Month: November 2012

National Papa John’s Depreciation Day – Or How To Buy Health Care For 14 Cents

Posted by on November 12, 2012 at 3:43 pm. 13 Comments :

Well, here’s a bad idea, if there ever was one. “National Papa John’s Appreciation Day.” This is brought to you by the folks who supported Chick-Fil-A’s bigotry with an assist from Fox News.

Let’s say there is a nationwide pizza franchise that earns $1.2 billion annually, and whose owner is worth about $350 million. And this cheesy enterprise decides that providing health care for the employees who are central to its success is just too expensive, despite the fact that it would produce healthier, more productive employees and release the federal government and all other insured Americans from the burden of picking up the tab. Never mind that the company gives away millions of pizzas in promotions with the NFL, or that the total additional cost of the health care is only about $0.14 per pizza, or that the owner’s projections are that the program will only cost about $5-8 million a year (less than 1/2 of 1% of earnings)

Then let’s say that this pizza vendor announces that, rather than reducing his profit margins fractionally, or finding other ways to cut costs (like the exorbitant executive salaries), he’s planning to layoff already struggling, low-income employees or reduce their hours so that they don’t qualify for health care – not to mention making it harder for them to buy groceries or pay rent.

Who in their right mind would promote a campaign to support this fiendish and greedy scheme? Fox News of course. Today they are featuring two stories that directly benefit a social media effort to “Stand With Papa John.” The plan is to get people who are in favor of exacerbating the hardships of workers and their families to patronize the pizza parlor on November 16. No doubt they’ll find a few tasteless schmucks who will participate. But screwing your employees to avoid offering them health care over just 14 cents is nobody’s idea of fatherly.

Papa John - Deadbeat Dad

John Schnatter has officially became America’s Deadbeat Dad. And Fox News is his enabler. Just like the Chick-Fil-A affair earlier this year, it is so disappointing to see people rallying around businesses that make hatred and greed the prime ingredient in their product. That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing decent people would turn into a cause celebre. And since that isn’t a particularly good idea, here’s a better one: Print out copies of the “coupon” above and take them to a Papa John’s on Appreciation Day. Leave a few around for other customers so they know exactly how immoral the owner of this pizzeria is.

Fox Flunky Frank Luntz Says “Fox News Viewers Ought To Be Outraged”

Posted by on November 11, 2012 at 12:17 pm. 2 Comments :

If you were to look for a political pollster or analyst who spent more time manufacturing a false narrative about the presidential election than Frank Luntz, you would probably give up in despair.

Luntz is a Fox News fixture who appears on numerous programs flaunting his phony focus groups that invariably swayed to favor Mitt Romney. He was also called upon to review campaign ads, some of which were produced by his Fox colleague, Karl Rove. Those reviews always seemed to rate the GOP ads better, which further affirmed his assessment that Romney was the favorite to win. And to top it off, Luntz is a consultant for hire to the Republican Party, so anyone expecting anything like objectivity from him is terminally naive.

Now that President Obama has decisively won reelection with an electoral landslide, Luntz has crawled out from beneath his wretched rightist rock to make what may be the most hilarious, deceitful, and self-serving statement of the whole campaign season:

“The published polls that the Romney campaign and the Republican establishment were trashing day after day turned out to be accurate. […] This is a bad day for establishment pollsters and it’s something they should be held accountable for. You have to tell your clients the truth. And you have to be accurate. And to miss so many states and to be this far off – Your Fox News viewers ought to be outraged, because day in and day out they were told that Mitt Romney was going to win.”

Indeed, Fox News viewers should be outraged – At Luntz and Fox News! After all, that is where conservative voters were fed the most conspicuously dishonest misinformation about the election and the projected outcome. They are the reason that Romney and his supporters were described as “shell-shocked” when they realized that he had lost. They are the ones who promoted nonsense like “Unskewed Polls” that ironically sought to skew published polling so that Romney came out ahead.

Fox News was so brazenly hypocritical in their reporting of election surveys that they chose to only publish polls that had Romney in the lead. They ignored or disparaged any poll that put Obama on top – even their own Fox News commissioned polls.

Fox News Polls

If election day was “a bad day for establishment pollsters,” it was a bad day for Luntz, because you don’t get more establishment than him. He was as much a part of the problem as anyone. Just a couple of weeks before the election he appeared on Fox to say that it was time to “take Florida off the swing state list,” because it had swung clearly and irreversibly to Romney. Of course, Florida went for Obama, as did all but one of the so-called “swing states.”

The disingenuous babble on Fox News has only one purpose: advance the political interests of conservatives and Republicans. That fact was illuminated by none other than Luntz himself when he told the Los Angeles Times that his airtime has previously been cut on Fox because “his findings didn’t comport with the outlet’s orthodoxy.” That’s an admission that Fox requires their contributors to toe a partisan line, and Luntz has obviously complied.

For Luntz to come out now and tell Fox viewers that they should be outraged is typical behavior for a propagandist who calls himself the “Word Doctor.” He is a professional flack who counsels his clients to lie by distorting language. It was Luntz who coined the term “government-run health care” as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act (or ObamaCare). It didn’t matter that the legislation was only aimed at health insurance and was not in any way a government takeover of medical services. The phrase itself was awarded the “Lie of the Year” from PolitiFact.

Frank LuntzIt’s what Luntz does. In one of his more infamous efforts to distort public discourse, he delivered a speech before a group of Republicans wherein he offered a series of rhetorical replacements for words he thought were damaging to the GOP cause. Words like “capitalism, compromise,” and “middle-class.” This screed was served up after first declaring his abject fear of the Occupy Wall Street movement, saying that he was “so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death. They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.” And his approach to countering it was not to formulate a policy response, but to change the wording of the GOP rebuttal in the hopes of confusing the public.

So, should Fox News viewers be outraged? I’ll say. But, sadly, they will probably just sink back into their stupor and continue to believe whatever falsehoods Fox throws at them going forward. Fox is already trying to sell the myth that Obama’s victory was insignificant and comes without a mandate. They are soft-peddling an electoral blowout and the fact that Democrats won even more seats in both the House and the Senate in a year where they were expected to lose seats. They are fostering the notion that the GOP should resist tax increases on the wealthy, despite the fact that Obama ran (and won) on that platform and exit polls show that 60% of voters favor it.

This further demonstrates that Fox is doing precisely the same things that ought to have enraged their viewers, and when they lose these arguments as well, their audience will be similarly shell-shocked. But they are getting exactly what they deserve by being foolish enough to keep watching a network that deliberately lies to them.

FLASHBACK: Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party

Posted by on November 10, 2012 at 3:15 pm. 5 Comments :

With the 2012 presidential election behind us, there has been a flurry of post-election analysis by observers from all across the political spectrum. One theme that I have seen coming from both the left and right is the notion that Fox News has not been particularly helpful to the Republican Party, despite that being their primary mission. This criticism reminded me of an article I published three years ago titled “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” So I went back and read it, and to my surprise, it seems just as relevant to today’s political landscape as it did then. In fact, it’s rather frightening (and disappointing) that so little has changed. That is, unless your a Democrat, because the harm that Fox is causing to the GOP is a gift to the Democrats.

So on this lazy Saturday afternoon I thought I would reprise this article for your enjoyment. I reprint it here without a single modification.


[Purchase FreakShow stickers at Crass Commerce]

The case was made long ago that Fox News is a blight on the media map. It is bad for journalism. It is bad for Democracy. It is bad for America. A so-called “news” network that repeatedly misinforms, even deliberately disinforms, its audience is failing any test of public service embodied by an ethical press.

I, personally, have made the case for an embargo of Fox News by Democrats and progressives (see Starve the Beast: Part I, Part II, Part III), documenting via studied analysis that there is no affirmative value to appearing on Fox News – a network that has established itself as overtly hostile to the Democratic message and its messengers.

However, there is another side to this that has not been addressed previously. Republicans might be well advised to avoid Fox News as well. There is a case to be made that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party. In fact, it may be the worst thing to happen to Republicans in decades. That may seem counter-intuitive when discussing Fox News, the acknowledged public relations division of the Republican Party. Fox has populated its air with right-wing mouthpieces and brazenly partisan advocates for a conservative Republican agenda. They read GOP press releases on the air verbatim as if they were the product of original research. They provide a forum where Republican politicians and pundits can peddle their views unchallenged. So how is this harmful to Republicans?

If all we were witnessing was the emergence of a mainstream conservative network that aspired to advance Republican themes and policies, there would not be much of note here. Most of the conventional media was already center-right before there was a Fox News. But Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). So while most Americans have never heard of actual Republican party bosses like House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, posers like Joe the Plumber and Carrie Prejean have become household names.

Fox News has descended into depths heretofore reserved for fringe characters. They are openly promoting the wackos who believe that President Obama is ineligible to hold office because he isn’t a U.S. citizen. They feature commentaries by secessionists and even those calling for an overthrow of the government and the Constitution. This explains how folks like Ralph Peters, a retired military officer who said that the Taliban captors of a U.S. Soldier would be saving us a lot of trouble and expense if they would just kill him, earn airtime on Fox. Peters previously told Fox News that he favors military strikes against media targets. This explains how Glenn Beck can agree with a guest that it would be a good thing if America were attacked again by Osama bin Laden. And don’t even get me started on Victoria Jackson, who has joined an ever-lengthening line of psycho-Chicken Littles who compare the President to Hitler.

Good Advice:
“If crazy ideologues have infiltrated the news business, we need to know about it.”
~ Bill O’Reilly, 7/16/09

The list of loonies extends to politicians like Michele Bachmann, entertainers like Ted Nugent, and of course, the talk show pundits like Rush Limbaugh, whose maniacal rantings are elevated by Fox into their version of political dialogue. It’s a dialogue that is consumed with ACORN conspiracies and Manchurian presidents. The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum.

As a result, the Fox News audience is being dumbed down by a parade of paranoid know-nothings. This strategy appears to be successful for Fox in that it has attracted a loyal viewership that is eager to have their twisted preconceptions affirmed. The conflict-infused fare in which Fox specializes is a ratings juggernaut – just like any good fiction. However, this perceived popularity is having an inordinate impact on the GOP platform. By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

With the Fox network unabashedly promoting the most ridiculous rumors, myths, and nightmares of the rightist fringe, moderate and independent Americans will grow ever more suspicious of the Fox/GOP agenda. Most Americans do not believe that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist; or that FEMA is constructing concentration camps; or that we are on a march toward socialism, communism, fascism, or whatever the right is peddling this week. Most Americans do not believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a reptilian alien, or the anti-Christ. In short, most Americans think that the loopy yarns spun by Fox News are fables told by madmen – and believed by even madder men and women who wallow in their doomsday utopia.

Fox News is fond of boasting about their ratings dominance. It is a daily occurrence and the structural core of their argument that they reflect the mood of America. The GOP has bought this argument in its entirety. So it is important to note here that success in the Nielsen ratings has no correlation to public opinion polling. The ratings only measure the program choices of Nielsen’s survey participants. That is a subset of the population at large, and not a particularly representative one. It is a sample focused on consumers, not voters. And its respondents are just those willing to have their TV viewing monitored 24 hours a day, which skews the sample in favor of people who aren’t creeped out by that. What’s more, viewing choices are not necessarily an endorsement of the opinions presented in the program. There are many reasons people choose to watch TV shows, the most frequent being its entertainment value. So any attempt to tie ratings to partisan politics is a foolish exercise that demonstrates a grievous misunderstanding of the business of television.

As for what constitutes success in the television marketplace, due to the broad diversification of available programming, it doesn’t take much to be heralded as a hit. A mere 3 share (3% of people watching TV) will land you in the top 10. For cable news the bar is set even lower. In fact, the top rated show on the top rated cable news network (The O’Reilly Factor) only gets about 3 million viewers. That’s less than 1% of the American population. It’s also less than World Wrestling Entertainment, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the CBS Evening News (the lowest rated broadcast network news program). By contrast, America’s Got Talent is seen by 12 million viewers – four times O’Reilly’s audience.

Numbers this low ought not to inspire much excitement from political operatives. Nevertheless, Republicans are riding the coattails of Fox News as if it were representative of a booming conservative mandate in the electorate. They are embracing Fox’s most delusional eccentrics. This is leading to the promotion of similar eccentrics within the party. Which brings us the absurd spectacle of the network’s nuts interviewing the party’s pinheads.

The inevitable result of this system of rewarding those farthest from reality is the creation of a constituency of crackpots. It is an endorsement of the philosophy brewed by the Tea Baggers that espouses racism, tyranny, and armed revolt. It is enabling a frightening corps of openly militant adversaries of democracy, free speech, and Constitutional rule. It is the sort of environment that produced the murders of Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen Johns.

This is a textbook example of how the extreme rises to the top. It is also fundamentally contrary to the interests of the Republican Party. The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds. It seems like such a waste after all of the effort and expense that Fox put into building a pseudo-journalistic enterprise with the goal of confounding viewers with false news-like theatrics.

Make no mistake, Fox News is still managed by hard core party patrons. And I’m not referring just to opinion-driven commentators like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, although they are bad enough. No, I am talking about executives and editors like CEO, Roger Ailes, former Nixon and Bush media consultant. I’m talking about Washington Managing Editor and VP, Bill Sammon, an avid right-wing alum of the Washington “Moonie” Times. I’m talking about Business News Chief and VP, Neil Cavuto, antagonistic interrupter extraordinaire. And let us not forget the head hype-master, Rupert Murdoch, whose UK operations were just discovered to have been unlawfully wiretapping celebrities, politicians, and even members of the Royal Family. Augmenting that executive roster are the GOP regulars who are straight out of the just retired Republican White House: Karl Rove, Dana Perino, John Bolton, Dan Senor, and Linda Chavez. And then there are the Fox News clowns…er…“contributors” like Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Bernie Goldberg, Michele Malkin, and on and on. If nothing else, Fox is a full-employment program for rightist weasels (and they also operate the Conservative Book Promotion Club).

The mission of Fox News from its inception was to be more than just a voice of opposition to Democrats. It was to utterly crush the left end of the political spectrum leaving only a teetering right wing with no counter balance. Yet, despite the torrid embrace between Republicans and Fox News, it is apparent that Fox is the source of a sort of friendly fire that is decimating the GOP by exalting its most outlandish and unpopular players. And since Republicans have not been particularly popular anyway lately, the anchor being thrown to them by Fox can’t be all that helpful – – – Except to Democrats.

The more things change, the more they get even crazier than they were before.

MSNBC: #1 Cable News Network In Primetime For Two Days Post-Election

Posted by on November 9, 2012 at 6:00 pm. 7 Comments :

The reelection of President Barack Obama was certainly a gratifying victory for Democrats and supporters of a moderate path forward for America. However, it also seems to have been a victory for the left-of-center cable news network, MSNBC.

MSNBC Crushing FoxFox News has been dominating the cable news ratings for about a decade. The primary reason for that is their having corralled all of the right-wing viewers while everyone else is scattered amongst the other networks. Nevertheless, that distinction gives them bragging rights and an over-sized reputation.

However, for the days (two, so far) that have followed the election, MSNBC has usurped the leader’s crown and ascended to become the number one network in cable news for primetime. In fact, on Thursday MSNBC beat Fox for the whole broadcast day. MSNBC performed well above their third quarter averages for their primetime programming, which had already outperformed their 2011 third quarter by more than twenty percent.

Almost every primetime program on MSNBC beat their Fox competition. The only exception was Ed Schultz who is up against Fox’s highest rated show, the O’Reilly Factor. Schultz, however, did increase his own ratings considerably, just not enough to surpass O’Reilly.

The standouts were Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell who trounced Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren, respectively. Maddow exceeded Hannity by 27% on Wednesday and a whopping 75% on Thursday. O’Donnell dunked Van Susteren on Wednesday by 64% and by 32% on Thursday.

This isn’t a one-time occurrence either. In September MSNBC bested Fox during the Democratic convention. Then they repeated their win after the release of the famous “47%” video of Romney secretly recorded at a Florida fundraiser.

It is notable that MSNBC achieved their win over Fox by growing their own audience while Fox’s audience remained fairly stable. So this isn’t a case of Fox’s viewers having tuned out the news after a depressing defeat. It remains to be seen whether this is a mere bump in the election afterglow, or a serious turnaround in the cable ratings race. But it is clear that there is room for MSNBC to grow and make a credible challenge to Fox’s dominance.

Fox News Shamelessly Politicizes Petraeus Resignation

Posted by on November 9, 2012 at 2:54 pm. 8 Comments :

This afternoon Gen. David Petraeus resigned as Director of the CIA with a letter that cited his having had an extra-marital affair.

Petraeus: Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation.

Despite the specificity of his letter, Fox News immediately began speculating as to the timing of the resignation and suggested that it had something to do with the investigation of the murders in Benghazi, Libya, and his scheduled testimony before congress next week.

Surprisingly, as Fox anchors were rumor mongering about Benghazi, Chris Wallace emphatically shot down such talk pointing out that Petraeus is a man of integrity who should be taken as his word. Wallace went on to point out that nobody tries to cover up political matters by confessing to cheating on their wife. But that moment of sanity was short lived.

The news broke on MSNBC at about 2:51pm ET, but Fox didn’t report it until 3:00. Then they spent about ten minutes stewing in Benghazi sauce without mentioning the Petraeus letter or the affair. It was clear they wanted to clutch onto the conspiracy theory that Obama must have orchestrated the whole thing to cover up his complicity in Benghazi-Gate. At one point Fox’s Trace Gallagher cryptically referred to Petraeus’ reason as “what we will now say is ‘unknown,'” which is evidence that he knew more than he was saying. And even after Wallace’s rational refutation, the conspiratorial ravings continued on Neil Cavuto’s program and The Five.

It simply doesn’t matter what the issue is. If Fox can’t pervert it into something that tarnishes President Obama, then it isn’t news. It couldn’t be more obvious that Fox intends to escalate their journalistic distortions in the coming second term of Obama. But it is repulsive that they would exploit this personal family tragedy as just more scandal bait to titillate their juvenile and easily manipulated audience.

Rush Limbaugh: So Wrong

Posted by on November 8, 2012 at 3:23 pm. 2 Comments :

Some of the best arguments against Rush Limbaugh come straight from his own mouth…

Rush Limbaugh - So Wrong

“I could be proven tonight to be so wrong and so all wet that nobody should be listening to me.”

That’s a remarkably candid observation. And one that turned out to be accurate. Although most clear thinking individuals have known for years that nobody should be listening to Limbaugh, now his own listeners have heard for themselves that he is unworthy of their time and attention. Even Limbaugh doesn’t take himself seriously. Take for example this post-election commentary:

“[P]eople have been asking me how I feel all night long. And I got, ‘Boy, Rush, I wouldn’t want to be you tomorrow. Boy, I wouldn’t want to have to do your show. Boy, I’m so glad I’m not you.’ Well, folks, I love being me. I can’t be anybody else, so I’m stuck with it. But the way I feel is this:

I feel liberated, and I’m just going to tell you as plainly as I can why. I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don’t think deserve having their water carried. […] Now, I’m liberated from having to constantly come in here every day and try to buck up a bunch of people who don’t deserve it, to try to carry the water and make excuses for people who don’t deserve it. I just – I did not want to sit here and participate, willingly, in the victory of the libs, in the victory of the Democrat Party by sabotaging my own. But now with what has happened yesterday and today, it is an entirely liberating thing.”

What a relief it must be for him to no longer have to pretend to back posers he doesn’t really support, just because he feels he needs to prop up the GOP, despite the fact that he doesn’t think they deserve it. In this statement he makes it clear that he would never allow himself to be that cynical and dishonest with his audience ever again.

Except for one thing. He made that statement following the election in 2006 when the Democrats swept the GOP out of power in the congress. Apparently his commitment to never carrying water for those who don’t deserve it was short lived. His obsession with bashing Democrats, even if he has to lie to his audience about Republicans, takes precedence over what he once called his liberation. That demonstrates the shallowness of Limbaugh’s character, and it is yet another reason that nobody should listen to him.

Fox News Audience Abandons Ship After Obama Wins

Posted by on November 8, 2012 at 12:17 pm. 17 Comments :

As further evidence of the tunnel-vision conservatism of Fox News, the Nielsen ratings for election night show just how intolerant their audience is of any information that is undesirable or contrary to their worldview.

As the broader television audience peaked into the evening, those watching CNN and MSNBC remained attentive to breaking news and analysis throughout the night. However, those watching Fox News switched off their media feeding tube shortly after the network declared that President Obama had been reelected.

Fox News Election Night Ratings

This chart reveals the precipitous relative decline in viewers that occurred only on Fox News. Some folks may speculate that Fox’s audience simply got tired and went to bed because the network skews older than the other channels and the geezers were sleepy. However, the percent decline for the total audience and the younger 25-54 year old demographic were nearly identical. Others may simply conclude that Fox’s conservative viewers just weren’t interested in anything they might have learned after the race was called. But that’s precisely the point.

Rather than be subjected to news that they found discomforting, the Fox audience turned away, even from their own partisan choice for what they think is news. The reelection of the President must have come as a something of a shock to Fox viewers because Fox had been relentlessly positive about Mitt Romney’s inevitable success, while portraying Obama as a failure who was destined to be rejected for a second term by a populace who despised him. Fox disparaged any polling that showed Obama ahead as biased and unreliable – even their own.

By shutting off Fox News early, they missed the spectacle of Fox contributor Karl Rove challenging the election analysis of his colleagues at the network. He insisted that the call on Ohio was premature and that he thought Romney would take the state. This resulted in anchor Megyn Kelly marching down to the newsroom to seek affirmations from the analysis staff of their projections. As it turned out, Rove was wrong, along with most of the partisan pundits that litter the Fox schedule.

The sharp drop-off in viewership that occurred only on Fox reveals the sensitivity that the Fox viewer has to actual, truthful information. That is something that Fox exploits eagerly as they load up their programming with false and prejudicial stories. And that accounts for why Fox viewers have been shown to be so much less informed than consumers of news from other sources. They have such an aversion to anything other than Fox’s pre-seasoned, right-wing brand of pseudo-knowledge that they won’t even stayed tuned to Fox if there is a chance they might be exposed to raw reality.

Update: On Wednesday night Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell handily beat their Fox competition (Hannity and Van Susteren) in the 25-54 demo.

Romney, Nugent, Trump, Et Al: A News Corpse Retrospective Of The 2012 Campaign In Words And Pictures

Posted by on November 7, 2012 at 3:39 pm. 2 Comments :

I can’t remember an election season that I was ever so glad was over. The magnitude of malice and mentally defective diatribes was monumental. And that was just from Donald Trump.

In case you missed it, Trump was so apoplectic after the election was called for President Obama, he vented on vehemently on Twitter. The coward has since deleted those but the evidence remains:

Trump: “He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!”

Except that President Obama won the popular vote by two million votes, as well as an electoral vote landslide (303-206. 332 if Florida goes to Obama where he is presently leading) But it isn’t bad enough that Trump’s facts are wrong, his inciting a revolution because he doesn’t like the results of a democratic election is disgusting, and anti-American. What’s more, he doesn’t grasp that if there were a revolution, it is likely that he would be among the first against the wall.

Then there’s Ted Nugent, the Motor City Douchebag, who went on a Twitter-spree that affirms the shaky nature of his psychological condition. He’s “crying tears of blood” for an America filled with “subhuman varmints” that “just voted for economic & spiritual suicide.”

Nugent: Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters hav a president to destroy America

Nugent has boarded the Histrionic Express, which already boasts Trump, Glenn Beck, Clint Eastwood, John Sununu, and other like-mindless zombies as passengers. They are hurtling toward an obliviousness that is nurtured by the Fox News bubble-sphere that only reports what they think their politically comatose audience can withstand.

It’s a methodology that results in the Republican Party bowing to its Tea Party masters so that seats once regarded as certain are lost. In 2010, the GOP lost an opportunity to take over the senate, but for weak tea candidates like Christine O’Donnell (DE), Joe Miller (AK), Ken Buck (CO), Linda McMahon (CT), Carly Fiorina (CA), Sharron Angle (NV), and Carl Paladino (NY). This year the same thing occurred with losers in races the GOP could have won: Richard Mourdock (IN), Todd Akin (MO), Linda McMahon (CT), Scott Brown (MA), and Josh Mandel (OH). And the House saw its share of defeats as well: David Rivera (FL), Joe Walsh (IL), Chip Cravaack (MN), Frank Guinta (NH), Denny Rehberg (MT), and my personal favorite loser, Allen West (FL). Michele Bachmann held on by a slivery 500 votes.

What follows are a few of my favorite political graphics of the season. I hope you enjoyed this adventure and my accompanying illustrations. It isn’t over. There is still much to done and the rightist media led by Fox News will certainly be redoubling their efforts to deceive the nation’s voters. So we must stay alert and engaged – starting now.

Original Bankster

Swiss Mitt

Pastromney on Ryan

Heartbreak of Romnesia

Nugent Vow

Eastwood Patriot

Eastwood Poll

Romney & Beck

Fact Checkers

Limbaugh's Republican Party

Trump's Deal

Cletus on ObamaCare

The Help

Slower Voters

Fox News Fails To Persuade Enough Suckers To Vote For Romney

Posted by on November 7, 2012 at 11:32 am. 6 Comments :

Pray for Fox NewsDespite their best efforts, Fox News is the biggest loser this morning, having utterly failed in their crusade to advance the prospects of their primary client, the Republican Party. Their sacred mission of partisan deception was proven to be impotent and ineffective.

It was an uphill climb from the start given that they were saddled with a GOP field that included zany characters like Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain. The eventual ascendency of Mitt Romney was unavoidable, even though he was a pariah in his own party who regarded him as a flip-flopping, north-eastern, moderate who created ObamaCare.

The campaign devolved rapidly after Romney’s nomination was evident. They never found any footing other than lunatic conspiracy theories that challenged President Obama’s citizenship and patriotism. When all you have are birthers and commie-phobic survivalists hunkering down in bunkers, you are not exactly going to appeal to middle-America.

The Fox News campaign effort relied conspicuously on false themes that never took hold outside the confines of the Fox bubble. They accused Obama of going on an “apology tour;” of disparaging small business owners by saying that they didn’t “build that;” of weakening welfare by removing work requirements; of plotting to ship Jeep production to China. None of it was true, and none of it was accepted by a public who is smarter than Fox thinks they are.

Nevertheless, Fox persisted in forcing their pre-masticated bullshit down the throats of American voters. They featured a parade of Republican politicians and pundits to pound their message into the already mushy brains of their viewers. Among their most brazenly partisan escapades was the broadcast of a four minute anti-Obama campaign-style video that was so egregiously inappropriate that they later pulled it from the air and their web site.

In the end, Fox had to work with the product that was handed to them. Mitt Romney was a flawed candidate who seemed to have no moral center. His primary argument for running was his experience as a businessman. But that item on his resume was dominated by Bain Capital, an investment firm best known for making millions by driving struggling companies into bankruptcy while sucking out fees and profits from loans that would never be repaid.

Romney hit the campaign trail with a brilliant strategy to make himself seem even more out-of-touch than was initially presumed. He spoke about corporations as people, how he wasn’t concerned about the poor, how he likes to fire people, about his wife’s two Cadillacs, and most damaging, about the 47% of the country that he regards as moochers and doesn’t have to worry about.

Wrap all of that into a package that also included a War on Women, an aversion to fact-checkers, and his now-famous Etch-a-Sketching of his prior positions, and you have a recipe for electoral disaster. Not even the unprecedented presence of Super PACS dumping unheard of millions into the GOP effort could rescue Romney from defeat. Although it is heartening to know that folks like Sheldon Adelson, Karl Rove, and the Koch brothers wasted so much money and have nothing to show for it.

This morning Fox News is scrambling to make excuses for coming up short. However, they refuse to take any responsibility for the electoral outcome. In many ways they seem to refuse to even admit defeat. Every story begins with the observation that the Republicans retained control of the House, and ends by saying that the losses were not the fault of the conservative agenda, but the strength of a powerful Obama campaign team and the bias on all the other media outlets.

That sense of denial is what defines the character of Fox News. And it may harden as they dig in to oppose Obama’s next four years. Their purpose for the next week or so will be to absolve themselves of any guilt, and to comfort their shocked audience who, because of Fox’s single-minded partisanship, never saw this coming. But judging from the reactions this morning, it is clear that Fox intends to continue to lie to their glassy-eyed disciples and to lie about their ideological adversaries. So strap yourselves in – it’s gonna be a bumpy four years.

Glenn Beck: If America Votes To Reelect Obama Then “We Have To Be Destroyed”

Posted by on November 6, 2012 at 2:01 pm. 11 Comments :

This has been an interminably long, divisive, and vitriolic campaign. Romney’s camp complains that he was accused of murdering the wife of a former employee of a company that Bain Capital drove into bankruptcy. President Obama has been charged with intentionally allowing an ambassador to be murdered as he watched. Romney’s campaign co-chair, John Sununu, declared that “This country can’t be saved unless we get rid of this president.” Ted Nugent came just shy of threatening to assassinate Obama, earning a visit from the Secret Service. And Americans across the country had to suffer through Meat Loaf butchering the national anthem.

Yes, it’s been a brutally difficult time for the country, but leave it to Glenn Beck to put the poisoned cherry on top of a stomach-churning sundae:

Glenn Beck Messiah

Transcript:

If you look at history through a biblical world view, the last step before a nation is completely destroyed is they drive the righteous from among them. If this isn’t a sign of a group of people that will drive the righteous from among them, and that’s the last step before God’s wrath comes, I fear for our country and it is – it cannot be overstated, it cannot be called paranoid … If you are a God?fearing person, hear me. Last call, America. Last call. Because the righteous will be driven from among them.

They are nasty, divisive and, I’m sorry, but there is no way to describe that quote from Valerie Jarrett other than evil. Warning: Saul Alinsky is just the beginning of these people.

But I believe in the American people. I believe that we are not too far gone. I believe that people can watch and see the difference. They can feel the difference. When you watch Barack Obama, you can just see he is angry. When you watch Mitt Romney, you can see he is not. We are not an angry nation. We don’t listen to demagogues like that. It doesn’t work. No matter how much power he has amassed, no matter how many friends in the media he has, Americans know. And if they reject it this time, if they’re so dead inside – that’s a possibility – if they’re so dead inside that they can no longer see the difference between good and evil, we have to be destroyed because we will be a remarkable evil on this planet.

Beck’s trademarked dementia has once again proven to be a show-stopper. His assertion that an Obama victory somehow translates into “drive[ing] the righteous from among” us, makes no sense whatsoever. Why wouldn’t the “righteous” stick around and continue to advocate for their agenda? Where does Beck think they are being driven to? Canada? Israel?

If God’s wrath is coming, what form will it take? Perhaps a hurricane in our most populous region? Oh wait, that already happened even before the election and many right-wingers claim that it helped Obama. Was that God’s intention? Could Beck’s God have deliberately assisted Obama? Remember, Beck’s God is also Romney’s god – Mormon. Does Romney share this Apocalyptic view?

Beck insists that he cannot be called paranoid, even as he sounds the alarm that it is “last call” for America. No, that’s not paranoid. And it isn’t as if he has signaled the end times before. Oh yeah, he has done that – repeatedly heralding the arrival of the “Perfect Storm.”

Glenn Beck's Perfect Storm

Beck disingenuously says that he “believes in the American people,” while leaving open the possibility that we are “dead inside” and “can no longer see the difference between good and evil.” It is that inner death that would define us as “a remarkable evil on this planet,” and condemn us to destruction.

There is one thing for which we can all be grateful on this election day: Glenn Beck cannot be elected to any divine post from which he could carry out his dementia.

UPDATE: Obama Wins! So it’s official. We are dead inside and have to be destroyed. Can it wait until after breakfast? And perhaps we should start with Beck and his followers. They are probably in more of a hurry to get to Heaven anyway (although they may be woefully disappointed when they reach their destination).

UPDATE II: Beck is now advising his disciples to buy farmland and guns. Next he’ll be leading them to a commune in Guyana (Becktown?) and making them Kool-Aid.