information they provide will not be shared with immigration agencies. And 2) That verification of immigration status will be a determinant condition of their eligibility.

The importance of the first item is to reassure people that an application will not result in an investigation or potential deportation. Many Latino families have mixed immigration statuses and they are sensitive to the possibility that their families could be separated. Consequently, they refrain from enrolling in benefits programs like ObamaCare. That means that many people who are actually citizens (i.e. children who were born here, or naturalized adults) would be deprived of services to which they are entitled because of their concern for other family members who may not be documented. This assurance allows them to apply without having to fear unrelated consequences.

The second item should be an assurance to bigots like Pollak that no undocumented immigrants would receive health care benefits under ObamaCare. It is an explicit declaration that citizenship is required for eligibility. And it is what makes Pollak’s assertion that illegal immigrants are being recruited regardless of their eligibility such a blatant lie.

It’s interesting to note that the Fox News Latino website does not have a story on this matter. Fox News Latino often takes positions that sharply contrast with those of the Fox News mothership. It is their way of trying to lure in the fastest growing demographic in the country without alienating them the way Fox News does. Although, there is a story that addresses the administration’s efforts to reach out to Latinos. And in that story they correctly point out the dilemma of mixed immigration status families who worry about separation, saying that “One big issue is that the law requires that those seeking coverage provide the immigration status of members of their household to determine eligibility.” That is what the page on Covered California is there for – to alleviate that concern.

It is remarkably dishonest and unethical to portray the information provided on Covered California as attempting to recruit undocumented immigrants to enroll in ObamaCare. Yet that is precisely what Breitbart and the Fox Nationalists did. And they did this despite the fact that the correct information was plainly in front of them on the same page. Therefore, it can only be assumed that they knew the truth and deliberately chose to ignore and/or distort it. But that’s the one thing that is not surprising about this. That is, in fact, standard operating procedure at Fox News.


ABC, CBS, NBC Criticized By Fox News For Being Just Like Fox

Posted by on February 13, 2014 at 1:18 pm. 4 Comments :

From it’s very inception Fox News has been the most adversarial news network that ever took to the air. Even it’s slogan taunted competitors by inferring that they were not “Fair and Balanced.” Whenever they see an opportunity to criticize other media, they leap on it with the ferocity of ravenous jackal. Such is the case with a report today on the Fox Nation website. The headline indicted the broadcast news programs for partisan bias saying that “ABC, CBS, NBC Report Ray Nagin Conviction, Neglect To Mention His Political Party.”

Fox News - Nagin

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Oh My God! That is a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. Any so-called “news” enterprise that would so brazenly distort the facts of a story in this manner should be ridiculed and ostracized from the community of reputable journalists. They should surrender their credentials and slink away in shame.

The only thing worse than neglecting to note the political party of a convicted former mayor would be to neglect to note that the network making the criticism did the very same thing. That’s right…When Fox News reported on the conviction of Nagin they also left out any mention of his party affiliation (video below). Shepard Smith broke into Gretchen Carlson’s program with a two and a half minute “Breaking News” alert that covered just about everything else that is known about Nagin, complete with graphics and video. So it would be difficult to argue that they didn’t have enough airtime or time to prepare.

The Fox Nationalists sourced their story to the ultra-rightist media bashers at the Washington Free Beacon who wrote that…

“CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and ABC World News broadcasts gave brief mention to the conviction of former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin Wednesday on 20 federal counts, including bribery and conspiracy, but all three omitted the fact that he was a Democrat.”

It says something about the research skills (or the rank dishonesty) of these supposed media analysts that they managed to monitor the big three nets for what they regard as flawed reporting, but failed to catch the same omission by the top-rated cable news network that shares their ideological bias. They would certainly never bother to complain about Fox when it, on multiple occasions, misidentified Republican scoundrels as Democrats without ever correcting the record.

Fox News Mislabels

On a more substantive note, the complaint that network news failed to mention that Nagin is a Democrat may not be a particularly serious oversight. When Nagin was indicted, the news spinners at NewsBusters made a similar complaint about network news reporting. What none of these stories mention is that Nagin’s party designation was a fairly fluid matter. As I wrote at the time…

“The right’s panic over whether or not the media should have identified Nagin as a Democrat ignores the fact that his association with the Democratic Party was a matter of political opportunism. Nagin had been a registered Republican for most of his adult life. He only switched parties when he decided to run for mayor of the heavily Democratic city of New Orleans. Even after his election he associated with, and behaved as, a Republican. As mayor he routinely favored the interests of his business constituents over the people. He was an avid supporter of George W. Bush prior to his election, and GOP governor Bobby Jindal afterwards.”

So it isn’t really much of a blunder to leave out the party affiliation of a slippery character like Nagin. In fact, if identifying his party were considered integral to the story, a responsible journalist would note that Nagin was more of a Republican than a Democrat. But if Fox is going to go out of their way to make their competitors look bad for leaving this information out, then they ought to include themselves in their criticism if they really want to be fair and balanced.


Putin On The Twits: Fox News Regulars Infatuation With The Russian Dictator

Posted by on February 12, 2014 at 1:51 pm. 10 Comments :

Try to imagine the reaction from Fox News and conservative politicos and pundits if President Obama or any other Democrat lavished praise on a foreign dictator. Consider the severity of the tongue lashing that would ensue, with blistering allegations of collusion, betrayal, and even treason. Tea Party Republicans would be drafting articles of impeachment, and thinly disguised comments advocating assassination and secession would flood the Fox Nation website.

So how then to respond to yet another Fox News contributor expressing his admiration for Russia’s strongman, Vladimir Putin? Dr. Ben Carson wrote an op-ed today that honored Putin for criticizing the United States for “becoming godless and moving away from Christian values.”

Carson: While we Americans are giving a cold shoulder to our religious heritage, the Russians are warming to religion. The Russians seem to be gaining prestige and influence throughout the world as we are losing ours. I wonder whether there is a correlation.

In two sentences Carson has displayed two examples of acute dementia. First, where Carson gets the idea that Americans are giving a cold shoulder to religion is a mystery. For good or ill, this is still a deeply pious nation with a huge majority of professed Christians. Second, Carson is advancing an incomprehensibly absurd notion that Russia is gaining prestige at a time when they are being excoriated for their bungled Olympics, and their support for the brutal Syrian regime of Bashir Assad is straining their international relations.

Carson is no stranger to delusional hyperbole. He has recently equated homosexuality with bestiality, ObamaCare with slavery, and demonstrated that he isn’t afraid to tread on Godwin’s Law by warning that our government is “acting like the Gestapo.” But he isn’t alone in these detours from reality either.

A fool’s parade of Fox Newsies have jumped on the Putin bandwagon. They include military analyst K.T. McFarland, anchor Martha MacCallum, anchor Tucker Carlson, and commentator Charles Krauthammer. And the affection from the Fox crew did not go unnoticed in Russia. An article published in Pravda last year with the fanciful title, “Why Conservative Americans Admire Putin,” gives a pretty accurate account of the commonalities between the Tea Party and the Politburo:

“With no hero to save them they become frustrated and look to Putin, [whom they see] kneeling at Christ’s Holy Sepulcher which Obama never does when visiting Jerusalem. They see him going to church when they know Obama favors Muslims who attack Christians and their churches. They see Putin establishing laws to protect the church and laws against homosexuality. This they admire and this brings them hope. Hope in their upside down world where there is a leader willing to follow Christ. They have no Reagan but they see Putin whom they wish was their president.”

So really, what it all comes down to is worshiping Christ and demonizing gays. As the Russians fall in line on those priorities, the American right has fallen in love with the Russians. Putin can be their Zombie Reagan. But you have have to wonder how far this could go. There are lots of villainous tyrants and demagogues who meet some of these prerequisites. Al Qaeda, for instance, is as stridently anti-gay as they are pro-theocracy. Right-wingers should love that. And you know who else hated gays? Hitler! Plus, if they pray hard enough, they may convince God to bless them with this:

Putin/Palin 2016


Fox News Wants Some Examples Of Tea Party Racism They Say Does Not Exist. So…

Posted by on February 11, 2014 at 1:12 pm. 63 Comments :

Last Saturday more than 80,000 people in North Carolina gathered to march in protest of the Republican mission to strip minorities of their civil rights and gut the social safety net for low-income citizens. It was the largest protest march since the peak of the civil rights movement in 1965.

So how does Fox News cover this news-making event? By having Sean Hannity send an African-American Tea Party leader to ambush and embarrass the marchers. How else would Fox do it?

Fox Nation

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Hannity’s “correspondent” was David Webb, founder of TeaParty365, Fox News contributor, and Breitbart News columnist. Webb landed at the protest with a bag of questions that had nothing to do with the agenda for the march. He harangued the protest’s organizers with off-topic questions (the video of which cut out most the answers). Then he asked a few participants if they thought Obama is a successful president. Most answered correctly that he has been obstructed at every turn by Republicans committed to blocking anything he proposes, even if it was originally a GOP initiative.

However, the feature of the video was Webb asking marchers to give examples of racism by the Tea Party. This is the sort of ambush tactic that serves no purpose other than to create a negative impression of the respondents. First of all, Webb’s video showed him interviewing only four people out of the more than 80,000 who attended the march. Without the uncut footage we have no idea if there were forty others who supplied Webb with bona fide examples of Tea Party racism that he left on the cutting room floor. It’s easy to splice together just the remarks that make his point and discard the rest.

Furthermore, the respondents were not official spokespeople for the protest and they did not come prepared to have answers for Webb’s loaded questions. It’s unreasonable to expect that random citizens participating in a march to protest specific policies of North Carolina’s ultra-right Republican administration will be carrying documentation of Tea Party racism to an event that isn’t related to that subject. Yet that is precisely what was expected of the four victims of Webb’s inquisition. Fox Nation even placed a story about this at the top of their website with a sensationalized headline that implied that liberals as a group were unable to cite examples of bigotry in the Tea Party. Maybe they should ask more than four liberals before making such a ludicrous assertion.

That said, I wouldn’t want Fox News, Sean Hannity, and David Webb to be disappointed by not getting a substantive response to their inquiries. Therefore, they might want to look into the Tea Party agenda for evidence of racism. For instance, their reactions to the recent commercials for Cheerios (with a biracial family) and Coke (with a multilingual rendition of America the Beautiful) revealed a thinly disguised prejudice for anything not purely of Euro-Caucasian descent. Then there were the infamous Birthers whose allegations are inherently racist. The Tea Party’s opposition to social safety net programs is often portrayed as a response to the lazy moochers in the inner city they regard as the beneficiaries. Then there is their advocacy of voter ID laws that largely impact minorities, as well as seniors and the poor. And they continue to refer to undocumented residents as “illegals,” even if they broke no laws. The Tea Party’s legislative and social agenda is rife with this sort of bigotry.

For more evidence, note the frequency with which Tea Party leaders are caught saying out loud things that are overtly racist. For instance this Arkansas Tea Partier, or this one in California, or this former chairman of the Tea Party Express.

And if that isn’t enough, take a look at these images gathered from Tea Party rallies and websites:

Fox News - Tea Party Racism

Of course, Hannity and Webb would never address these examples that they disingenuously requested. Their intent from the outset was to let the question hang out there unanswered to leave the false impression the charges of racism were unwarranted. But any paying attention knows the truth about the Tea Party, and a little research confirms it. Too bad Fox News viewers will never see it.

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Rachel Maddow Beats Fox News – Again

Posted by on February 10, 2014 at 8:11 pm. 30 Comments :

For the second time this year, Rachel Maddow pulled off a weekly ratings win against Fox News in the critical 25-54 demographic that advertisers prefer.

maddow-3x

Available now on Amazon: Fox Nation vs. Reality. Get it today.

MSNBC has been enjoying a bit of boost with daily breaking coverage of Chris Christie’s BridgeGate scandal. And thanks to Christie’s determination to impede the investigation the story just keeps getting prolonged which, of course, provides more opportunities for MSNBC to rake in the ratings.

Rachel Maddow is one of the prime beneficiaries of this situation. She was the first cable newsie to report on Christie’s bullying tactics and she has consistently broken new developments. As result she is seeing her ratings spike significantly.

Megyn KellyMaking this even more significant is the fact that Maddow is beating Megyn Kelly, who was promoted to her prime time slot specifically to try to capture more of the younger audience that Maddow is drawing. For her to have another weekly win so soon may be a warning flag that Kelly isn’t appealing to the audience that Fox intended. In fact, Kelly may just be exacerbating Fox’s older skewing, predominantly male audience who tune in for the titillation that Fox deliberately exploits.

In addition to Maddow’s numbers, Chris Matthews has also been bumped up. He beat his Fox competition, Greta Van Susteren, for the week as well. It is clear that having substantive reporting that viewers find valuable is the most effective way of building an audience. And MSNBC should strive to more of that. Or they could try the Fox model of just making shit up that feeds the prejudices of low-information viewers. That seems to work too.


A Typically Malicious Morning On Fox News

Posted by on February 10, 2014 at 3:02 pm. 2 Comments :

With no new scandal bait emerging over the weekend for Fox News to exploit, they may consider this a slow news day. But in the 24/7 world of cable news the show must go on. Consequently, the editorial team over at Fox was forced to scrape up some chum for their ravenously disgruntled audience. And this is what they came up with:

Fox News

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The Clinton Suck-Up
There’s a new book that contains flattering remarks about Hillary Clinton by Gen. David Petraeus. He says that “she’d make a tremendous president,” and sites as an example of her qualifications a reason that is certain to rattle your average Foxie:

Petreaus: “Like a lot of great leaders, her most impressive qualities were most visible during tough times. In the wake of the Benghazi attacks, for example, she was extraordinarily resolute, determined, and controlled.”

Uh oh. A respected general who was revered by the right, and even solicited by Fox News CEO Roger Ailes to run for president in 2012, has high praise for Clinton and her handling of Fox’s favorite anti-Clinton cudgel, Benghazi. Fox’s response was to rush John Bolton into the studio for his reaction. Bolton seemed a bit confused as he struggled to find the meaning of this development. He eventually settled for claiming that Petraeus must have made a mistake or that he was sucking up to Clinton. That was about the best they could do on short notice as they sought to walk the fine line between their reverence for Petraeus and their hatred for Clinton.

Trapped In ObamaCare
If Clinton and Benghazi are Fox’s favorite punching bags, ObamaCare is a close second. They have spent countless hours trying to sabotage the program and frighten their viewers from participating in it. This morning they brought in Fox Business anchor Melissa Francis to discuss what they called an “ObamaCare Coverage Gap.” In reality what they were describing were people whose income fell below the threshold to qualify for ObamaCare subsidies.

Originally these people were supposed to become eligible for Medicaid, but last year the Supreme Court issued a ruling that made that provision voluntary in each state. It is in mostly Republican controlled states where they declined to take advantage of the billions of federal dollars available to expand their Medicaid programs. As a result, the low income residents of those states have been left without any coverage at all. So the coverage gap that Fox attributes to ObamaCare is actually the fault of GOP governors and legislatures who were more interested in scoring a political blow than they were in the well being of their citizens. For some reason Fox left that detail out of their report.

The Olympic Terrorist Bombing
On Fox News Sunday this weekend, the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Mike McCaul (R-TX), discussed his concerns about terrorism at the Sochi Olympics and said that “There’s a high degree of probability that something will detonate, something will go off.” This is a concern that has been articulated by many people, especially after a couple of actual terrorist bombings in southern Russia. But few officials have gone so far as to say that it is “probable.” [For the record, the last terrorist bombing that occurred during the Olympics was in the United States at the games held in Atlanta. The bomber was a right-wing extremist upset by socialism and abortion. Before being caught he bombed a couple of family planning clinics.]

Which brings us to the appearance this morning by Fox contributor Ralph Peters. For those who are unfamiliar with him, he has a long record of vile commentary that includes advocating torture and accusing President Obama of seeking “common ground” with Al Qaeda. Asked to respond to McCaul’s prediction, Peters went on a bender of his own. After agreeing that the risk in Sochi is real, Peters offered some praise for how the Russians handle these sort of affairs.

Peters: “Sometimes a heavy hand and brutality works. [The Russians] don’t do stop-and-frisk, they do stop-and-frisk and beat the hell out of you. And you know what? It’s brutal, it’s ugly, and sometimes it works.”

Obviously Peters approves of the exercise of brutality. And this is not the first time he has said so. He believes that American soldiers should use the same tactics that are used against them by enemy forces and terrorists. In his view there is no place for preserving the values and humane principles that most Americans revere. And by repeatedly inviting Peters onto their network, Fox News is just as bad.

That’s how the morning went at Fox News. It was fairly typical and filled with the sort of lies and animus that is characteristic of the network. No doubt they will escalate their hostile rhetoric as the day proceeds. The morning crew is setting a pretty high bar for the prime timers, O’Reilly and Kelly and Hannity, to clear later today.


Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Voter ID Photo Fallacy

Posted by on February 9, 2014 at 7:15 pm. 2 Comments :

With a weekend full of legitimate news stories like the Olympics or immigration reform, Fox Nation reserved the top spot on their web page to post a blatant lie: “NAACP Requires Marchers Protesting Voter ID Law To Show Photo ID.”

Fox Nation

Read the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality for more of Fox’s blatant lies.

One of the favorite tactics of propagandists is to expose alleged hypocrisy on the part of their foes. And when they can’t find any actual hypocrisy, the more unscrupulous among them will simply invent some. That’s the case with this article on Fox Nation. Sourcing the information from the Daily Caller, a right-wing webloid run by Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, the article states flatly that…

“North Carolinians marching to protest voter-ID laws must present a valid photo ID to participate in an NAACP-hosted protest against voter-ID laws in Raleigh on Saturday.”

The evidence of what would be an embarrassing misstep is a tweet by a conservative blogger that showed a portion of a flyer promoting the protest. The flyer had a list of “do’s and don’t’s” for the marchers. One of the “do’s” said to “bring a photo identification (driver’s license, passport or other valid photo ID) with you and keep it on your person at all times.” So there you have it. Except that what you have is something completely different than what the headline and story alleged.

There was absolutely no requirement by the NAACP, or anyone else, that a photo ID be shown in order to participate in the march. No one would be checking for them, and no one would be refused without one. The Fox Nationalists apparently can’t tell the difference between a requirement and a suggestion. The advice to carry a valid ID is one that is commonly given to people who participate in public protests. Occasionally such events encounter police interventions, and having your ID handy can smooth the process. That is the only reason that the flyer recommended that participants carry an ID. It was in no way a prerequisite for participating.

Even if there were a requirement to have an ID for the protest, there still wouldn’t have been any hypocrisy. Conservatives like to make irrelevant analogies when defending their voter suppression plans. They point to the need to show an ID when boarding a plane or buying alcohol. However, flying and drinking are not in the same category as voting, which is regarded as right and a duty in our democracy. Any attempt to depress turnout, particularly in a way that is so transparently prejudicial, is undemocratic.

What’s more, the incidence of fraudulent voting is practically nil, so they are proposing to disenfranchise thousands of citizens in order to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. But that’s how they operate. And they don’t care any more about fair elections than they do about honestly representing the facts in a story like this one.

FYI: The “Moral Mondays” protest march, that Fox was so brazenly lying about, drew upwards of 80,000 people – in North Carolina!It was the largest civil rights march in the South since 1965.


Oy Vey: Tea Party Xenophobes Think ‘E Pluribus Unum’ Is English

Posted by on February 9, 2014 at 1:51 pm. 20 Comments :

The rightist wing of the Republican Party (aka Tea Party) has never been shy about making fools of themselves, particularly with regard to popular culture. An advertisement by Cheerios that featured a biracial family was a recent example of this as the conservative wackos went ballistic over a tweet that correctly predicted they would hate the ad. Following that, Coca-Cola incited wingnut rage by committing blasphemy with a multilingual rendition of “America the Beautiful” during the Superbowl.

Not content to growl menacingly at heart warming celebrations of America’s diversity, Tea Party factions are now claiming that their bigoted tantrums have won them a victory over the liberal multiculturalists in charge of the international soda conspiracy.

Breitbart News is reporting that Coke has “surrendered” to the Tea Party after complaints that their commercial offended right-thinking conservative xenophobes who are unable to tolerate people who show their love for America in a variety of languages.

Breitbart Tea Party Coke

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It is the evidence of this surrender that is so strikingly preposterous. The Coke ad was reworked a bit when it was broadcast during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. A short segment was added to the beginning of the ad with the words “E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one.” It is that modification that the BreitBrats are asserting is proof that their vilification of human harmony was successful. So let’s get this straight. Coke, they said, “bowed to conservative critics” who insist on English-only by inserting a short phrase in — Latin.

These are the same rocket scientists who carried signs to their Tea Party rallies saying “Government hands off of my Social Security.” They are the same people who pledged to burn their ObamaCare cards (which do not exist). And now they think that appending a Latin phrase onto an ad is a testament to their strength in getting a cold corporation to acquiesce to their demands for an English-centric America.

All I can say is ach du lieber. These people are obviously loco. If they had any esprit de corps with their fellow Americans they wouldn’t show such disdain toward them, capiche? After all, these are the villains upon whom they are showering their hate: