Month: February 2012

Fox Nation vs. Reality: America’s Founding Principles

Posted by on February 29, 2012 at 1:38 pm. 4 Comments :

What is it with conservatives who purport to revere American history but have virtually no knowledge or understanding of it? From GOP candidates who think that the Revolutionary War began in New Hampshire, to Republicans who reject marriage equality, to Supreme Court justices who think corporations are people. The right has fetishized the Constitution and canonized its authors, but they repeatedly show disdain for both through their ignorance.

The Fox Nationalists routinely abuse the American legacy by misrepresenting it and twisting its meaning in pursuit of their partisan agenda. This morning they ran an item that unfairly hammers President Obama with an accusatory headline saying “Obama Attacks America’s Founding Principles in Detroit.”

The basis for their assertion is an article that misquotes the President’s remarks to the UAW in Detroit yesterday. The article was originally published by CNS News, a subsidiary of the ultra-rightist Media Research Center, and slams Obama for allegedly saying that “trying to climb to the very top” is only about “greed.” But the President’s message was more than that. What he actually said was…

“America’s not just looking out for yourself, it’s not just about greed, it’s not just about trying to climb to the very top and keep everybody else down. When our assembly lines grind to a halt, we work together and we get them going again. When somebody else falters, we try to give them a hand up, because we know we’re all in it together.”

That part about not “keep[ing] everybody else down” was a significant omission. As is the part where Obama says that “we’re all in it together.” The notion of collective destiny is something that conservatives have profound trouble grasping. It’s why they hate unions and community organizing. However, another great American had something to say in this vein, and he knew a thing or two about America’s founding principles:

Ben Franklin

How long will it be before Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh rips Benjamin Franklin apart for being a socialist Alinskyite?

Koch Brothers Whine About Obama Fund Raising Letter

Posted by on February 28, 2012 at 1:03 pm. 9 Comments :

For a couple of multi-billionaires with virtually unlimited resources who vigorously engage in hardball political activity, the Koch brothers are an awfully lily-livered pair of wusses.

The Koch brothers created and bankrolled the Tea Party, an AstroTurf, corporate funded, pseudo-movement, that incessantly disparages President Obama as a communist, a Nazi, a Muslim, an atheist, a Kenyan, and a Manchurian agent whose mission is to deliver America to its enemies and/or Satan. The Kochs are also the money behind numerous think tanks and organizations whose purpose is to destroy the presidency through propaganda or outright manipulation and suppression of the vote (such as the American Legislative Exchange Council).

Despite their prominent role in attacking the President, the Kochs are wetting their britches because the Obama reelection team mentions them in a fund raising letter. The exchange looks something like this:

Obama Fund Raising Letter: In just about 24 hours, Mitt Romney is headed to a hotel ballroom to give a speech sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a front group founded and funded by the Koch brothers. Those are the same Koch brothers whose business model is to make millions by jacking up prices at the pump, and who have bankrolled Tea Party extremism and committed $200 million to try to destroy President Obama before Election Day.

Koch Response: [I]t is an abuse of the President’s position and does a disservice to our nation for the President and his campaign to criticize private citizens simply for the act of engaging in their constitutional right of free speech about important matters of public policy. The implication in that sort of attack is obvious: dare to criticize the President’s policies and you will be singled out and personally maligned by the President and his campaign in an effort to chill free speech and squelch dissent. […] the inference is that you would prefer that citizens who disagree with the President and his policies refrain from voicing their own viewpoint. Clearly, that’s not the way a free society should operate.

Apparently the way a free society should operate, according to the Kochs, is that critics of the administration are permitted vast leeway to spew any and all slander that they like, but if the other side seeks to respond they are guilty of squelching dissent. That’s not debate. That’s a one-sided harangue. And it becomes media propaganda when the right-wing press links arms with the Kochs to take their side and whine about free speech. Seriously? Fox News is grumbling about free speech?

The Koch brothers have absolutely no case when they are actively orchestrating nasty campaigns against the White House and other Democrats, but expect their targets to stay silent. They have recruited Fox News, who spent six minutes on this topic this morning with Megyn Kelly and Laura Ingraham, but no opposing view. They recruited Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago by planting an article written by the Kochs’ attorney on their editorial page. Fox Nation joined in with a featured item that linked back to the Kelly/Ingraham segment on Fox News. Kelly even plugged the Wall Street Journal article to bring the noise machine gears around full-circle.

The Kochs need to quit crying like toddlers lost in a Wal-Mart. They are not merely private citizens engaging in free speech. They are political powerhouses who have committed more than $200 million dollars to defeating the President. The Bush administration was quite vocal in denouncing their critics, including Cindy Sheehan, who was not a billionaire, but the mother of a slain soldier in Iraq. Vice-President Cheney actually did seek to chill free speech by explicitly warning people to “watch what you say.” But we never responded by whimpering about the White House being mean to us. We continued to press our case, get our message out, and speak truth to power.

If the Koch brothers think that they can persuade people that they are sympathetic waifs being put upon by a mean president, they are out of their minds. They are only embarrassing themselves by appearing to be wealthy weaklings who want to dish it out but run away weeping if the victim of their vitriol raises his voice.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Taking Candy From Children

Posted by on February 28, 2012 at 9:53 am. 4 Comments :

Fox Nation is reporting the results of a new study that reveals some of the character differentials between the rich and the poor. As reported in the Huffington Post:

“The report contradicts the notion that poor people are more likely to act unethically out of financial necessity. Instead, the researchers wrote the ‘relative independence’ and ‘increased privacy’ of the wealthy make them more likely to act unethically. They also share ‘feelings of entitlement and inattention to the consequences of one’s actions on others’ that may play into their moral decisions.”

The study conducted experiments that showed that rich participants took twice as many candies as poorer participants from a jar that had been designated for children. The study also found that nearly half of all drivers of expensive cars cut off pedestrians at crosswalks, while no drivers of the cheapest cars did so (and only about 30% of drivers of less expensive cars). In addition, the study found that the rich were more likely to cheat in a game and lie to potential job applicants.

But the interesting part of the coverage by the Fox Nationalists is how they framed the study: LIB STUDY: Rich People More Likely to Take Candy from Children.

Fox Nation

The “LIB STUDY” prefix was attached by Fox in an obvious attempt to disparage the research and to bias readers against it before they even read the article. So who is this liberal institution that is poisoning the minds of America with their phony studies that bash our nation’s patriotic millionaires? Well, it’s that bastion of secular-progressive propaganda, the National Academy of Sciences.

This is just more evidence of the right’s knee-jerk reaction to science, education and higher learning. They have an involuntary motor response that causes them to shake uncontrollably whenever learned people present documented research. It just cuts against the grain of the conservative mind that favors religious fables over science and faith over proof.

This study is only a part of the body of research on human behavior. It may or may not be conclusive of anything as there are likely to be other studies that either affirm or negate its results. That isn’t important here. What’s important is that, regardless of what you might think of this study, the representation by Fox that the National Academy of Sciences is just some liberal operation and therefore undeserving of consideration, further defines them as anti-science, pseudo-news hacks who champion illiteracy and ignorance.

Soros Envy: Why Does Fox News Hate Rich People?

Posted by on February 27, 2012 at 7:59 pm. 15 Comments :

Ordinarily Fox News is the strongest advocate on behalf of the Greedy One Percent (GOP). They fiercely defend the the privileged class that they have endearingly tagged “job creators” (although that is far from true). They relentlessly oppose efforts to reform the tax code into something more equitable. And even though billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates agree that people like themselves are not paying a fair share, Fox News shouts nonsense about a class war that they invented.

But nothing comes as close to psychotic derangement as the right’s obsessive hatred of George Soros (except maybe Saul Alinsky and President Obama). In today’s FoxNews.com opinion section is an editorial titled: George Soros — the rich man who is hated around the world. What’s really interesting about this column is that the author, Dan Gainor of the uber-conservative Media Research Center, is actually correct.

Gainor has done his research and discovered that there are many nations in the world where Soros has cultivated a profound dislike. Gainor even provides a list of some of them. They include: Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, and the Soviet Union. The thing that most of these places have in common is that they all suffered under oppressive regimes prior to Soros coming to the aid of the people.

So what we have here is Fox News complaining bitterly that the dictators and communists who were deposed by the freedom-loving citizens of their countries, with help from Soros, do not now regard Soros affectionately. Fox is literally taking the side of the former tyrants who, not surprisingly, are somewhat upset with Soros. By extension we must assume that Gainor would prefer that Soros had minded his own business and let the tyrants continue their rule and their reign of terror.

This is the same sort of deranged thinking that resulted in Fox finding fault with the Seal Team assault on Osama Bin Laden. If Obama had anything to do with it, it must be bad – no matter how good it is. And the same goes for George Soros. So even though Soros helped to defeat the bad guys, the only thing Fox notices is that now all the bad guys hate him, and somehow that make Soros a bad guy.

This twisted criticism, however, is not the only point that Gainor sought to make with his article. He is also emphatically opposed to Soros’ philanthropic activities. Gainor complains that Soros has committed $8 billion to his Open Society Foundation that aids a diverse variety of international charitable organizations. But Gainor sees no irony in the fact that he is the Boone Pickens Fellow at the Media Research Center. That means that his position was endowed by another billionaire who bankrolls international charitable causes. What’s more, the Media Research Center is the beneficiary of millions of dollars from the John Birch Society, the Koch brothers, and the Scaife family foundations – all wealthy philanthropists with designs on influencing the direction of certain nations, particularly the United States. And we can add Rupert Murdoch to that group as his news enterprises are among the biggest customers of the Media Research Center.

Dan Gainor is a profoundly inept critic. He once condemned an imagined conspiracy by Soros and, in the process, implicated himself. He further embarrassed himself recently by declaring that Arianna Huffington is “the most powerful propagandist since a guy named Goebbels.” Then he penned a column upbraiding Rachel Maddow for a mistake made during her program, apparently unfamiliar with the cornucopia of on-air gaffes that Fox News seems to add to daily.

Fox News has made preaching the divinity of capitalism a staple of its programming. And they love nothing more than a wealthy individual who they can promote as proof of their Randian orthodoxy. But whatever you do, do not become a liberal billionaire. Fox has an entirely different standard for those practitioners Satanism. In fact, Fox hates them. What is it that Fox hates about rich people that actually care about people who are not rich?

The Fox Effect: The Book That Terrifies Roger Ailes And Fox News

Posted by on February 27, 2012 at 9:55 am. 4 Comments :

A new book from Media Matters was just released that chronicles the history of Fox News and explains how a small group of wealthy, politically connected conservative partisans conspired to build a pseudo-news network with the intent of advancing the right-wing agenda of the Republican Party. And that network, known for its drooling anti-liberalism, is scared spitless.

The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine, was written by David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt (and others) of Media Matters. It begins by looking back at the early career of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and his role as a media consultant for Republican politicians, including former president Richard Nixon. From the start Ailes was a brash, creative proponent of the power of television to influence a mass audience. He guided the media-challenged Nixon through a treacherous new era of news and political PR, and his experiences formed the basis for what would become his life’s grand achievement: a “news” network devoted to a political party, its candidates, and its platform.

When Ailes partnered with international newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch to launch a new 24 hour cable news channel, he was given an unprecedented measure of control to shape the network’s business and ideology. The Fox Effect examines the underpinnings of the philosophy that Ailes brought to the venture. His earliest observations exhibit an appreciation for the tabloid-style sensationalism that would become a hallmark of Fox’s reporting. Ailes summed it up in an interview in 1988 as something he called his “orchestra pit theory” of politics:

“If you have two guys on stage and one guy says ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls into the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?”

That’s the sort of thinking that produced Fox’s promotion of hollering town hall protesters during the health care debate and their focus on lurid but phony issues like death panels. It is a flavor of journalism that elevates melodrama over factual discourse.

This article also appears on Alternet.org.

The book exposes how Fox was more of a participant in the news than a reporter of it. Through interviews with Fox insiders and leaked internal communications, The Fox Effect documents the depths to which the network collaborated with political partisans to invent stories with the intent of manipulating public opinion. The authors reveal memos from the Washington managing editor of Fox News, Bill Sammon, directing anchors and reporters on how to present certain subjects. For instance, he ordered them never to use the term “public option” when referring to health insurance reform. Focus group testing by Fox pollster Frank Luntz had found that the phrase “government option” left a more negative impression, and they were instructed to use that instead.

There is a chapter on the Tea Party that describes how integral Fox was to its inception and development. The network literally branded the fledgling movement as FNC Tea Parties and dispatched its top anchors to host live broadcasts from rallies. The Fox Effect also details the extensive coverage devoted to the deceitfully edited videos that brought down ACORN. Fox was instrumental in promoting the story and stirring up a public backlash that resulted in congressional investigations and loss of funding. The book followed the story from Andrew Breitbart’s new and little known BigGovernment blog to Glenn Beck’s conspiracy factory to the wall-to-wall coverage it enjoyed on Fox’s primetime. This chapter is where the authors introduce what they call “The Six Steps” that Fox employs to create national controversies:

  • STEP 1: Conservative activists introduce the lie.
  • STEP 2: Fox News devotes massive coverage to the story.
  • STEP 3: Fox attacks other outlets for ignoring the controversy.
  • STEP 4: Mainstream outlets begin reporting on the story.
  • STEP 5: Media critics, pundits praise Fox News’s coverage.
  • STEP 6: The story falls apart once the damage has been done.

This is a pattern that has played out with varying degrees of success. Fox used this blueprint to engineer the career-ending slander of presidential adviser Van Jones and Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod. But the strategy was less effective when used against Attorney General Eric Holder and Planned Parenthood, although not for lack of effort.

These, and other examples of deliberate bias, illustrate why most neutral observers regard Fox News as the PR arm of the Republican Party. The Fox Effect makes a convincing case to affirm that view and even offers admissions to that effect by Fox insiders. It is a damning exposé of how a political operative and a right-wing billionaire built a propaganda machine thinly disguised as a news network. The research and documentation are extensive and compelling.

For that reason, Fox News has mounted an unprecedented attack on Media Matters in advance of the book’s release. [Note: Actually it’s not so unprecedented. Fox set the precedent itself last year with a sustained campaign to do tangible harm by tacking an article to the top of the Fox Nation web site with a headline that read “Want to File an IRS Complaint Against Media Matters? Click Here…”] In the week prior to publication of The Fox Effect, Fox News broadcast no fewer than a dozen derogatory segments across all dayparts and on their most popular programs, including The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, Fox & Friends, etc. It was the sort of blanket coverage usually reserved for a natural disaster, a declaration of war, or a lewd TwitPic of a politician. The attacks never contained any substantive argument or even example of error on the part of Media Matters. However, they are brimming with the most nasty form of personal invective imaginable.

The basis for the Fox News broadcasts was a series of articles by the Daily Caller (TDC), the conservative web site of Tucker Carlson, who just happens to also be on the Fox News payroll. The gist of the story, as described by TDC, is that Media Matters is manipulating news organizations, coordinating messaging with the White House, and struggling to cope with the “volatile and erratic behavior” of Brock, whom TDC alleges is mentally ill. TDC never reveals from where they got their psychiatric credentials, nor when they had an opportunity to examine and diagnose Brock. Likewise, they never reveal where they got any of the other information for the allegations they make against Media Matters as every source is anonymous.

Media analysts have universally condemned TDC’s reporting. Howard Kurtz interviewed author Vince Coglianese on CNN’s Reliable Sources and assailed the absence of any evidence to corroborate the allegations of his anonymous sources. Coglianese could not even confirm that events alleged in the article ever occurred. He laughably argued that the absence of a denial from Brock was evidence of guilt, rather than a simple disinclination to raise the profile of a poorly written article. Jack Shafer wrote for Reuters that “the Daily Caller is attacking Media Matters with bad journalism and lame propaganda.”

Media Matters was created to document conservative media bias and work to implement reforms that would produce more balanced reporting. Yet, Fox is confused by the fact that Media Matters’ research is cited by progressive organizations and publishers. The grunt work of aggregating video and other reporting is appreciated by those who use Media Matters materials. Much of it is provided without any editorializing. The right has always been fearful of any entity that would simply record their disinformation, nonsense, and hostility, and then hold them accountable for it. But they have yet to criticize NewsBusters or their parent organization, the Media Research Center, despite the cozy relationship they have with Fox News. Brit Hume, the former managing editor of Fox News, however, was abundantly grateful:

Hume: I want to say a word, however, of thanks to Brent [Bozell] and the team at the Media Research Center […] for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report, I don’t know what we would’ve done without them. It was a daily buffet of material to work from, and we certainly made tremendous use of it.

Joining in on the assault is the Fox Nation web site that is engaged in a relentless barrage of critical articles with disturbingly insulting and hyperbolic headlines. For instance:

  • Is Media Matters’ David Brock A ‘Dangerous’ Man?
  • Were Media Matters Donors Duped?
  • Inside Media Matters: Founder Believed to be Regularly Using Illegal Drugs, Including Cocaine.

But even those paled in comparison to what Fox News was posting on the screen graphics that accompanied their broadcasts:

  • MEDIA MATTERS’ MONEY: David Brock is an admitted drug user
  • THE MONEY BEHIND THE MACHINE: David Brock committed to a quiet room
  • A LIBERAL INFLUENCE: Brock spent time in a mental ward

Fox News - Media Matters

Note that the subjects of the broadcasts were financial in nature. Fox was reporting on TDC’s discovery that Media Matters donors were largely progressive individuals and foundations (not exactly what one would call a scoop). However, Fox News appended assertions as to the mental stability of Brock, which had nothing to do with their topic. It was merely an opportunity for them to take swipes at a perceived enemy. And this mud-slinging occurred during what Fox regards as their “news” programming, not the evening hours that they designate as the opinion portion of their schedule.

In order to cement the impression that David Brock is a mental defective, unfit to lead any organization or to be given serious consideration, Fox News brought in their resident psycho analyst, “Dr” Keith Ablow. As a part of the Fox News Medical “A” Team, Ablow appeared on the air in a segment that painted Brock as seriously disturbed and even dangerous:

“If you are filled with self-loathing you will see demons on every street corner because you project that self-hatred. […] He’s a dangerous man because having followers and waging war, as he says, or previously being a right-wing hitman, this isn’t accidental language. It’s about violence, destruction, and he feels destroyed in himself.”

This diagnosis was an invention by Ablow who has never examined Brock, or even met him. That in itself is a violation of the American Psychiatric Association’s Principles of Medical Ethics, something Ablow does not need to concern himself with because last year he was compelled to separate himself from the APA due to ethical “differences.”

This is actually the second time Ablow has appeared on Fox News with his absurd fantasies (or projections) about Brock. And Brock isn’t his only pretend patient. A few weeks ago he published an op-ed on FoxNews.com that praised Newt Gingrich’s serial infidelity as evidence of traits that would help him to make America stronger were he president. Seriously! And who could forget his deranged psycho analysis of President Obama?

If Fox News wants to engage in “remote” psychiatry they ought to at least be fair and balanced about it. However they pointedly make no mention of the reported paranoia of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. No mention that he was cited as the reason that the NYPD provided police protection for the Fox headquarters at a cost of $500,000 a year to the people of New York. No mention of the obsessive fears described by Tim Dickinson in a Rolling Stone profile:

“Ailes is also deeply paranoid. Convinced that he has personally been targeted by Al Qaeda for assassination, he surrounds himself with an aggressive security detail and is licensed to carry a concealed handgun. […] Murdoch installed Ailes in the corner office on Fox’s second floor at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The location made Ailes queasy: It was close to the street, and he lived in fear that gay activists would try to attack him in retaliation over his hostility to gay rights. (In 1989, Ailes had broken up a protest of a Rudy Giuliani speech by gay activists, grabbing demonstrator by the throat and shoving him out the door.) Barricading himself behind a massive mahogany desk, Ailes insisted on having ‘bombproof glass’ installed in the windows – even going so far as to personally inspect samples of high-tech plexiglass, as though he were picking out new carpet.”

I really have to wonder if even the Fox News audience is so intellectually comatose that they wouldn’t recognize the feverish anxiety gushing from Fox in advance of the Media Matters book. A tree stump would notice that they are laying it on awfully thick. So the obvious question is what are they so afraid of? And the answer is that Fox News can no longer hide from their reputation as a dishonest purveyor of slanted propaganda and tabloid trash on behalf of a right-wing agenda and the political operatives who advance it and benefit from it.

The Fox Effect is a thoroughly documented investigation into the inner workings of both the organization and its principle managers and backers. It peels away the layers of the conservative cabal that has so effectively poisoned the public discourse on many significant issues. And like the fraudulent Wizard in the city of Oz, Fox wants us all to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain (Roger Ailes), or to the curtain (Fox News), or the corporation that controls it all (News Corp). And to that end Fox has embarked on a massive smear campaign to destroy the credibility of the book, its authors, and the organization that produced it. But Media Matters has already succeeded. As noted in the book’s epilogue:

“Fox News will no longer be able to conduct its campaign under the false pretense that the network is a journalistic institution. There is heightened awareness in the progressive community and in the general public of the damage Fox causes.”

And that is exactly what Fox is afraid of.

Mitt Romney Working To Shore Up The Greedy One Percent Vote

Posted by on February 27, 2012 at 12:29 am. 16 Comments :

Politics is a complicated pursuit that requires a well thought out game plan. An experienced professional knows that the path to victory cannot be left to chance. Mitt Romney seems to have done the meticulous research and deep analysis necessary to advance a serious campaign. While unorthodox, Romney has identified a constituent base amongst the nation’s wealthy and is working hard to solidify his dominance of it.

Mitt Romney

What else could explain his persistent pandering to the GOP (Greedy One Percent) and the corporations he thinks are people? Romney casually makes $10,000 bets. He likes to fire people, but isn’t concerned about the poor. He brags about owning numerous cars, including two Cadillacs. He is best known for having a net worth of a quarter of a billion dollars but only pays a 14% tax rate, about half of what average, middle class Americans pay.

The stream of statements that cast a spotlight on the differences between Romney and the rest of America cannot be accidental. After all, despite Romney’s insistence that he is essentially a businessman, he has spent the past decade in politics. He is aware of the presence and influence of media. And he knows quite well that he has a reputation for failing to connect with ordinary voters. Nevertheless, he continues to say things like what he said today at the NASCAR 500 in Daytona. When asked if he followed the sport he said…

“Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.”

Of course he does. Why would anyone expect Romney to rub shoulders with the unclean peasants who sit in the stands when he can have cocktails with celebrities in the VIP section? Romney spent his morning in Daytona at breakfast with the billionaire owners of NASCAR. He toured the grounds, gave a short address to the crowd and cameras, and left without without ever intending to watch the race.

All of this leads to one inescapable conclusion: Romney is focused like a laser beam on locking up the vote of the richest Americans. It’s a bold strategy considering the composition of the voting blocs that control the wealth in this country. The 400 wealthiest Americans control about the same amount of wealth as the 150 million at the bottom of the income scale. It’s hard to see how that equation leads to a Romney victory, but he must know what he’s doing. Right?

As for his competition, Rick Santorum had a presence in Daytona as well. He didn’t make it personally, but he sponsored a car in the race. In a pre-race statement Santorum disclosed his strategy and his hopes:

“I recommended he stay back in the pack, you know, hang back there until the right time, and then bolt to the front when it really counts. So let’s watch. I’m hoping that for the first, you know, maybe 300, 400 miles, he’s sitting way, way back, letting all the other folks crash and burn, and then sneak up at the end and win this thing.”

What a lovely sentiment. Santorum is hoping that the other drivers “crash and burn.” That’s the way he hopes to achieve success – via a fiery holocaust of twisted metal and flesh. It’s probably a metaphor for the way he hopes to succeed in his campaign, and for the way he thinks people in all walks of life should advance their interests. Just pray for your opponents to meet some dreadful fate, then raise your arms victoriously. We already know that he hopes that there will always be income inequality in America and that he opposes expanding access to education for all citizens. So his new statement is consistent with his philosophy that hinges success on the failure of others.

There is an ironic symmetry between the positions of Romney and Santorum. One seeks to prop up winners, the other seeks to bash down losers. Neither cares much for the less fortunate among us who simply want a fair shot on a level playing field. They are two sides of the same coin and, if it weren’t for the horrible things they’ve said about each other, they’d make a pretty good GOP ticket.

Rick Santorum And The Anti-Intellectual, Theocratic Legacy Of The GOP

Posted by on February 26, 2012 at 1:43 pm. 8 Comments :

The Republican Party has been advocating ignorance for decades. They Reject the 98% of scientists who affirm that climate change is real and the result of human activity. They scoff at evolution in favor of Biblical affirmations that put the age of the Earth at only 6,000 years. They belittle Harvard graduates as elitists and revere candidates they think would make good beer drinking companions.

Now Rick Santorum, the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has said aloud what has only been alluded to in the past. At a forum for the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, Santorum said…

“President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob!”

Really. How elitist of Obama to suggest that all Americans have access to the same opportunities to improve themselves personally and professionally. What a pompous, exclusionary attitude. Santorum continued saying…

“There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.”

Exactly. Heaven forbid that kids should be encouraged to learn things taught by college professors when all they are capable of is manual labor and assembly line work. Santorum is squarely opposed to kids having higher aspirations. He castigates Obama for wanting to remake kids in the image of someone who began poor, from a broken home, and rose to become president of the United States. But Santorum prefers the image of kids who skip school, get a job, and never achieve anything greater than their parents did. Never mind the fact that most parents sacrifice selflessly to give their kids the opportunity to reach their highest potential.

In Santorum’s world ignorance is the goal. It would have to be in order to persuade people to vote for him. And his followers are fully on board with this. They applauded enthusiastically at his “snob” comment. But this is a relatively recent position for Santorum. In is last campaign for senate, his web site told a different story:

“In addition to Rick’s support of ensuring that primary and secondary schools in Pennsylvania are equipped for success, he is equally committed to ensuring the {sic) every Pennsylvanian has access to higher education.”

Critics will surely jump on that reference as evidence of Santorum’s hypocrisy. But not so fast. He was only in favor of “every Pennsylvanian” having access to higher education, not every American. Screw the Kansans and the Carolinians. Obama has the temerity to favor people from Arizona to Maine earning college degrees. That is unconscionable, but it’s OK for PA.

This weekend also saw Santorum describing the parts of the Constitution that make him vomit.

“I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country… to say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up.”

Of course, I don’t know of anyone who says that people of faith should have no role in the public square. They can and do in great numbers. However, having “involvement in the operation of the state” is another thing entirely. It’s called theocracy, and it’s what you get when there is no separation of church and state.

The combination of viewing education as a character flaw and the Bible as an addendum to the Constitution is what defines the modern Republican/Tea Party. But it is not what this country is based on and it is not the path to peace and prosperity. And when discourse devolves to the point that the Constitution makes candidates wretch and advocating greater access to a college education makes you a snob, you know that a line of reason has been crossed.

Andrew Breitbart’s Delusional David Brock PhotoGate Conspiracy

Posted by on February 25, 2012 at 9:28 am. 9 Comments :

The chronically choleric Andrew Breitbart is well known for his histrionics and hyperactive bluster. One need look no further than his recent psychotic tirade aimed at Occupy protesters in Washington, whom he castigated as rapists and murders, to understand the depths of his dementia.

David BrockOn his BigGovernment blog yesterday, Breitbart uncovered a disturbing conspiracy involving David Brock, the founder of Media Matters. Apparently a photograph of him that was published in a 1997 issue of Esquire Magazine was allegedly scrubbed from the Internet with the help of co-conspirators at Google – and probably George Soros, ACORN, Sesame Street, and, of course, the White House.

Breitbart is convinced that, because he can’t find an online copy of a picture from a fifteen year old magazine, he has stumbled onto a liberal media attempt to rewrite history. What is it that Brock would be trying to hide by suppressing this (rather interesting and artful) photograph? Breitbart is attaching some profound significance to this picture that most other observers would simply regard as photographic melodrama – the sort that commonly appears in culture pimping publications like Esquire.

To hear Breitbart tell it, this photo depicts “an otherwise boring political subject [who] is happy to take off his clothes and tie himself to a tree in the name of fighting the VRWC [vast right-wing conspiracy].” Breitbart exclaims “What narcissism! What delusions of grandeur!” And he asks “Who else takes a homoerotic picture Fabio-style and tied to a tree?” He is proud of himself for rediscovering this photo “with all its narcissism and desire for fame, adulation and martyrdom.” If I didn’t know any better I might have thought that Breitbart was referring to his own adventures in periodic pictorials. Here is Breitbart in the March 2010 issue of Time Magazine:

Andrew Breitbart
Andrew Breitbart: Booze, Bath, And Beyond

What narcissism! What delusions of grandeur! Who else takes a homoerotic picture, naked in a bubble bath, in the name of fighting the VLWC? Breitbart’s hypocrisy is only matched by his conceit. For a raving egotist like Breitbart to accuse others of narcissism takes mega doses of chutzpah. Breitbart is so self-involved that he wrote in his biography (see my review) that “I didn’t want to react to the news at all. I wanted to be the news.” And he has succeeded in that ambition in the most embarrassing sense. Like the dweeb who repeatedly slips on a banana peel, Breitbart has become famous for falling on his ass over and over again. He’s a one-man Three Stooges.

[By the way, If you try to search for that photo of Breitbart on Google you will have great difficulty finding anything other than one or two blog postings. And this photo is only two years old. It must be some sort of conspiracy between Breitbart, Time Warner, and the Koch brothers to suppress such an unflattering and nausea-inducing portrait. Come to think of it, it may be a public service.]

If that isn’t enough, Breitbart says of Brock that “Only in a world without opposition can Brock be safe—so he must destroy it.” Breitbart offers no support for that statement. On the other hand, Breitbart’s destructive tendencies are well documented. He once swore to “bring down the institutional left” in three weeks. That was over two years ago so I’m assuming the institutional left doesn’t have much to worry about at this point. In his biography, Breitbart also maligned the faction of the media that he regards as his opposition as worse than Al Qaeda.

Like all of the other critics of Brock and Media Matters, Breitbart leaves one thing out of his extended diatribe: Any evidence that Brock has done anything untoward, unscrupulous, or unprincipled. Media Matters is a resource for documented conservative bias in the media, often without editorializing. But Breitbart makes a big show of personal attacks without bothering to provide a single example of any wrongdoing on the part of his victim. He is a relentless smear-monger who has no respect for the truth.

Breitbart also has no respect for people who have just eaten. And on that point I would like to apologize for having posted that photo of him bathing. I felt it was my journalistic responsibility, but I now regret the subsequent gastrointestinal distress it may have caused some readers.

Sarah Palin’s Anti-Reality Energy Rant Invites Mockery

Posted by on February 24, 2012 at 1:00 pm. 5 Comments :

The increasingly irrelevant VP-losing, half-term serving, un-reality TV has-been, Sarah Palin, has climbed atop her Facebook soapbox once again to show the world that she has not yet exhausted her supply of incoherent policy positions and dopey cliches.

In a posting titled, “Obama’s Anti-American Energy Policies Invite the Next Crisis,” Palin gets just about everything wrong and calls President Obama a traitor in the process. The woman who coined the term “death panel” obviously has no better understanding of international energy markets than she does of health insurance reform. And the purpose of her posting is to advance the same tired myth about oil production and prices that she and the GOP have been peddling for years.

Srah Palin - Mythbusters

The posting begins on a note of delirium with Palin asserting that Obama “likes to take credit for actions initiated by the last administration.” Credit? Credit for what? Destroying the economy? Starting two wars? $4.00 per gallon gasoline? I think the word Palin is looking for is blame. And since Obama certainly doesn’t want any of that, her point is pure lunacy. Particularly the part where she says…

“[Obama]’s not interested in lowering the price of gas because exorbitantly high gas prices are one of his campaign promises.”

Of course. Because every political analyst knows that higher gas prices are the one sure way to guarantee reelection. It’s almost as good as high unemployment, which Republicans have also accused Obama of causing deliberately (to enslave people, or something).

The crux of Palin’s argument is a regurgitation of the standard Republican mantra to “drill, baby, drill.” She and her GOP comrades have invented a theory that gas prices are increasing because of low supply and that if we have more of it prices would decline. The problem with that theory is that all of the evidence refutes it.

McClatchy: “U.S. demand for oil and refined products — including gasoline — is down sharply from last year, so much that United States has actually become a net exporter of gasoline, unable to consume all that it makes.”

So what benefit would there be to producing more domestic oil if we are just going to ship it to other countries? If more supply would lower prices all we would have to do is stop exporting the gas we are producing now, but the domestic market would not support that. So what is the cause of higher prices? According to experts it is the inordinate impact of speculators and the instability in the Middle East, a point on which both Palin and Obama agree. However, Palin’s solution is “to drill here and drill now,” which we already know is no solution at all.

In a speech on energy yesterday, Obama responded to criticisms from his opponents by noting that “Only in politics do people root for bad news.” Palin took that missive as advice and declared that “I guarantee the rising prices will only get worse.” Nowhere does Palin cite the basis for her guarantee, nor how the guarantee will compensate anyone foolish enough to put their faith in it. I’d want to get it in writing. Obama also mocked the right’s energy strategy as a political stunt:

“You can bet that since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their 3-point plan for $2 gas. And I’ll save you the suspense. Step one is to drill and step two is to drill. And then step three is to keep drilling.”

Once again, Palin took Obama’s mockery as a model for her platform. She literally proposed a 3-point plan, the day after Obama predicted it, that consisted of drilling (in Alaska), drilling (in Canada), and more drilling (for natural gas). And all the while she continues to ignore the reality that there is no deficiency in supply. In fact, the right’s (and Palin’s) favorite energy boondoggle, the KeystoneXL pipeline, is specifically designed to transport oil from Canada to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico so that it can be exported. If it were intended for domestic use they could build a much shorter pipeline to refineries in the Midwest.

There is a reason that Sarah Palin has become so irrelevant, and it has to do mostly with what she does and says herself. This Facebook energy treatise is merely the latest example of her monumental inability to shape a coherent thought. To say that she invites mockery is an understatement. She literally begs for it.