Month: February 2013

So F**king What? Obama Aint No Emperor

Posted by on February 16, 2013 at 3:05 am. 3 Comments :

The weasels at Fox News must be working overtime to find new ways to demonize President Obama as a tyrannical defiler of freedom. They seem to love nothing more than inventing paranoid conspiracies wherein the President is plotting to crown himself king and drag patriotic teabaggers off to reeducation camps. Of course the first flaw in that theory is that you would have to be educated in order to be reeducated.

Earlier this week Obama participated in a Google Hangout event and was asked about his immigration policy. Specifically, the questioner wanted to know what he would do to prevent deportations that resulted in the break up of families. Obama responded…

“This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency. The problem is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed. And congress right now has not changed what I consider to be a broken immigration system. And what that means is that we have certain obligations to enforce the laws that are in place even if we think that in many cases the results may be tragic.”

So the President’s thoughtful response was that his administration was required to act in accordance with existing law and would do so until such time as those laws were changed. But the wingnut brain instinctively edits Obama’s utterances to conform with their twisted preconceptions. Consequently, all they heard was “The problem is…I’m not the emperor of the United States.”

Fox Nation

So F**king What?

The obvious point the President was making was that the American system of government requires some measure of cooperation between equal branches of government. He wasn’t knocking it or proposing that he be elevated to Supreme Leader. He was merely explaining why he could not unilaterally revoke existing laws with which he has objections and impose his version.

Rather than accurately report the exchange, Fox Nation posted the most wildly distorted misrepresentation of what the President said and left it to their dimwitted audience to wallow in a fear-soaked nightmare of an impending dictatorship ruled by a freedom-hating, devil worshiper who wasn’t even born here. And, as usual, their outrage is reserved for Obama despite the fact that the previous Republican president made similar remarks with not so much as a whimper from the right:

The Fox Nationalists didn’t bother to publish the complete quote or to link to an article that reported the event in greater detail. And heaven forbid they would provide the sort of context that included Bush’s remarks. Their purpose was clearly to portray Obama as power-mad in order to induce a state of frothing hysteria amongst the FoxPods. And judging by the comments attached to the Fox Nation item, it worked spectacularly well. They are nothing if not predictably and pitifully gullible.

Fox News Hires Herman Cain To Fill Network’s Wingnut, Philandering, Birther Role

Posted by on February 15, 2013 at 10:33 am. 7 Comments :

In Keeping with their mission to elevate the most ignorant, delusional, dishonest, self-serving, partisan extremists of the far-right Tea-publican Party, Fox News has just announced that they have added former pizza chain magnate Herman Cain to their payroll.

You may remember that Cain boasted that he didn’t know the names of foreign leaders and dismissed inquiries about them to be “gotcha” questions about Uzbecki-becki-stan-stan. He declared that under ObamaCare he would be dead, despite the fact that it would not have altered the course of treatment for his cancer at all, but it does provide care for other cancer patients who would have no care without it. His 999 tax plan was widely ridiculed by economists. He was an avowed birther who insisted that Obama “should prove he was born in the United States of America.” And with serial philanderer Newt Gingrich absent from Fox, they needed to fill the void by hiring another misogynist. Cain fit the bill due to multiple allegations of sexual harassment that derailed his short-lived campaign for president.

And who could forget Cain’s astute foreign policy observations as represented by this analysis of the Libyan uprising:

No wonder Fox snapped him up. That’s the sort of wisdom that sets the Fox editors, programmers, and audience to drooling. It’s the reason why Fox has buttressed their roster since the election with dimwitted losers like Mark Levin, Erick Erickson, Karl Rove, and Scott Brown. With the addition of Cain they continue to demonstrate that they have no interest in either fairness or balance – or honesty or intelligence for that matter. Congratulations Fox. You are nothing if not consistent.

Bill O’Reilly Can’t Stop Embarrassing Himself: The Drone Edition

Posted by on February 14, 2013 at 11:41 am. 2 Comments :

Last week Bill O’Reilly demonstrated how utterly inept he and his staff were when he asked “You heard anything on NBC about the drones?” Then he answered his own question saying “Neither have I. Neither has my staff.” As it turns out it was actually NBC who broke the story that had spurred the media dialogue on the subject.

Bill O'Reilly

However, O’Reilly stiffened his back and insisted that he was still right with a tortured explanation that talking about drones was not talking about drones. On last night’s program he wandered further into delusional territory during an interview with Howard Kurtz, who had previously criticized O’Reilly about his not noticing NBC’s role in the coverage of drones. O’Reilly charged Kurtz with hypocrisy and accused him of…

“…confusing hard news reporting about drones with the New York Times editorial page, which hasn’t condemned, as far as I know, in any great measure as they did with waterboarding, the use of it. What we were clearly talking about here was why the left doesn’t condemn killing terrorists with drones.”

As you might expect, O’Reilly stuck his massive foot into his even bigger mouth yet again. Nearly a year ago, well before this current dust up, the Times published an editorial titled “Too Much Power for a President.” The very first paragraph reads…

“It has been clear for years that the Obama administration believes the shadow war on terrorism gives it the power to choose targets for assassination, including Americans, without any oversight. On Tuesday, The New York Times revealed who was actually making the final decision on the biggest killings and drone strikes: President Obama himself. And that is very troubling.”

The Times goes on to say…

“No one in that position should be able to unilaterally order the killing of American citizens or foreigners located far from a battlefield — depriving Americans of their due-process rights.”

So much for the Times not condemning drones. Even worse, O’Reilly actually contradicted his own premise that liberals have not been critical of Obama’s drone policy despite their criticism of Bush’s waterboarding and torture tactics. In the opening of this segment O’Reilly explicitly acknowledged that liberals were openly opposing Obama’s CIA director nominee over this very issue.

“Will counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan become the head of the CIA? He testifies on Capitol Hill tomorrow, but some liberals don’t like him because he is the director of the drone program that kills terrorists from the sky.”

O’Reilly needs to explain how liberals can be hypocrites for not speaking out against drones when they are, in fact, speaking out and O’Reilly himself has heard it and used it to introduce his story. He may also want to explain how he missed the New York Times editorial hammering the President on drones, but still went on the air to say the Times never criticized Obama. His loathing for depraved lefties was palpable as he piled on his rage:

“This is about one thing. Hypocrisy. You leftists screaming about waterboarding yet they’re muted about killing with drones because they’re in the tank for Barack Obama.”

Right! Leftists like the New York Times, Rachel Maddow, Glenn Greenwald, etc. are all in the tank for Obama even while they harshly slam him for deploying drones. It should also be noted that another news organization actually did mute the drone story – Fox News. Therefore they must also be in the tank for Obama.

How many times does O’Reilly have to get virtually everything wrong before people will take notice that he is just blabbering old fool who can’t form a coherent argument on any subject? If he had the capacity to feel shame he might hole himself up in a cabin in Idaho for the remainder of the decade. Unfortunately, his prodigious ego will ensure that he will continue to misinform his audience and whine pitifully when someone tries to point out his mistakes. And somehow this gets ratings for Fox. Well, I guess if people will watch Honey Boo Boo, they will watch anything.

The Making Of A Fox News Headline: State Of The Union Edition

Posted by on February 13, 2013 at 9:33 pm. 4 Comments :

President Obama’s State of the Union address was generally well received by a majority of Americans with polling showing high approval for the speech (CNN, PPP). But oddly enough, Fox News managed to put a negative spin on the public reaction.

What makes this particularly odd is that the article that Fox posted on their web site had mostly positive things to say about the speech. However, the headline could not have been more downcast: “Obama’s State of the Union speech a well-crafted, hollow recitation of nothing more than words.”

Fox News

A hollow recitation of words? As opposed to a recitation of shoes, or bees? How about a recitation of pie? It is pretty much a given that, by definition, all recitations are of words. This may be a detail that escapes the linguistic geniuses at Fox who can’t seem to even get through the second paragraph of the article with making numerous grammatical errors.

Fox News Grammer

More to the point, the headline Fox composed was utterly detached from the content of the article. At no point did the author, fake Democrat Doug Schoen, write that the speech was “a hollow recitation of nothing more than words.” That was an invention of the headline writer. Schoen did, however, write that the speech was “well-written, well-crafted” and “hit all the right notes.” He also said that it “was a great speech.” None of that made it into the headline.

Had Fox wanted to disparage Obama without resorting to fiction, there was plenty in Schoen’s screed from which to choose. Schoen used much of his space to blame Obama for the obstructionism on the part of congressional Republicans. But the headline writer must have thought that angle would be too steep for the Fox audience. All things considered, that was probably the right call.

Sarah Palin Look-a-Like Scott Brown Takes Her Place At Fox News

Posted by on February 13, 2013 at 1:40 pm. 6 Comments :

The worst kept secret in cable news has just been confirmed. After having lost the senate seat he held for a mere two years, Scott Brown has been hired as a contributor by Fox News.

Scott BrownFilling a role that was held by Sarah Palin until her recent dismissal, Brown is the new beauty pageant contestant turned politician who was unable to complete a full term in office to be scooped up Fox, just like Palin. His unique experience having done nothing of substance while in office other than criticize the President makes him the perfect acquisition for a network that has made its reputation by avoiding substance and bashing the Obama administration.

Fox has been struggling to persuade people that they are moderating their tone after having been embarrassed by election coverage that was grossly biased and detached from reality. So they canned Palin and Dick Morris as scapegoats for their ineptitude. However, they kept the core of their conservative message machine with Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Neil Cavuto, the Fox & Friends Kindergarten Krew, etc. What’s more, they hired Erick Erickson (who called a Supreme Court justice a “goat-fucking child molester”) and Mark Levin (who thinks even Republicans are socialists) was tapped to fill the Palin void on the Hannity show.

Anyone who believes that Fox intends to adjust their programming to be more neutral is terminally naive. They are merely throwing a life saver to one of their favorite politicians who is still a potential candidate for either the senate or governorship of Massachusetts in 2014. Fox is well known for employing prospective candidates for political office despite the breach of ethics that presents. They are currently allowing Geraldo Rivera to host his own show while testing the waters for a senate race in New Jersey.

Fox apparently was nervous about not having a Palinesque figure on their payroll, and now they can rest easier with Brown filling her designer pumps. Thanks to Brown, Fox’s tradition of shallow analysis and strident harangues will proceed without interruption.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Record High Gas Prices Far Below Actual High

Posted by on February 12, 2013 at 10:11 am. NO Comments :

Be sure to read the book that Wonkette calls “A valuable contribution to the effort to chip away at Bullshit Mountain.”
Fox Nation vs. Reality

Perhaps the single biggest driver of economic activity among commodities is the price of gas. It impacts the economy on a multitude of levels from shipping to manufacturing to households, and of course, automobiles. Consequently, it is a favorite subject of Fox News to wield as a club when they believe that it will negatively impact President Obama. They are so enamored of this particular propaganda weapon that they will even deploy it if they have to make up the allegedly bad news.

Fox Nation

The headline plastered atop the Fox Nation web site yesterday screamed “Gas Prices Hit Record High.” The underlying article reported that the national average had just reached $3.59 per gallon. Those of you who pay attention to gas prices are now wondering how that figure can be described as a record high. After all, the national average gas prices were significantly higher in the past, most notably during the summer 2008, during the Bush administration, when they topped out at $4.12 per gallon.

Apparently the record being heralded by the Fox Nationalists is for a single day. It appears that $3.59 sets a record for all previous February 11’s. What the significance of that is remains a mystery. By itself it says nothing about the state of the economy or even the prospects for gas as a commodity. It doesn’t take into consideration the fact that there was a little old hurricane a couple of months ago that shut down imports and refineries throughout most of the eastern seaboard. Neither does it note the impact of the current blizzard slamming the region.

For Fox to misleadingly post a headline that claims record high gas prices without noting the qualification that it only applies to a single day is fairly typical of their journalistic malpractice. And it affirms that they are more interested in proselytizing a message of doom and fear than they are in informing their already ignorant audience.

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Thinks Latinos Are Idiots

Posted by on February 12, 2013 at 3:40 am. 1 Comments :

“The president likes to divide people into groups. He’s too busy getting the middle class to hate rich people, blacks to hate whites. He is busy trying to get everybody to hate each other. We need to get along.”

That’s the first quote in a New Republic article profiling Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and his latest project to deceive and exploit America’s growing Latino community. And it frames the the rest of the article perfectly by illustrating just how delusional Ailes is if he thinks people are going to buy his Rodney King act.

Roger AilesRoger Ailes is, without peer, the most divisive media figure in America. His stewardship of Fox News brought us Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Sarah Palin. He presides over a ship of fools, liars, and racists who rip apart the fabric of this diverse nation, and now he wants us to believe our literally multiracial president is the source of our division and that Ailes genuinely wants us all to get along?

The truth is that Ailes has belatedly realized that the patently offensive portrayal of Latinos as illegal, drug-using, job-stealing, criminals, has had a negative effect on both the Republican Party’s electoral prospects and the network’s bottom line. So not long ago he added a web page to the Fox News site aimed at pandering to this audience while he continued to insult them daily on Fox News. The obvious contradiction was apparent in how the two entities covered the same story.

Fox News Latino

Note the Latino site’s adorable child draped in an American flag, and the Fox Nation site’s “illegals” handcuffed on the ground. That editorial disparity is evidence of Ailes’ intent to manipulate people for whom he clearly has no respect. And manipulation is at the core of the next quote:

“The fact is, we have a lot — Republicans have a lot more opportunity for them. If I’m going to risk my life to run over the fence to get into America, I want to win. I think Fox News will articulate that.”

Notice how Ailes started to say “we have a lot,” then switched to “Republicans have a lot,” having caught himself nearly admitting that Fox is indeed the Republican network. And his assertion that Fox will articulate a message that they want the people they characterize as invading moochers to be more successful in that pursuit is ludicrous. Ailes isn’t the least bit interested in moderating the rhetoric on immigration, despite his remarks to the New Republic:

“Republicans haven’t used the right language. They keep talking about illegal immigration. I think the word ‘illegal immigration’ is a false name. You are talking about two separate issues. One is sovereignty….Immigration is a separate issue.”

That is just gibberish. It’s Ailes’ way of justifying a position that discriminates and insults Latinos and ignores entirely that his network is the only major news enterprise that still regularly calls undocumented workers “illegals.” If he honestly objected to the term he could simply instruct his employees to discontinue the use of it. He hasn’t done that because he still regards them as illegals and he knows that his audience does as well. At least the Fox News audience. Now he also has to worry about the Fox News Latino audience and, according to the New Republic, he persists in clinging to the demonstrably false notion that there is no difference in the way they handle their reporting.

“There’s an assumption that Fox News Latino is softer on Latinos than Fox News in general. That’s ridiculous.”

For Ailes to support that view he would have to explain all the documented examples of Fox News Latino reporting stories in a relatively fair manner while the Fox mothership was blatantly disparaging and downright racist.

Ailes may have intended this New Republic piece to be a bit of PR to advance his campaign for Latino dollars and votes, but his own words betray the disrespect he has for the Latino community. And if he thinks he can fool them into thinking that his transparently self-serving Fox News Latino web site absolves him of any responsibility for the hatred oozing from the rest of his news empire, he really doesn’t understand people, and he will be sorely disappointed when he discovers that they are not as stupid as he thinks they are.

Texas GOP Congressman Invites Hitler To Holocaust Memorial Service

Posted by on February 11, 2013 at 4:01 pm. 4 Comments :

OK, that headline may be a little over the top. But only a little. The real story is that “Texas Congressman Invites Ted Nugent, Who Threatened The President’s Life, To The State Of The Union.” Yep, that is actually happening.

Ted Nugent SOTU

“I am excited to have a patriot like Ted Nugent joining me in the House Chamber to hear from President Obama,” [Rep. Steve] Stockman said on his congressional website on Monday.

Stockman is the GOP crackpot who promised to fight President Obama’s perfectly reasonable gun safety proposals with everything, up to and including, filing articles of impeachment. Now he will be personally escorting into the halls of Congress the washed-up schlock-rocker who publicly told Obama that…

“You might want to suck on one of these, you punk? Obama, he’s a piece of sh*t and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns.”

And then there was the time that he said…

“I vow that I will use our freedom to get these dirty c*ck-suckers out of the White House. The president is a bad man. The vice president is a bad man. They’re all bad people. If you don’t get that, you’re a dead motherf*cker.”

Ted Nugent Vow

And who could forget his threat that…

“If Barack Obama becomes the President in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

Nugent is an utterly repulsive, pseudo-patriot whose very presence at the State of the Union is an insult to the solemn historical address that is mandated by the Constitution. Furthermore, it is an overt act of disrespect on the part of Stockman to invite a man who expresses such vulgar disdain for this president and the country who elected him. However, it does help to make clear the level of hatred that the Republican Party harbors and how eager they are to embrace the sickest freaks in their flock. America will be able to judge the dignity (or absence thereof) of the GOP and their guests as compared to, for instance, Michelle Obama’s guest, Cleopatra Cowley, the mother of slain fifteen year old Hadiya Pendleton, a victim of the sort of gun violence that is the predictable result of Nugent’s NRA agenda.

Stockman and Nugent are well aware of the deliberate controversy and divisiveness they are inciting. It is their intent to drive a wedge between Americans who are anxiously seeking common ground on the critical issues that will be discussed by the President. And it is the sort of brazenly political gesture that has resulted in Republicans sinking to record lows in favorability and congress having a lower rating than cockroaches, lice, and root canals.

[Addendum] Media Matters has posted a collection of 20 Inflammatory Comments by Ted Nugent. Don’t click unless you have a strong stomach. And while these remarks reveal Nugent to be a humongous douche nozzle, they say far more about the congressman who is making Nugent his date to the SOTU prom.

Pope TV: The Fox News Connection To The Vatican

Posted by on February 11, 2013 at 10:27 am. 2 Comments :

Well, here we go again. There’s gonna be another new Pope and for some reason American television is going to be plastered with wall-to-wall coverage of a religious enterprise’s loss of its CEO and their search for a new leader.

Pope TV

With the announcement that Pope Benedict will resign at the end of this month, it also seems like a good time to reprise this article about how a Fox News reporter became the PR man at the Vatican:

Awash In Scandal, Vatican Turns To The Pros At Fox News For Help
[June 24, 2012] It was announced yesterday that Greg Burke, the Fox News correspondent in Rome, has accepted the position of senior communications adviser in the Vatican’s secretariat of state. The article in the Associated Press notes that the Vatican has been having a number of problems such as “a scandal over Vatican documents that were leaked to Italian journalists,” […] “Benedict’s now-infamous speech about Muslims and violence, his 2009 decision to rehabilitate a schismatic bishop who denied the Holocaust, and the Vatican’s response to the 2010 explosion of the sex abuse scandal.”

When an institution as prominent as the Vatican requires professional guidance through a maze of public relations challenges as steep as these, it only makes sense that they reach out to experts in the propaganda arts. Conveniently, Burke was at hand in Rome and, as a member of the ultra-conservative Catholic prelature, Opus Dei, his accordance with Church dogma is not in doubt.

Presumably the Vatican is confidant that Burke will bring some measure of expertise to his new duties whitewashing the Vatican’s malfeasance. However, Fox News is better known for their prowess in inventing scandals that never occurred (i.e. Birthers, voter fraud, war on Christmas, fast and furious, etc.), rather than in quelling actual scandals. Nevertheless, Burke’s first statements after the hiring suggest that he is precisely what the Vatican is looking for:

Burke: You’re shaping the message, you’re molding the message, and you’re trying to make sure everyone remains on-message.

In other words, Burke will be doing for the church exactly what Fox News has been doing for the Republican Party for years. Which raises a question far more interesting than the one about a Fox News correspondent going to work for the Vatican: What was a member of Opus Dei doing covering the Vatican for an alleged “news” organization for the past ten years? That would be indisputably unethical. It would be fine if he were assigned to farm subsidies or Wall Street, but not the church with which he is so closely associated. That would be like having a top Republican strategist working as a political analyst at a news network.

Oh wait…Karl Rove is already doing that at Fox News. And Fox also employed four prospective GOP presidential candidates in the past year. And they also employ executives who were caught instructing their news staff to slant their reporting to favor Republicans. And they invite Republican politicians and advocates to appear on the air far more often than Democrats or liberals. Mitt Romney alone as appeared on Fox & Friends 21 times in the last year, while appearing only once on any Sunday network news program.

It may be be indisputably unethical, but it’s also the Fox News business model. Whether or not it works at the Vatican remains to be seen. However, the Republican Party and the Vatican have much in common. They are both trying to sell stories on faith to ill-informed people who are motivated by fear.

So get ready for the onslaught of PopeMania that is bound to persist at least until a new Pope is crowned sometime between now and the end of March. Mr. Burke is already on the story and has secured a high profile Op-Ed on Fox News written by John Moody, Executive Vice President and Executive Editor at Fox News, as well as a Pope John Paul II biographer. Moody’s article, not surprisingly, concludes by praising Benedict as “brave” and reminding the Fox Flock that “the promise of heaven [is] lasting and infinite.” You know…..journalism in the proud tradition of “We preach, you deify.”

Memo To Media: Don’t Cover The Phony Tea Party Response To The State Of The Union

Posted by on February 10, 2013 at 10:19 am. 5 Comments :

It was announced last week that GOP Sen. Rand Paul will be giving the “official” Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. In previous years it was Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann (who CNN carried live).

Tea PartyThere hasn’t been any indication yet of whether the media will carry Paul’s response live, but it should be noted that to do so would be a total farce. There is no such thing as the Tea Party. It is simply a fringe wing of the Republican Party. Rand Paul is, of course, a Republican. He represents the views of the rest of his party, as well as those of the person giving the official GOP response to the President, Marco Rubio (who is also a Tea Partier).

What this means is that the GOP is trying to get two bites of the post-SOTU apple. The media should not fall for this ruse. Paul was even quoted on CNN as saying that his remarks would not be competing with Rubio’s and would just be “extra.” Therefore, coverage of his comments would only serve to double up the opposition to Obama’s speech.

The Tea Party has recently sunk to new lows in support from the American people. Their caucus in congress is much smaller than that of the Democrats Progressive Caucus (Tea Party, 49; Progressive, 71), despite having more Republicans in the House.

If the media is intent on giving undeserved attention to the Tea Party, fairness would require them to give equal time to a progressive response. Perhaps they could invite Bernie Sanders to respond to the President. He would surely articulate a message that differs from the administration in greater measure than Paul would differ from Rubio. Or maybe they could call on Carolyn Maloney, whose advocacy of reforms for gun safety would be a timely subject.

In any case, it would be unethical for the media to grant an unpopular fringe group the opportunity to propagandize the nation when they already have an official spokesman in Rubio. And if they did so without balancing the coverage by presenting a progressive response it would affirm their right-wing bias. Will the media act unethically? Well, it aint like they haven’t before.