Day: 9/9/2009

Glenn Beck Loses This One: Cloture Vote On Cass Sunstein

Posted by on September 9, 2009 at 3:58 pm. 12 Comments :

For almost as long as Glenn Beck has been attacking Van Jones, he has also been smearing Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s nominee for Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. However, this afternoon the Senate passed a cloture vote cutting off debate and permitting a final vote on Sunstein’s confirmation.

The 63-35 vote for cloture included Republicans Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Robert Bennett (R-UT), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME). Democrats voting against: Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), James Webb (D-VA).

Beck has been bashing Sunstein as another dangerous radical who is bent on destroying America. He has taken out of context remarks by Sunstein that Beck characterizes as insane (well, Beck should know). For instance, Beck says that Sunstein wants animals to get lawyers to represent them in cruelty cases against humans. Beck also said that Sunstein is in favor of forced organ donations. The truth is very different. Sunstein is an academic who has written on many issues from a theoretical perspective. That’s what academics do. But Beck isolates these professorial musings and recasts them as zany plots to impose some sort of tyrannical dictatorship that exists only in Beck’s diseased mind. And the funny thing is, Sunstein had been favorably received by many conservatives when his nomination was announced.

Beck seemed so dejected when announcing the results of the cloture vote. It was as if he couldn’t quite comprehend that the world wasn’t bending to his will. When the vote passed, Beck told his audience that their lives had changed FOREVER! Beck described the office Sunstein will hold as the most powerful position anywhere. He said that Sunstein will be able to tweak any and every law to pursue whatever ends he desires – and those desires, you can rest assured, are evil. Listening to Beck you would think that Sunstein’s post was even more powerful than Obama’s.

But this is just the typical hyperbole that Beck employs to scare the bejeebus out of his slack-jawed viewers. If whatever Beck is talking about at the moment isn’t the most fearsome thing of all time, his audience will become distracted by a leaf fluttering outside the window and it will take half an hour to get them worked up again. Beck was even downplaying the Van Jones matter, saying that while everyone wanted us to focus on Jones, the real threat was Sunstein. Of course it was Beck that was blathering incessantly about Jones for some sixteen programs. Now he accuses “someone” of using Jones as a diversion while the Senate secretly pushed Sunstein through.

Don’t expect Beck to loosen his grip. He will certainly resume his attack on Sunstein. But the truth is that Sunstein will shortly be confirmed by the Senate, which means he is not actually a “czar” at all (actually, there no czars. The whole concept was developed to deceive and frighten ignorant wingnuts). And Beck will expand his smear campaign to bash Mark Lloyd and Carol Browner and whoever else Beck thinks he spread his lies about. That is, if we let him.

Inside The Disgusting Mind Of Mark Foley

Posted by on September 9, 2009 at 12:57 pm. 4 Comments :

A North Palm Beach, Florida radio station has announced that they will be testing a new program to be hosted by congressional sexual predator, Mark Foley.

As a refresher, Foley was the Republican representative of the 16th district of Florida. He resigned his seat after it had been revealed that he had engaged in sexually explicit communications with Congressional pages, some of them underage.

Now WSVU is preparing for broadcast what may be the first episode of “Inside the Mind of Mark Foley.” Now there’s a place I surely would not want to go. The selection of that name suggests a certain tone deafness by the folks at WSVU. But the irony couldn’t be any worse than the station’s call letters themselves, which mirror the name of the television crime drama “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” How appropriate is it that the station that presently airs Don Imus, and is seeking to put Foley on it’s roster has call letters that bring to mind sexual perversity and assault?

Joe Raineri, the show’s producer, when asked about the project being syndicated said “I don’t see anything stopping it.” Really? Not even the fact that the host is a sleazeball who was forced to resign from Congress in disgrace? I suppose that in the world of talk radio, that may not be an impediment to success. After all, convicted felons Ollie North and G. Gordon Liddy haven’t been hurt by their malfeasance. And the number one talk radio personality, Rush Limbaugh, is still riding high (pun intended) after getting caught in an Oxy-Contin scandal.

Here’s a taste of the program from a promotional snippet:

“So do you want to know what’s inside the mind of Mark Foley? A real insider’s view into the inner workings of Washington, D.C.”

No I don’t. And this is just what we need – more bloviating from Washington insiders. There certainly isn’t enough of that in the media.

Fox News Insults ACORN With Blatantly False Headline

Posted by on September 9, 2009 at 11:12 am. 5 Comments :

Fox News is reporting its distinctly dishonest version of a story concerning voter registration fraud in Miami. The article on the Fox News home page features a blaring headline and photo that declares an “ACORN INSULT” has been made against the late Paul Newman in commission of voter fraud. Clicking the link to the full article delivers Fox’s story about eleven ACORN workers for whom warrants have issued in conjunction with an investigation. Only here does Fox reveal at least part of the truth with a headline that reads “ACORN Turns in Florida Workers on Voter Fraud Charges.”

That’s right, ACORN turned in the fraudulent registration forms and the employees responsible for them. How does that square with the sensationalistic rhetoric about “insults” that Fox attributed to ACORN?

But the gesture Fox made after clicking the false headline still did not repair the error. The case against the ACORN employees was not one of voter fraud. It was voter registration fraud. The distinction is significant because the former can produce an improperly cast ballot. However, in these cases of registration fraud, there was no possibility that fake votes could occur. What’s more, the actual victim of the crime is ACORN itself, as they were being duped by personnel attempting to receive payment for work they did not do.

Another problem with Fox’s reporting is that it took them until halfway through the story to address the fact that it was ACORN who turned in the false registrations and employees. In a terse, single sentence, Fox conceded that a spokesperson for the Florida state attorney’s office told Fox that it was ACORN who alerted the authorities to the crimes. Fox didn’t bother to go further and report that the state attorney’s office praised ACORN for their diligence, saying…

“We’ve been very aggressive about a lot of these cases. But we would not have known about these workers unless ACORN brought it to us.”

Finally, Fox closes their article with a reprise of insinuations against ACORN for fraudulent activity during last year’s presidential campaign. Once again, those accusations were brought to the attention of authorities by ACORN. But Fox merely reports that “ACORN’s activities were frequently questioned…” Fox does not report that it was Fox, and the conservative organizations they front for, who were doing the questioning.

This is just another in the endless stream of bias that is part and parcel of the “fair and balanced” pseudo-news enterprise that is best known for how it Fakes News.