Debating The Ebola Czar: The Fox News “Power Panel” Of Dunces

The Ebola mania continues in the media as the White House announces the appointment of an Ebola response coordinator. Ron Klain, who served as chief of staff to both Vice President Biden and former vice president Al Gore was chosen for his managerial skills to assume a purely administrative role. No sooner was the announcement made than Republican pundits and politicians piled on to criticize the move.

At this point, anyone who takes criticism from the right seriously has an acute deficiency of mental capability. President Obama’s opponents are so notoriously kneejerky that whatever they say has lost all meaning. Recall that they spent months during the President’s first term deriding his advisers as “czars,” comparing them to Soviet apparatchiks, and demanding that they be dismissed. Then the Ebola situation occurs and the same folks demand the immediate appointment of a czar. But after Obama agrees with them and appoints one, they grumble that he chose the wrong guy. This is further evidence that there is nothing that Obama can do that will satisfy these trolls.

While at the Fox News asylum, the inmates have taken over. The naming of Klain was belittled as a political gesture and Klain himself was said to be unqualified. But the people making these assessments were themselves lacking in any credentials on either public health, infectious diseases, or government administration. Take for example the “Power Panel” assembled on The Real Story with former Miss America turned Fox News anchor, Gretchen Carlson.

Fox News Ebola Panel

The panel called upon to grade the President’s performance consisted of Matt Schlapp, a right-wing activist and chairman of the American Conservative Union, Rick Reichmuth, a Fox News weatherman, and Philip Segal, a criminal defense lawyer. Not a single one of them had any experience with public health, infectious diseases, or government administration. Yet they were somehow qualified to pass judgment on Obama and Klain. And this was not some random group of talking heads who simply wanted to express their opinions. This was the “Power Panel.”

The panel began on a hilariously ironic note when Schlapp tried to raise the anxiety level by saying that the CDC “has shown incompetence” and that he would “move from being alarmed to being scared.” Then he laid into the czar question saying that “Now we’ve picked a czar over this who is more a political spinner than a health expert.” Remember, this is coming from a professional political spinner. The lawyer didn’t contribute much more to the discussion.

Surprisingly, Reichmuth the weatherman made the most cogent remarks, reminding the panel not to over hype the “crisis,” and that not responding to AiDS in a timely manner in the eighties led to a real tragedy. Reichmuth didn’t venture further on that subject, but we know that it was Ronald Reagan who said nothing about AIDS until after some 20,000 people had died. Contrast that with the current “outbreak” where there has been only one fatality in the U.S.

Fox News has been decidedly negative about every aspect of the administration’s response to Ebola. They opposed the czar. They opposed sending troops to West Africa. They opposed bringing infected Americans back home for treatment. The only measures they advocate are those that seal the United States off from the rest of the world in a continental haz-mat suit that prevents travel and border crossings. Never mind that actual experts dismiss those ideas as being ineffective and even counterproductive.

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All of this panic over an epidemic that has never materialized has drawn attention away from the midterm elections. But the idiotic rhetoric, fear mongering, and other ill-informed blathering by the right should serve as a reminder of the real importance in voting on November 4th. If the Republicans gain more control over our government, we can expect a couple of things that would be truly disastrous. First, they would initiate impeachment proceedings for Obama over Benghazi or health care or gay marriage or something something Kenyan something Muslim something. And secondly, they would contract an exterminator to tent the entire nation and fumigate to rid it of pests whom they define as Democrats, liberals, minorities, non-Christians, and women who don’t know their place.

They are praying that you don’t vote. And when they aren’t praying they are passing legislation to make it harder for you to do so. Don’t let them succeed. There are more of us then there are of them. If we vote, we win. So vote and make sure everyone you know votes. Well, except for your lost friends and family who still listen to Rush Limbaugh and watch Fox News.

Fox News Wastes No Time Lying About Pelosi’s Comments On The Benghazi Kangaroo Committee

Two weeks ago Republican House Speaker John Boehner announced the formation of the House Select Committee On Politicizing Benghazi. Since that time, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has been weighing whether to participate in the obvious charade being performed by House Republicans. Today she decided that Democrats needed to be represented on the panel and named the five members who would fill that role (Pelosi video).

Fox News Pelosi

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Fox News carried the announcement (although they cut short their coverage when the new ranking member, Elijah Cummings began his remarks), but they wasted no time following the event to utterly distort what Pelosi had just said. She began by lamenting that it was unfortunate that “…the Republican obsession with Benghazi has not been about the victims, their families, or our country.” And she could not have been more clear about her condemnation of the blatant partisanship and politicization of the process by Republicans. [Emphasis added]

Pelosi: Over the past two weeks we have engaged in good faith discussions with Speaker Boehner over the shape and standards of the Select Committee. We had hoped for a level of fairness, transparency, and balance. Especially considering the subject matter. We were not able to reach any agreement. Regretably, the Republican approach does not prevent the unacceptable and repeated abuses by committee Chairman Issa in any meaningful way.

Consequently, Pelosi concluded that the history of Republican corruption in previous hearings made it “all the more reason for Democrats to participate.” That’s not a particularly compelling argument. The risk that participation would confer a measure of credibility to the committee was more than enough reason to abstain. Nevertheless, Pelosi had made her decision despite some lingering doubts.

Pelosi: I could have argued this either way. Why give any validity to this effort? But I do feel it’s important to the American people to have a pursuit of these questions in as fair and open and balanced way as possible. That simply would not be possible leaving it to the Republicans.

Immediately following Pelosi’s remarks, Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson broke in with a loaded question for correspondent Catherine Herridge. But it was Herridge’s response that twisted Pelosi’s words into an unrecognizable pile of Fox-excreted cow droppings (Fox video).

Carlson: I don’t know how you feel about this, but I’m stunned that Nancy Pelosi has made this decision because we just heard from Jay Carney a few moments ago, still calling it a Republican conspiracy theory.

Herridge: Well, Gretchen, the thing that jumped out at me in this news conference is that there seems to be a subtle shift in tone. What we have heard consistently from the Democratic leadership is that this is going to be a kangaroo court. We did not hear that at the news conference. I think what we heard was a recognition by the Democrats that they must now engage in a very serious way with the Republican-led Select Committee. And this is a reflection of the fact the members of this Republican Select Committee are very serious in nature.

Where on earth did Herridge get the impression that Democrats were recognizing any speck of seriousness on the part of the Republican pretenders orchestrating this phony committee? Pelosi had just slammed them as repeatedly abusive and untrustworthy when left alone. It almost seems as if Herridge is attempting to portray Pelosi as expressing respect for the committee she just finished denouncing as unfair and unnecessary. Herridge continued, and added a new element of political intrigue to the discussion.

Herridge: So this is a recognition by the Democrats that they must seriously engage, and that it would be a political mistake not to be engaged and to leave some of these issues unanswered. Especially leading up to the midterm elections.

Note that this is the first reference to politics. Pelosi said nothing about it in her remarks, but Herridge has now accused Pelosi of making a politically driven decision aimed at the upcoming midterm elections in November. Herridge’s introduction of politics is as baseless and offensive as the the Republicans efforts to fundraise off of the Benghazi tragedy. And then she follows up with a decidedly biased and negative characterization of the Democrats just assigned to the committee.

Herridge: What’s also striking to me, I think you could make the argument that several of the committee members are true partisans and have been on the attack on Benghazi from the get-go. So they seem to have been picked by the Speaker (sic) as way to answer these Republican allegations the administration, in effect, dropped the ball on Benghazi, they mislead the American people, and even more specifically that there was real negligence at the State Department that was led by Mrs. Clinton.

Really? After praising the Republicans on the committee as “serious,” Herridge is calling the Democrats “true partisans” who have been on the attack? Wouldn’t that description better fit the Republicans (and, of course, Fox News) who have been attacking on this issue for nearly two years? Herridge even mistakenly referred to Pelosi as the Speaker as she launched into a diatribe against Democrats, the administration, and Hillary Clinton, whom she baselessly called “negligent.” At this point Carlson chirped back in to dishonestly put words into Pelosi’s mouth.

Carlson: So Catherine, you’ve been covering this from the beginning. What happened in these meeting with John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi to go from just last week Pelosi saying Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, and not wanting to talk about it, to now saying “Well, we need to give validity to this effort?”

Of course, Pelosi never said that she needs to give validity to the committee. Quite the opposite. She clearly communicated that the only reason she was participating in the GOP farce was because it is so utterly lacking in validity. However, Herridge is demonstrating why the Democrats should have refrained from participation. Because even when they explicitly declare that the committee has no validity, Fox News and the GOP will twist their words to imply a validity that doesn’t exist. And if that isn’t enough, Herridge then went on to heap more praise on the Republican members of the committee.

Herridge: There is a real recognition that this is going to be a serious-minded investigation. The Republicans have chosen people with the requisite oversight background, also a legal background, two former U.S. attorneys, and they will, in effect, be able to move through this in a very methodical way. And they will be able to fill in these gaps. And it’s these gaps that represent, I believe, based on my reporting, real jeopardy for the Democrats, for the White House, and even more specifically, for former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and what this may mean for her possible presidential ambitions.

Once again, Herridge has injected politics into the debate, along with her perspective/hope that the committee’s work will be harmful to Democrats, particularly President Obama and Secretary Clinton. And if she hasn’t yet made herself clear, this is how she framed her bottom line.

Herridge: But the bottom line, for the folks at home, is the Democrats recognize it’s going to be a serious effort, and would be a political mistake not to engage in the fullest possible way.

In all, Herridge said four times that Democrats recognize that the committee will conduct a serious investigation, despite having no confirmation of that view from any Democrat. Herridge simply made it up, (much like the way Fox News produces most of their stories). And she repeatedly thrust politics into the discussion. In that regard she may be revealing the true motives of Fox News and the Republican Party. Neither are the least bit interested in a search for answers or solutions. From the start, the Benghazi fever that has infected Fox and the GOP was always about politics. It was, and is, an attempt to tarnish the President and to conduct a preemptive strike against Hillary Clinton’s possible campaign for president in 2016. They couldn’t care less about the American lives that were lost or about ways to prevent such loss in the future.

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The reporting by Fox News recounted above came just seconds after Pelosi’s televised announcement about the Democratic members she assigned to the committee. So Fox had to have been prepared in advance with the harshly partisan and political response that ensued. This was an orchestrated hit job on Pelosi that was likely devised by Fox’s CEO, and former Republican media strategist, Roger Ailes. And it illustrates, once again, that Fox is not even pretending to be a news enterprise. It is a brazenly partisan division of the Republican Party and a mouthpiece for raging conservatism.

Benghazi Committee Commences As Phony Fox News Scandal Falls Apart

The Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, announced today that he has chosen the rabidly partisan South Carolina Tea Party congressman, Trey Gowdy, to chair a special committee to waste more time and money investigating their trumped up Benghazi scandal. In naming Gowdy, Boehner praised his determination and desire for truth saying that…

“Trey Gowdy is as dogged, focused, and serious-minded as they come. I know he shares my commitment to get to the bottom of this tragedy.”

Gowdy Doody

Of course the truth is that neither Boehner nor Gowdy have any interest in getting to the bottom of anything. Their statements and actions for the past year and a half show that they are only interested in politicizing a tragic loss of American lives. Having failed to uncover even a sliver of evidence of any wrongdoing, Boehner is, in effect, insulting his own colleagues in Congress (i.e. Darrell Issa) who have been conducting pseudo-investigations without producing the hoped for “smoking guns” with which they could continue their campaign of political slander.

With the appointment of Gowdy, Republicans will have an attack dog in charge of the panel who has demonstrated his bitterly prejudiced views on this subject. Here are just a few of his past comments regarding the issue he is now pretending to seek the truth about:

  • 4/28/2013: There are more Benghazi hearings coming; I think they’re going to be explosive. [That never came to pass]
  • 5/7/2013: I think I can prove tomorrow that it was an intentional misrepresentation by Susan Rice and others. [That was a year ago, and still no proof]
  • 8/2/2013: What creates the appearance and perhaps the reality of a cover-up? Not letting us talk with people who have the most amount of information, dispersing them around the country and changing their names. [Here he is descending into a delusional conspiracy theory for which he provided no evidence]
  • 12/31/2013: What in the world explains the violence in Benghazi prior to the video being translated and released? Our consulate was attacked way before the video was released. [And this is just patently false]

This background on the man who will be chairing the committee shows that Boehner and his party are not really taking this matter seriously. It is a desperate attempt to dig up some political mud to throw, to tarnish the prospective presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton in 2016, and to salvage Boehner’s sinking reputation with the far-right fringe of his party whom he needs if he wants to be Speaker in the next session of congress.

Adding to the absurdity of convening a special committee on Benghazi is that the foundation of the GOP’s case keeps collapsing. Just as Gowdy’s predictions from a year ago never materialized, the most recent allegations are likewise illusory. The email that has become the object of their obsession reveals nothing new and doesn’t even refer to Benghazi in the portion they have latched onto. So now some Republicans are swerving to claim that the real outrage is the whereabouts of President Obama when the attack in Libya was taking place, and whether or not he was in the Situation Room at the White House. The only problem with that line of attack is that it is utterly irrelevant to anything. Even when Gretchen Carlson of Fox News tried to light that sparkler, she was doused by Andy Card, George W. Bush’s Chief of Staff:

Carlson: Did you find it unusual that the National Security Adviser, the former one, a few days ago with Bret Baier said that President Obama was not in the Situation Room on the night of the Benghazi attacks? Is that odd or is that normal?

Card: I don’t think that says a lot. The President does not have to be in the Situation Room at every time with every crisis. […] I don’t think that it’s credible that we would expect, as the the pubic, that the President would be sitting in the Situation Room all the time.

This is the environment in which the Republican’s new committee will meet. They have nothing of substance to contribute. Democrats are considering boycotting the committee. That would be a wise move that would leave the GOP to stink in their juices.

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The result will be that the GOP will be seen by the American people to have no case, no integrity, and no interest in solving the problems that the people really care about. And if Benghazi is the issue they hope to run with in 2014 – or 2016 – they are going to be sorely disappointed when the returns come in. And they will be able to thank Fox News for their losses. After all, it was Fox, and their CEO Roger Ailes, who masterminded the Benghazi myth and worked tirelessly to prop it up.

foxnews-ailes-benghazi

OBAMA SCARE: The Right’s Fright Offensive To Scare People Away From Affordable Health Care

Halloween is approaching and the hobgoblins of conservative minds are already spinning nightmarish tales of the horror of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare). Actually, they have been doing it for quite some time dating back to at least March of 2010 when Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller published an article headlined “IRS looking to hire thousands of armed tax agents to enforce health care laws.” Fox News re-posted the article on their community web site and Fib Factory, Fox Nation despite the fact that it was a complete fabrication and was debunked by the Annenberg Center’s FactCheck.org

Fox News
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This year the campaign to recast a program that makes health insurance accessible to millions of Americans as a plague of locusts has risen to fever pitch. The Republican Party and conservative media has pulled out all the stops in a strategy aimed at scaring people from signing up with the hope that low enrollment will collapse the system. President Obama had the same concerns last month when he said…

“What you’ve had is an unprecedented effort that you’ve seen ramp up in the past month or so that those who have opposed the idea of universal health care in the first place — and have fought this thing tooth and nail through Congress and through the courts — trying to scare and discourage people from getting a good deal.”

These are not the hackneyed GOP talking points about death panels, job killers and government bureaucrats coming between patients and doctors. These are far more fanciful efforts that stretch the limits of credulity and appear to have more in common with satire than actual news reporting. Yesterday Rush Limbaugh “ruminated” (sourced to Breitbart) that ObamaCare may just be a ruse to set up gun registries in the United States. This is what it has come to as ObamaCare has finally reached the consumer stage and conservatives are desperate to keep people from discovering its benefits. For instance…

1) Fox News Warns That If You Sign Up For ObamaCare Hackers Will Steal Your Life Savings
On an episode of “The Real Story” on Fox News, host Gretchen Carlson introduced an ominous new strain of fear mongering to demonize ObamaCare. She interviewed John McAfee, the anti-virus software developer who is presently a fugitive from a murder investigation in Belize. He asserted a wild accusation that visitors to Healthcare.gov are going to be victimized by hackers who will steal their identities and/or drain their bank accounts.

However, neither Carlson nor McAfee actually provide any evidence of such a threat. In fact, when directly asked about it. McAfee diverts from the question and lays out a completely different threat that has nothing whatsoever to do with the ObamaCare web site. He alleges that nefarious individuals could set up their own unaffiliated web sites in the hopes of luring naive people of whom they will seek to take advantage. Of course, that is a threat that exists every day for every web site, and has since the Internet began. But visiting Healthcare.gov does not expose anyone to these phony sites as implied by the fear mongers at Fox.

2) WorldNetDaily Reports “Obama ‘Crashing Health-Care Site On Purpose'”
This article asserts that the President is so afraid that insurance shoppers will learn that ObamaCare is really more expensive than the old system that he deliberately caused the website to crash to keep people from seeing the rates. No one is defending the botched launch of the insurance exchanges, however, the notion that the technical glitches were intentionally caused by Obama is delusional.

WND’s argument (supported by links to Rush Limbaugh) that rates will increase leaves out the subsidies and tax credits that are available for many applicants. With these adjustments, premiums for most people will be substantially lower. The administration would, therefore, be anxious for consumers to have access to that information and would not be putting obstacles in their path.

3) Rand Paul: Take ObamaCare Or Go To Jail
The Tea Party darling Rand Paul has made innumerable false statements about virtually every policy that has emanated from the White House. But none surpass the diversion from reality than when he said “They say take [ObamaCare] or we will put people in jail. People say we aren’t going to put anybody in jail. The heck they won’t. You will get fined first. If you don’t pay your fines, you will go to jail.”

That’s interesting coming from someone who has frequently complained that no one in Congress has read the Affordable Care Act. If he had read it himself he would have known that the law explicitly prohibits criminal consequences for non-payment of fines. It states “In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure.” It rarely gets more clear than that, but the mission to frighten the public exceeds the motivation for truth on the part of GOP scare-meisters.

Notably, Bill O’Reilly insisted that no one on Fox News ever claimed that failure to enroll in ObamaCare would lead to a prison sentence, but he was hilariously embarrassed by the videos that proved otherwise, including on his own program.

4) Right-Wing Think Tank Mortified That ObamaCare Web Site Links To Voter Registration Form
This is a particularly curious horror story as it seeks to raise an alarm over something that ought to be regarded as a civic duty. Nevertheless, the conservative MacIver Institute (a Koch brothers funded operation) published an article that implied there was some sort of heinous objective on the part of the Obama administration for having included a link to a voter registration form on the ObamaCare website. This startling revelation is met with foreboding by MacIver and a flurry of right-wing media outlets that disseminated MacIver’s story including National Review, Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, and of course, Fox News. All of their reports agreed that this was a clandestine attempt to register only Democratic voters despite the absence of any partisan framing. MacIver even asks specifically “[W]hat does registering to vote have to do with signing up for Obamacare?”

The core of the right’s trepidation is rooted in a more fundamental aversion to the act of voting itself. It is why they are continually erecting new barriers to voting, such as unreasonably stringent identification requirements, shortening or eliminating early voting periods, wholesale purges of voter rolls, and of course, brazenly discriminatory gerrymandering. Democrats, on the other hand, have sought to expand voter turnout with bills like the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (aka Motor Voter) that mandates that certain government agencies provide people with access to voter registration. In fact, it is that twenty year old law that requires the ObamaCare administrators to make voter registration available. MacIver, and their similarly mortified conservative comrades, are either unaware of this, or are deliberately feigning ignorance in order to rile up their conspiracy-prone base.

5) Weekly Standard Finds Imaginary Threat On ObamaCare Website
The ultra-conservative Weekly Standard dispatched their crack reporters to ferret out what they portrayed as an ominous security threat on the Healthcare.gov website. What they found were comments in the site’s source code that said that “You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system.” The Standard notes that these comments were not visible to users and were not part of the site’s terms and conditions. But that didn’t stop them from implying that users would be still be bound by it because “the language is nevertheless a part of the underlying code.” Not really. It’s only a part of some inoperative text that carries no more obligation than some discarded notes.

This is another situation where you have to wonder whether these people are embarrassingly stupid or brazenly dishonest. There is a reason that this language was not visible. It was deliberately removed with the use of HTML comment tags by the site’s programmers. It was undoubtedly edited out because it was not an accurate expression of the site’s privacy policy. It does not mean that users are agreeing to a secret clause permitting the government to spy on them as the Standard implied. If any of these “reporters” had a fourteen year old at home they could have learned what this is about. But that would have interfered with their goal which is to leave Americans with the false impression that some hidden danger lurks beneath the surface of ObamaCare.

6) Fox News Fears ACORN Is Back To Push ObamaCare
The Curvy Couch Potatoes over at Fox & Friends had a jolly old time resurrecting their fear of a community organizing enterprise that no longer exists. ACORN was wrongly hounded out of business by right-wing opponents after pseudo-journalist and convicted criminal, James O’Keefe, distributed some deceitfully edited and libelous videos. But that hasn’t stopped conservative media from exhuming the corpse whenever they are in need of a sensationalistic story, as demonstrated by Fox co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck who announced that “We’re getting information that ACORN operatives are trying to sign people up for the Affordable Care Act.”

While ACORN was never found to have engaged in any unlawful activity, there was a bill passed that prohibited them from receiving federal funds. However, there is nothing in the law that prevents organizations with former ACORN staff from getting federal grants. In fact, there isn’t even any current law that prevents ACORN from getting grants as the previous ban was not included in the latest Continuing Resolution. Fox is brazenly misrepresenting the facts in an attempt to reignite fears of the old ACORN bogeyman. And they upped the terror ante by further alleging that ACORN would use your personal medical and financial information against you politically. They never revealed how that would occur, or to what end, but that isn’t the point. Their only interest is in spreading fear, no matter how irrational and unsupported.

Conclusion:
The zealousness with which these right-wing propagandists pursue their disinformation campaign is evidence of their own fear that Americans will come to appreciate having access to affordable health care. Therefore, they see their mission as derailing the program before that eventuality unfolds. Their tactics get more extreme and absurd the closer the program gets to gaining acceptance. A particular target of their attack is young people whose participation is important for the program to succeed. Consequently, opponents have launched a well-funded campaign (thanks to the Koch brothers) to scare off young consumers. Generation Opportunity has already released the now notorious “Creepy Uncle Sam” videos that make false implications of government intrusion into medical care. Next they are embarking on a twenty city college tour to mislead students.

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PolitiFact has reviewed sixteen claims made by ObamaCare detractors and found all of them false. Twelve of those were designated “Pants On Fire” lies. If there is one question that begs to be asked, it is this: If ObamaCare is so terrible, then why do opponents have to lie so much about it?

ObamaCare Myths

OBAMA SCARE: Fox News Mortified That ObamaCare Web Site Links To Voter Registration Form

Fox News has been engaged in a massive disinformation campaign against ObamaCare for going on three years now. After all that time, and having exhausted the considerable creative resources that came up with twelve “Pants on Fire” lies about the program, Fox’s desperation is showing. Just last week they went apoplectic over a phony allegation that millions of Americans will be victimized by hackers if they try to enroll in a new health care plan. This week they are testing another absurdity intended to rattle consumers.

Fox News

Once again, Real Story host Gretchen Carlson is carrying the water for the Tea-Publican extremists with a segment that reveals the shocking news that the “ObamaCare Exchange Website Asks Folks To Register To Vote.” This startling revelation is met with foreboding by Carlson’s guest, Dr. Marc Siegel (a member of the Fox News Medical A-Team along with this quack):

“I have a problem with it because it seems like more salesmanship. Like, here, go to the state exchange and now, by the way, vote. Vote for who? Vote for a Democrat who’s supporting this? Or maybe if you can’t get through to the exchange, Gretchen, then maybe you vote for a Republican, right?”

Right! Except that no one is ever directed to vote. They are merely given the opportunity to register. And they may register however they wish, just as Siegel himself pointed out. But the core of the right’s trepidation is rooted in a more fundamental aversion to the act of voting itself. It is why they are continually erecting new barriers to voting, such as unreasonably stringent identification requirements, shorter early voting periods, wholesale purges of voter rolls, and of course, brazenly discriminatory gerrymandering.

Republicans simply hate it when people participate in democracy, particularly when Democrats are doing it. To be fair, Democrats would be happy if fewer Republicans voted also, but unlike the GOP, Democrats have not tried to legislate away the right of Republicans to vote. To the contrary, they have sought to expand voter turnout with bills like the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (aka Motor Voter) that mandates that certain government agencies provide people with access to voter registration. In fact, it is that twenty year old law that requires the ObamaCare administrators to make voter registration available. Fox News, and their similarly mortified conservative comrades, are either unaware of this, or are deliberately feigning ignorance in order to rile up their dimwitted base.

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The icing on the top of this manufactured controversy is that it appears to have been cooked up by the right-wing MacIver Institute, a think tank funded by the Koch brothers and the neo-fascist John Birch Society. The story appeared first on Fox’s community web site and Fib Factory, Fox Nation, where it was sourced to MacIver. It traveled from there to a flurry of right-wing sites including National Review, Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, and eventually, the Fox News mothership. This is yet another means that the Koch brothers use to funnel their propaganda into Fox News in the guise of journalism.

OBAMA SCARE: Fox News Warns That If You Sign Up For ObamaCare Hackers Will Steal Your Life Savings

On Friday’s episode of “The Real Story” on Fox News, host Gretchen Carlson introduced an ominous new strain of fear mongering to intimidate Americans from learning more about how the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) can benefit them. Fox News is so terrified that people will discover how much there is to gain by enrolling, that they continue to invent ever more frightening tales of horror.

Fox News Obama Scare
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Carlson’s guest for the segment was John McAfee, the notorious developer of the anti-virus software company, who is presently a fugitive from a murder investigation. Carlson introduced McAfee with a declarative statement that enrolling in ObamaCare is dangerous because “Hackers could easily steal your identity. You could even lose you life savings if you do sign up.”

Oh my! That sounds awful. Pack up the kids Mabel, we’re moving to our bunker in Idaho where we stashed the gold bullion and freeze-fried moose stew. Fox News has confirmed that legions of hackers will be stalking innocent health insurance consumers to bleed them dry and deliver their souls to Satan.

This wild assertion that visitors to HealthCare.gov are going to be victimized by hackers is designed to frighten people away from the web site. Fox News has embarked on a full scale assault against ObamaCare with false allegations of higher costs, reduced service, death panels, national deficits, and even allusions to slavery. Their goal is to steer enough gullible viewers away from participating in order to engineer the program’s failure. And now they are deploying their latest tactic, fear of a malicious army of identity thieves.

During the interview, Carlson raises the specter of outlaw hackers laying in wait on the ObamaCare web site. However, neither she nor McAfee actually provide any evidence of such a threat. In fact, when directly asked about it. McAfee diverts from the question and lays out a completely different threat that has nothing whatsoever to do with the ObamaCare web site:

“There are no safeguards to prevent anyone – you, me, anyone who can develop a web site that only costs a couple of hundred dollars – and pretend to be an examiner, an agent, and you can log on, I’ll ask you for your Social Security number, your date of birth, everything I need to an hour later empty your bank account. And this is going to happen, and it’s going to happen very soon. Nothing in the ObamaCare system safeguards against this.”

To be clear, McAfee is not talking about any flaw or security risk to users of HealthCare.gov. He is saying that other nefarious individuals could set up their own unaffiliated web sites in the hopes of luring naive people of whom they will seek to take advantage. Of course, that is a threat that exists every day for every web site, and has since the Internet began. It has absolutely nothing to do with the ObamaCare site and does represent any risk to its users.

In short, if you give your Social Security number to a fake web site, or the widow of a Nigerian prince, it isn’t Obama’s fault. And the fact that Fox News will lie about this so brazenly is evidence of how scared they are that most Americans are going to appreciate having access to affordable health care for the first time. They are going to appreciate declining costs and lower national deficits. And they are going to remember who it was that threw every obstacle they could find in the path of these reforms when they go to the polls in November 2014.

Gretchen Carlson Not Naked In Fox News Debut

BREAKING (7/6/2016): Gretchen Carlson Sues Fox News CEO Over Pervasive Sexual Harassment

Moving up from her previous assignment on the Fox & Friends couch, Gretchen Carlson’s new afternoon program on Fox News premiered today with something of a disappointment for the old, white, male, Christian, Tea Partiers who dominate the Fox audience.

Earlier this month Carlson teased the launch of her new show, “The Real Story” during a an interview with her former co-host Brian Kilmeade on his radio show. The discussion took a lascivious turn when Carlson announced that “pants were not allowed on Fox & Friends.” She later chided Kilmeade saying that “You always liked to be shirtless. Sometimes you actually suggested that for me.”

If that saucy exchange didn’t get blood pumping in the Viagra-stuffed Fox watchers, what came next would surely guarantee a anxious tune-in bonanza for Carlson’s debut.

Carlson: You never know what I’m going to show up in. I’m busy putting it all together and so, you know, I might forget my clothes the first day.

Unfortunately for all the Fox pervs who made a point of flipping over to Fox for Carlson’s virgin outing, she showed up fully clothed and sitting behind a desk that obstructed much of the view that fans had become accustomed to on the Fox & Friends furniture. Sometimes the temptation even proved too much for her co-workers.

Gretchen Carlson
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As for the program itself, Carlson managed to book both Donald Trump and Sarah Palin to spice up the first day. Needless to say, her guests insured that the program would have the same low standards for substance, depth, and newsworthiness that she demonstrated on her old show. Trump pretended that he would be able to negotiate a solution to the shutdown crisis, but offered no specifics on how. Palin unleashed her patented word-salad jumble of incoherence that was peppered with insults to the President and anyone else with whom she disagrees.

Carlson herself proved that she does not have the intellectual foundation to host an alleged “news” broadcast. In a discussion about the Justice Department’s announcement that they are suing the state of North Carolina for voter suppression, Carlson was stunned to learn that the state had a voter fraud rate of about .00174 percent. She further dismissed the notion that any other state’s rate would be so low. Of course the truth is that North Carolina’s rate is not the least bit extraordinary, as documented by Media Matters. Voter fraud is extremely rare in the United States, despite the right’s attempt to artificially inflate the issue as some sort of epidemic.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News has had a great deal of success parading a bevy of blonde hosts and contributors who have no journalism credentials whatsoever. She is replacing Megyn Kelly who got a bump up to primetime. Carlson, therefore, may do well in her new role as the network’s newest daytime eye candy. But she will also continue the network’s right-wing agenda and devotion to lies and disinformation. If Fox News is anything, it’s consistent.

Fox News Rewards Megyn Kelly’s Bootlicking Conservative Bias With A Promotion To Primetime

This just in: “Megyn Kelly will move to FOX News Channel’s (FNC) primetime lineup upon her return from maternity leave, announced Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO, FOX News.”

Megyn Kelly GQThis was just a matter of time as Fox News has pretty obviously been grooming Kelly for a prominent role at the network from the day she was hired. Both Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes had taken a profound (and somewhat creepy) interest in her due to her pinup girl good looks, her background as a lawyer, and her eagerness to fulfill the Fox mission of slandering anyone and everything liberal without regard to honesty or ethics. (See Fox Nation vs. Reality)

Kelly fits the Fox mold to a tee, as a busty blonde presenter who would appeal to the Cialis-chomping, scooter-riding, gold-hoarding, geezers who make up such a large part of Fox’s audience and advertiser base. And Kelly is not shy about marketing her sex appeal as demonstrated by her pictorial in GQ Magazine.

As an anchor, Kelly has fashioned a more palatable version of Glenn Beck’s conspiracy-riddled wingnuttery. The stories she features are a collection of partisan tripe and manufactured outrages that have little basis in fact. From her near-obsession with the irrelevant New Black Panther Party, to her false accusations against then-Pennsylvania senate candidate Joe Sestak, Kelly has been a non-stop, gushing flow of disinformation and gossip. For more examples:

  • Kelly defended an anti-Islam filmmaker as a “patsy” of the Obama administration.
  • Kelly asserted that Americans have “gotta get a little squeamish” about the prospect of being killed by drones.
  • Kelly told her colleague Bill O’Reilly that pepper spray used against student protesters was just “a food product, essentially.”
  • Kelly moderated a discussion that was based on a series of “Fox Facts” that were cribbed directly from a Republican National Committee press release.
  • Kelly featured a disreputable reporter with a history of violence (who was later arrested for sexually assaulting a four year old girl) in her frequent attacks on the funders of the Islamic Center that Fox derisively referred to as the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
  • Kelly misrepresented the results of a Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll to argue that Democrats are defying the will of the people.
  • Kelly helped to cover up the extra-marital affair of GOP senator John Ensign and failed to disclose her personal involvement in the story.

It’s easy to see why Fox would want to advance Kelly to their primetime lineup. The musty presences of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren could surely use an injection of new blood. The problem is that one of them will have to be booted from their perch. The most obvious loser would be Van Susteren, whose show is the weakest performer of the lot. However, Hannity’s position is hardly safe considering that he is despised by most of his colleagues. Even O’Reilly cannot be dismissed since he has floated suggestions that he might be ready to retire.

So we will have to wait until Fox announces their new schedule to see who comes up short. But in the end it will make no difference in the content that Fox offers. It will continue to be rabidly right-wing, with a clearly denoted bias for Republican Party dogma. Kelly’s entry into the club will not change that. In fact, it will congeal the conservative hackery into a younger, more alluring package. But the brain-dead zombies who watch Fox won’t have to worry a bit about whether they will continue to get a daily dose of propaganda devoid of those pesky and annoying facts that make understanding current events so difficult. For them, Kelly will be a comforting and reassuring breath of fresh lies.

[Update: 7/10/2003] There is still no word on where Kelly will land in primetime, but one of the replacements for her daytime gig will be Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson, whose experience as a former Miss America certainly prepared her for a role as a Fox News anchor. Media Matters has prepared an exhaustive look back at Carlson’s credentials.

Laugh-Track Republicans Need Debate Audience To Tell Them What To Think

The Republican Party has made a pariah of Hollywood, which they regard as a bastion of liberal propagandists bent on manipulating public opinion. But after the reaction to last night’s debate in Tampa, Florida, it is apparent that it is the GOP that is wedded to Tinseltown’s tactics.

Commonly known as “laugh-tracks,” the procedure used to “sweeten” the audio of television productions has conditioned audiences to rely on the cues they receive from other audience members. These emotional prompts serve to make certain the audience gets the intended message. And now the long-term effect of this technique has resulted in Republican debate audiences becoming dependent on such cues to inform them of what their own own reactions ought to be to candidates’ remarks. Absent these signals they become lost and don’t know what they are supposed to think. And this morning they are very upset about that.

As evidence of this, note some of the Twitter responses from Republican partisans to NBC’s request that the audience in Tampa refrain from interrupting the candidates with demonstrations of approval or disapproval:

Rich Lowry: if the SC debates had been like this (dull, no audience reaction), gingrich wouldnt have the SC primary

Adam Perine: wow the audience is really missing in this debate… Hurts Newt… probably intentional by NBC #FIDebate

S. E. Cupp: Wow, way to suck the air out of the room, NBC. #NoApplauseIsNoFun

Gateway Pundit: Taking the crowd out of the debate hurts Newt. Brilliant move NBC. Look for this technique in the fall. #FLDebate

Without question, most of the GOP debates thus far have allowed a raucous environment that encouraged the candidates to pander to the crowd, as opposed to articulating more substantive positions. As a result there were some notorious moments that are remembered more for their insight into the character of the GOP audience than the character of the candidates. For instance:

  • The audience gleefully cheered the mention of Rick Perry’s record-breaking number of executions.
  • The audience booed an American soldier on duty in Iraq when he asked a question about gays in the military.
  • The audience applauded when Ron Paul answered that he was content to let an ailing man die because he had no health insurance.
  • The audience went wild when Newt Gingrich evaded a question about his ex-wife’s allegations of adultery and open marriage, and instead attacked the moderator for asking the question.

Newt Gingrich has been the most aggressively solicitous candidate in the GOP field. He is adept at stirring up an audience, and he feeds off of the reactions he incites. Consequently, he is the most concerned about any effort to mute audience response. On Fox & Friends this morning, Gingrich was asked about this by host Gretchen Carlson:

Carlson: What was your reaction to last night’s debate? The audience was taken out of it and up until this point, the audience has been your fan.

Gingrich: I wish in retrospect I’d protested because Brian Williams took them out of it. I think it’s wrong. And I think he took them out of it because the media’s terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media, which is what they’ve done in every debate. And we’re gonna serve notice on future debates, we’re not going to allow that to happen. That’s wrong.

The fact that Gingrich sees the Republican primary debates as a contest between the candidates and the media, rather than the candidates themselves, is telling. The media is an easy target as it has an approval rating with the American people that is almost as low as the congress from which Gingrich emerged. No wonder he would rather debate the media than his GOP opponents. Gingrich is, in effect, admitting that he wants to use the debate audience as a weapon to advance his candidacy.

It will be interesting to see if Gingrich is successful in getting the debate sponsors to comply with his self-serving demand. Needless to say, it would be utterly irresponsible for the press to buckle under to such bullying tactics. There may be reasons, pro and con, for permitting the audience to be openly demonstrative, but it should always be a decision based on journalistic principles, not candidate preferences.

What’s more, the press should not be taking sides in the debate over whether debate audiences should be heard. But, of course, Fox News has already done just that. They have already published at least two stories that slant in favor of Gingrich’s position.

Fox Nation - NBC Debate

As an aside, audience response is also a factor during State of the Union addresses. One of the most annoying parts of these affairs is the constant interruptions and fidgeting by members of congress that can’t stay in their seats for more than two minutes. I wish that Brian Williams could drop by and tell them to sit still and listen respectfully until the speech tonight is completed.

[Update] Mitt Romney appeared on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning and affirmed my point about the media being an easy target and Gingrich’s exploitation of that fact:

“It’s very easy to talk down a moderator. The moderator asks a question and then has to sit by and take whatever you send to them. And Speaker Gingrich has been wonderful at attacking the moderators and attacking the media. That’s always a very favorite response for the home crowd. But it’s very different to have candidates going against candidates, and that’s something I’ll be doing going against President Obama if I get the chance to be our nominee.”

Fox News On Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns: Who Cares?

The Fox News morning program, Fox & Friends, has a unique quality that differentiates it from the rest of the Fox News schedule. In addition to the lies, propaganda, and GOP PR that fills the network’s fare, Fox & Friends features a trio of hosts who are called anchors only because of how much they weigh down the network’s IQ.

On today’s episode, the three squawking heads entered into a discussion of Mitt Romney and the question of whether he would, or should, release his tax returns as just about every other candidate has done in modern times. [Video below] It went a little something like this:

Brian Kilmeade: One thing about Mitt Romney: He’s rich! And most people know it. And I guess that’s one of the reasons that he does not want to release his tax returns, because there seems to be a war on success in this country.

Gretchen Carlson: And I want to know from the viewers: Do you care about this topic? Tax returns?

Eric Bolling: Who cares if he made a lot of money. Frankly, we should all be thrilled he made a lot of money. He’s a capitalist. Don’t we want that?

Indeed, Mitt Romney is rich and most people know it. But that is not the reason that he doesn’t want to release his tax returns, and it’s not the reason that voters want him to. The practice of releasing tax returns was begun in order to establish whether the candidate is complying with the law and not receiving special treatment due to his connections in business or politics. It is also done to disclose any impropriety or relationship to special interests that might pose a conflict for a public servant.

Fox News is exploiting the controversy surrounding Romney to invent another so-called war on something they consider sacred (i.e. Christmas, junk food, religion, light bulbs, etc.) In this case it’s success. The segment was chock full of the usual complaints about “villainizing the wealthy,” job creators,” and “class warfare.” But the ultimate goal was to trivialize those who call for accountability on the part of our representatives, and to give people like Romney (or R*Money, as his Highlife Homies call him) cover to suppress any information that they want to hide from voters.

I’ve seen a lot of tactics used by right-wingers to obfuscate and evade true transparency, but this is a new low. People have a right to know whether their leaders are honest and trustworthy. I have to wonder whether Fox’s Tea Party viewers, who purport to be fed up with government deceit, would actually approve of this effort to free candidates from the responsibility of demonstrating their fitness to serve in this simple manner.

Does Romney have something to hide? Is he embarrassed by how little he paid in taxes due to loopholes that the rest of us don’t get? Does he have investments in enterprises that might affect his judgment or independence? These are important questions, but equally important is why is Fox News running interference for Romney and any other politician who might have skeletons he wants to keep in the closet until after the election?