Month: July 2010

White House May Cancel Wall Street Journal

Posted by on July 30, 2010 at 6:13 pm. 1 Comments :

Rupert Murdoch has been constructing his pay walls as a means to squeeze more revenue from his newspapers. By most accounts it is failing as viewership declines on the web sites of his newspaper properties.

In response to this failure Murdoch has doubled-down on greed by jacking up the price for news clipping services, including the one used by the White House. Politico reports that the Wall Street Journal will raise its fees by half a million dollars. The White House responded by saying…

“Obviously, we’re not paying $500,000. This is taxpayer money,” the official said. “We have no idea how we’re going to handle this. We may have to drop [The Journal].”

Considering the fact that anyone in the White House could subscribe to the Journal for $140.00 a year, this seems like a remarkably shortsighted and stupid policy. What’s more, it could motivate the White House to favor other news outlets, for interviews and other media releases, whose bundled clippings they can receive at a reasonable rate. Why would they want to deal with the Journal if their access to the stories was more difficult to obtain and dissemination might be restricted?

There is a stench of desperation about this. Murdoch has not made a successful business decision in years. The Fox Business Network is floundering; MySpace is almost invisible; the pay wall has not been adopted by peers; even the Wall Street Journal purchase resulted in staggering losses. Without Avatar and Fox News, News Corp would be a basket case. And Fox News has been losing viewers as well.

Now that the Journal is writing off some major clients like the President, it may just be a matter of time before they fall of their own bloated weight. I wonder where people like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity would go if there were no Fox News to coddle them?

Fox News Has Not Earned A Front Row Seat

Posted by on July 30, 2010 at 10:25 am. 8 Comments :

The White House Correspondent’s Association is deciding this weekend what news agency will get the seat in the White House Press Briefing Room that was vacated by Helen Thomas. One of those seeking the seat is Fox News.

The timing of this could not be more significant. Coming on the heels of Fox’s disgraceful promotion of Andrew Breitbart’s phony video that accused an honorable woman of being a racist, how could the WHCA even entertain the notion of giving a front row seat of honor to Fox? This latest embarrassment just serves to remind people of past disgraceful acts on the part of Fox News: the smearing of Van Jones; the lies about ACORN; the fabricated controversy over the New Black Panthers; the list goes on.

Fox News is NOT news. It is a blatantly partisan operation that promotes the interests of the Republican Party and conservative ideology. Giving this seat to Fox after they have so recently demonstrated how undeserving they are would be a slap in the face to journalists who work hard to uphold the ethics that their profession requires.

Credo has a petition to the WHCA urging them to give the seat to National Public Radio. NPR has been working this beat for 40 years (compared to 14 for Fox), and they serve an audience that is almost 14 times larger than Fox. Please sign the petition ASAP and let the WHCA know that we do not want Fox to be rewarded for their dishonesty.

Glenn Beck Uncovers Homer Simpson’s Clandestine Plot

Posted by on July 30, 2010 at 3:08 am. 7 Comments :

Comrade Homer SimpsonWith the myriad enemies that America is facing in this tumultuous age of terrorism, leave it to Glenn Beck to investigate and unveil one of the most dastardly schemes ever perpetrated on our unsuspecting nation. Only someone with the delusional paranoia of Beck could have discovered this lurking danger. Thank God for Beck’s dementia, for without it we would all be doomed.

Beck: Before the 1960s, these were the shows on television. This was Father Knows Best. Can you even imagine a show named that? This is My Three Sons. Ward Cleaver, Leave It To Beaver. The role of father was strong, but now — I mean, I hate to be my grandfather and say, “We didn’t even have Rice Krispies back then” — but look at the difference.

This was before these guys [the Weather Underground] showed up. Now look at our culture. [The Simpsons] is the funniest show ever written on television. I love this show. But dad’s a schlub.

That’s right! The Weather Underground conspired to turn dads into schlubs. Never mind the fact that on programs like Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver the dad, just as likely as not, was portrayed as dense or over-reacting to some family crisis. He was frequently bailed out by the mom or some innocent revelation of the child. And set aside Beck’s inability to come up with program names that reflect the strength (i.e. dominance) of the father figure, like maybe King of Queens or My Wife and Kids.

All of that is just a distraction from the hidden truth of the Weather Underground’s blueprint for destroying the family unit and demeaning fatherhood. For half a century this cabal has laid dormant, waiting for an opportunity to pounce. At the center of this sleeper cell is the craven visage of Homer Simpson, a villain thrust upon us by the execrable Rupert Murdoch and Fox. Thanks to Beck we can now see that this deceptively lovable goofball is actually a treacherously effective functionary of a secular-socialist revolution that aims to impose a brutal dictatorship and enslave us all.

However, Comrade Homer didn’t count on Beck exposing his plan. And now that the veil has been lifted, there is still time resist the looming tyranny. So rise up America. Rise up and cast off the shackles that Homer and his legion of Marxists would bind unto you. Reject tyranny. Reject Fox and Murdoch. Live free or eat my shorts!

Fox Nation Is SHOCKED By Hostile Rhetoric

Posted by on July 29, 2010 at 7:20 pm. 4 Comments :

Fox NationThe Fox Nationalists are just livid over an article that invokes what they regard as hostile language. Never mind that their own community is populated by rhetorical thugs and assassins. What they discovered on a blog about disappearing plankton has them in a full faint. And they attached a headline that fully expresses their dismay: Daily Kos: Climate Skeptics Should Be Euthanized.

The article Fox Nation links to is on the blog for the book “Green Hell.” The book purports to reveal “how environmentalists plan to control your life” (oh my) and was written by Fox News’ “Junk Science” columnist and Global Warming denier, Steve Milloy. Before becoming an apologist for polluters, Milloy was an apologist for tobacco companies. He’s made a career of attempting to persuade people that poison is good for you. In this case Milloy’s ire was raised by a column written by Steven Andrew at the The Examiner.com under the ominous title “Studies show dramatic decrease in plankton.” Scared yet?

Let’s take a look at all the things Milloy got wrong. First of all, he repeatedly refers to Steven Andrew as Steven Alexander. Secondly, Andrew was writing this column for The Examiner and not for Daily Kos, so it can hardly be attributed to Daily Kos, as both Fox Nation and Milloy did. Thirdly, Milloy falsely claimed that the posting was removed. In fact, it was just edited to satisfy Milloy’s tender sensitivities. Fourthly, Andrew never advocated either euthanasia or suicide for Milloy or anyone else. He merely invoked a humorous reference to the iconic film Soylent Green. It was a reference directed at the befouled state of the environment in the science fiction film with an ironic aside:

“If only the Soylent Corporation were publicly traded, or better still, if only Milloy and his buddies could check into one of the company’s lovely medical suites for a short nature movie and a glass of wine.”

This is really no more objectionable than someone suggesting that Rush Limbaugh eat some shrimp caught in the Gulf Coast after Limbaugh declared that the oil spill there was no big deal. The point would be simply to embarrass Limbaugh by challenging him to stand by his ridiculous assertions, not to poison him.

Milloy described Andrew’s remarks as “intolerance” and said that it is the reason he fights so vigorously against the “greenshirts.” But if he is so concerned about intolerance, why hasn’t ever ever condemned Bill O’Reilly for wanting to strangle journalists, or Glenn Beck for fantasizing about choking Michael Moore to death?

The answer, of course, is that Milloy is hypocrite who couldn’t care less about the rhetoric he is pretending to be offended by. For him, and for Fox Nation, this is just an opportunity to bash an opponent and to spread more of their anti-climate propaganda. It doesn’t take a astrophysicist to figure that out.

Shirley Sherrod To Sue Cowardly Andrew Breitbart

Posted by on July 29, 2010 at 4:43 pm. 13 Comments :

Cowardly Andrew BreitbartShirley Sherrod spoke today at a convention for the National Association of Black Journalists. Andrew Breitbart was also invited to speak. He initially accepted the invitation but later rescinded his acceptance. Perhaps he chickened out after he heard that Sherrod would be there.

Breitbart has good reason to be afraid. During her remarks Sherrod noted that she would “definitely” sue Breitbart for posting a grossly deceptive video that implied that Sherrod was a racist. She added that “He had to know that he was targeting me.” She further noted that Breitbart has not apologized and that, at this point, she’s not interested. She is clearly a women who knows her own mind and knows racism when she sees it:

“I saw it in what they did, in what Fox did and in what Breitbart did. I knew it was racism when it happened to me, and no one had to tell me that.”

It’s interesting that Bill O’Reilly saw fit to apologize to Sherrod. Fox News Sr. VP Michael Clemente even acknowledged a “breakdown” within his news operation. But Breitbart said that he has nothing for which to apologize. And Breitbart crony Brent Bozell of the uber-conservative Media Research Center said that Sherrod should apologize to Breitbart and Fox. These people are seriously ill.

Contrast that with the comments by President Obama today in a speech before the National Urban League (which was carried live by CNN and MSNBC, but not by Fox News):

“Now, last week, I had the chance to talk to Shirley Sherrod, an exemplary woman whose experiences mark both the challenges we have faced and the progress that we’ve made. She deserves better than what happened last week when a bogus controversy based on selective and deceiving excerpts of a speech led her led to her forced resignation.

Now, many are to blame for the reaction and overreaction that followed these comments, including my own administration. And what I said to Shirley was that the full story she was trying to tell, a story about overcoming our own biases and recognizing ourselves in folks who, on the surface, seem different, is exactly the kind of story we need to hear in America.”

Why is the right so incapable of exhibiting the slightest bit of decency, humility, or honor? Sherrod was clearly defamed and she deserves her day in court. In fact, it wouldn’t be so bad if the case was expanded to a class action against Breitbart and Fox News with the addition of Van Jones and ACORN as complainants. They were every bit as much victims of Breitbart and Fox. And if Sherrod creates a legal defense fund I will be happy to donate and to promote it.

Iowa GOP Seeks To Strip Ronald Reagan Of US Citizenship

Posted by on July 29, 2010 at 11:14 am. 5 Comments :

In a Declaration from “We the People” of Iowa the Iowa Republican Party declares that…

“…the federal government has grown too large, too intrusive and too oppressive to the point that government now stifles the productivity, the freedom, the ingenuity and the very spirit of the American people. We declare that all three branches of government have been governing outside their well-defined bounds as stated in Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution of the United States.”

Consequently, they demand that…

“…the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government return to govern within their constraints clearly defined by the Constitution given to us by the founders in 1787 and further refined by the Bill of Rights in 1789.”

Notice that they did not demand a return to any of the amendments other than those in the Bill of Rights. So under their restoration of the original intent of the Founders, slavery would still be legal and women could not vote.

But what elevates this declaration from curiosity to idiocy, and beyond that to absurdity, is this charming little provision tucked away in the platform:

“7.19 – We call for the reintroduction and ratification of the original 13th Amendment, not the 13th Amendment in today’s Constitution.”

Th 13th Amendment to which they refer is not the one presently in the Constitution that abolishes slavery. There was a 13th Amendment introduced prior to that that was never ratified. It proposed that…

“If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall, without the consent of Congress accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them.”

The purpose of including this plank in the platform was to make a statement regarding President Obama having won the Nobel Peace Prize. Setting aside for the moment that the Nobel is not awarded by a “foreign power” and thus would not have triggered the provision, if it were applicable it would mean that every American Nobel winner (scientists, writers, etc.) would have had their citizenship revoked as well. What’s more, it would strip the citizenship of Americans honored by the British Crown with honorary knighthoods, including Bill Gates, Rudy Giuliani, Steven Spielberg, and the sainted Ronald Reagan.

Since these crackpots haven’t been able to prove that Obama isn’t a citizen because he wasn’t born in the U.S., they are now trying to revoke his citizenship, and that of hundreds of other dignified Americans, including many that are their heroes.

Just how crazy are these lunatics? Let’s take a look at a couple of other planks in their platform. Section 4.26 says that “We oppose teaching multicultural based curriculum.” Section 7.10 says that “We affirm that desecrating the American or state flags is not constitutionally protected free speech, and should be punished accordingly.” That was immediately followed by Section 7.11 that says “We oppose any regulation or law that would restrict the freedom of speech.”

And if you need any further evidence of the madness in the Iowa GOP, the platform declaration also contains an enumeration of values that were taken straight from Glenn Beck’s web site for the 912 Project. Eleven of the twelve values on Beck’s site are in the Iowa GOP platform. The missing one is “charity,” which the Iowans replaced with “common sense.” That is a telling substitution. Six of nine of Beck’s principles are in the platform as well.

With the Iowa GOP deciding who can and cannot be a citizen, and Beck providing divine inspiration and spiritual guidance, there are, as Beck would say, “dark days ahead” for the Republican Party.

Is The GOP Ashamed Of Its Tea Party Base?

Posted by on July 28, 2010 at 9:06 am. 5 Comments :

This morning the Fox Nation has placed as its top story an article on the Democrats’ new campaign to tie Tea Partyists to Republicans. Is that supposed to be a criticism? I thought the GOP and the Tea Baggers were best buddies. Republican candidates across the nation have embraced the Tea Party and enthusiastically sought their support. Tea Party candidates like Sharron Angle in Nevada and Paul Rand in Kentucky have been lauded as heroes within the GOP. Now, all of a sudden, they are complaining that Democrats are calling attention to the affection these conservative comrades have for one another.

When did the Republicans come to view the Tea Party as a liability? Why would this ad rattle them? Recent polling shows that 79% of Tea Partyists identified themselves as Republicans. And some of the top Republicans have been pandering to the Baggers in the most overt manner possible:

John Boehner, House Minority Leader: There really is no difference between what Republicans believe in and what the tea party activists believe in.

Sarah Palin, 1/2-term governor/Fox News contributor: The Republican Party would be really smart to start trying to absorb as much of the Tea Party movement as possible because this is the future of our country. The Tea Party movement is the future of politics.

Sen. Jim DeMint, GOP Chair Michael Steele, Newt Gingrich, and more, share these sentiments. However, the Fox Nationalists seemed to be worried about the association with extremist elements of the Tea Bagging faction. The posting links to an article on The Daily Caller that goes into more detail about this troublesome trend. But the article doesn’t support the contention that it is the Tea Party that worries them. The Caller asserts that the Democratic effort is…

“…a swipe at House Republicans for not offering more specifics of how they would govern if they retake the House. But it’s also an attempt to force the GOP to own proposals by Rep. Paul Ryan.”

Are they worried about the Tea Party or their own Republican agenda? Paul Ryan may be a Tea Party sympathizer, but he is also a Republican leader and the ranking member of the House Budget Committee. Why would the GOP need to be “forced” to adopt the budget proposals of their own budget committee chief? Why are they ashamed to endorse their own platform and people? That’s all the Democrats are putting forth in their video and on the web site dedicated to the Republican Tea Party Contract on America. The site is a summary of the Republican agenda as stated by Republicans, and is fully annotated to document their positions.

While Fox Nation is serving the interests of the Republican Party by seeking to mock the Democrats’ campaign, the Fox Nationalist citizens of the web site (which hilariously just added the words “All Opinions Welcome” to their logo) are not as anxious to distance themselves from the Tea Bagging contingent. Here is a sampling of comments from these completely sane and reasonable folks:

Wolverine Oathkeeper: I do not think it is necessary to puke the reasons why I am not voting for ANY DemonRats especially Obama “The man from Kenya who scammed our country”. My core thought is that they do not represent “One Nation under God, Indivisible With Liberty and Justice For All”

Judgment: Decent People have the common sense to know that the Democratic party has become a Servant of Satan and is using all his favorite ‘tools’ of lies and deception to decieve the people.

Muslim socialist democrats …….taking lying to a whole nother level !: These muslim socialist democrats are runnin scared…………….There is no antidote for the socialist policies of the muslim moron ! America is fed up with these morons and there is nothing the muslim socialist democratic party can do !

WHITE&PROUD2: Hey Liberals, who gives a f–k what you do? Your time is up and you are irrelevant!!

s-t-g: I like the ad. I wish the republican party was more conservative and would enact much of what the tea party stands for.

Exactly! This ad is not the least bit derogatory from the perspective of the Tea Bagger. It is a documentary exposition of the current state of the Tea-publican establishment. No Tea Partyist would find this ad objectionable. So the question is…why do the Republicans and their media mouthpieces?

Update: House Minority Whip Eric Cantor is ashamed. He announced today that he would not be joining the Tea Party caucus in Congress recently founded by Michelle Bachmann (R-TP).

Old Media Hacks And New Media Whores

Posted by on July 27, 2010 at 11:34 pm. 1 Comments :

The Shirley Sherrod story has been an embarrassment to just about everyone concerned. The White House, the Department of Agriculture, Fox News, and many in the conventional news bureaus and the conservative Internet. Sadly the person who should be most embarrassed is Andrew Breitbart who, due to his suffering from an acute case of sociopathic narcissism, is incapable of registering normal expressions of shame or decency.

Surprisingly, this unfortunate affair has produced a remarkable eruption of insight from an unlikely source. Mark Halperin of Time Magazine has owned up to a failing of the Convention Media that is not often acknowledged by someone within their own ranks:

“The Sherrod story is a reminder […] that the old media are often swayed by controversies pushed by the conservative new media. In many quarters of the old media, there is concern about not appearing liberally biased, so stories emanating from the right are given more weight and less scrutiny.”

No shit! This is something that has been obvious to conscious observers for years. The right has so befuddled the cowardly martinets of the media that any whiff of potential liberalism is received with a near hysterical recoiling. Regardless of how rooted in the truth it is, grown reporters and editors flinch and quickly avert their brains. This is an acquired response brought on by decades of conservative behavioral training – AKA working the refs.

Halperin’s sudden wakefulness is not universally held. Last month the ombudsman at the Washington Post, Andrew Alexander, published a demented apology to conservatives, going so far as to declare that…

“…traditional news outlets like The Post simply don’t pay sufficient attention to conservative media or viewpoints.”

Alexander’s position that conservatives don’t get sufficient attention is in stark contrast to Halperin’s position that conservatives are given more weight. Alexander cited stories about ACORN and Van Jones to support his thesis. As it turns out, both of those stories were as phony as the one about Sherrod being a racist, but I have yet to see the Post’s correction or adjustment to their editorial policy. In fact, Alexander’s journalistic dyslexia is precisely what Halperin is warning against. Halperin continues…

“Additionally, the conservative new media, particularly Fox News Channel and talk radio, are commercially successful, so the implicit logic followed by old-media decisionmakers is that if something is gaining currency in those precincts, it is a phenomenon that must be given attention. Most dangerously, conservative new media will often produce content that is so provocative and incendiary that the old media find it irresistible.”

What this boils down to is old-fashioned greed. Whether lured by the success of Fox News or the lust for controversy, these are both aspirations that translate into dollars. So the old media is simply aligning itself with the oldest profession.

The saddest part of this is that the White House has once again been seduced by these whores. This is pretty much what they should expect after allowing themselves to be bullied into casting off Van Jones. That sort of victory is like blood in the water to rightist thugs. Now they think they can get whatever they want by fabricating smears and disseminating falsehoods to a compliant press corps. That’s why they do it.

We’ve come along way from the days when former White House Communications Directer Anita Dunn told CNN’s Howard Kurtz that Fox News is “the communications arm of the Republican Party.” Or the days when David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel went on the air and correctly pointed out that Fox News is “not a news organization.” How did we get from there to last week’s disgraceful submission by the administration to Breitbart’s deceitful campaign of lies?

It is well past time that people recognize that Fox News, Breitbart, and the rest of the rightist press, are not credible practitioners of journalism. We don’t have to respond to their invented scenarios. We must not assign them credibility. We can turn down their invitations to appear on their programs. They do not deserve to be treated as if they were legitimate journalists. And above all, never make an important decision because of some story they initiated. They are liars!

Is that clear enough? If Mark Halperin can see it, then surely the rest of the media can.

Why Fox News Is Racist

Posted by on July 26, 2010 at 8:53 pm. 9 Comments :

For the past few weeks Fox News has been ratcheting up the racial content of their tabloid fare. Megyn Kelly’s obsession with a trumped up story about the New Black Panther Party and their dozen or so members is a perfect example of the race-baiting that Fox passes off as journalism. They follow that up with the promotion of an Andrew Breitbart video that was blatantly edited to tar USDA employee Shirley Sherrod as a racist even though the opposite was evident when the video was viewed in its entirety.

Glenn Beck Deploring HonorBut these recent events are not aberrations. They are representative of an agenda that cannot be anything but deliberate. Recall Fox’s use of offensive rhetoric with reference to President Obama and his family like “terrorist fist jab” and “Obama’s baby mama.” Then there was the time that Bill O’Reilly tried to explain his reluctance to be critical of the First Lady by saying that he didn’t “want to go on a lynching party.” Or the time he attempted to praise patrons of Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem by noting that they didn’t shout for their “mother-fucking iced teas.” And who could forget Glenn Beck calling Obama a racist with a deep-seated hatred for white people? Beck is escalating his racial insensitivity by holding his self-glorifying rally in DC on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech next month.

Some people might wonder why Fox News would risk alienating a potentially significant portion of their audience. Well, we have the answer now. According to Brian Stelter of the New York Times, the African-American segment of viewers of Fox News in primetime this season is only 1.38%. That compares to 19.3% for MSNBC, and 20.7% for CNN, numbers that are much closer to the 14% of African-Americans in the population at large. These numbers also suggest that the black audience that might have been watching Fox have split evenly between MSNBC and CNN causing those networks to be over-weighted by about 6% each.

It is apparent that Fox News has little to lose by offending a segment of the television universe that doesn’t watch their programs anyway. Combine that with Fox’s political incentive to suppress Democratic votes and the strategy of inflaming racial animus doesn’t seem so bad in their warped perspective.

At the very least this explains why Fox persists in airing obviously offensive stories and why they think they can get away with it without adverse consequences. They have nothing to lose in financial terms, and much to gain by pandering to a prejudice demographic. It may be reprehensible to decent folks, but to Fox it’s just good business, and more importantly, good politics.

Andrew Breitbart (Hearts) Al Qaeda

Posted by on July 26, 2010 at 3:16 pm. 1 Comments :

In a shocking new video the chronically choleric Andrew Breitbart is caught admitting that he “hearts” Al Qaeda and its network of terrorists.

This confession, startling for its candid veracity, is not particularly surprising coming from a this rhetorical bomb-thrower. His personality is rife with terrorist leanings and he is known to be as opposed to the present government of the United States as Osama Bin Laden or any other radical jihadist.

Now that the truth is out, Breitbart’s defenders must be put on notice. Chief amongst these is the Republican Party who is hosting a fundraiser in Beverly Hills next month. This event is asking deep-pocketed Republican elitists to donate between $5,000 and $60,000 to the party. The entertainment for the evening features RNC Chairman Michael Steele sharing the stage with Breitbart. There has been no comment from Steele as to whether Breitbart’s embrace of Al Qaeda or his deceitful smearing of Shirley Sherrod as a racist present any problems for this booking.

The disclosure of Breitbart’s allegiance to Al Qaeda is reminiscent of Glenn Beck’s admission that he idolizes Adolf Hitler:

Everyday we learn more of the truth about these dangerous and disreputable characters.