Month: January 2014

Fox News Worse Than Cuomo: Promoted ‘No Liberals Allowed’ Community

Posted by on January 22, 2014 at 2:00 pm. 16 Comments :

NOT BREAKING NEWS: No one is going to have to interrupt regular programming to announce that Fox News is overflowing with hypocrisy, but their latest example of it is a delicious foray into obliviousness on a grand scale.

This week New York governor Andrew Cuomo told a radio interviewer that “extreme” conservatives have “no place in the state of New York.” The statement was immediately picked up by every right-wing media outlet and reported with the typical context-extracted zeal for which the wingnut media is so well known. Cuomo’s full remarks reveal that he was referring only to politicians and candidates who embrace far-right fringe opinions, not mainstream Republican citizens of New York. Here is what he said:

“Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”

The gist of his commentary is plainly true. New York is not, in general, a state that will welcome politicos who advocate assault weapons and hate homosexuals. And with regard to reproductive choice, even conservative New Yorkers do not sway so far left that they would favor indicting doctors and mothers for murder.

Nevertheless, conservatives nationwide took Cuomo’s words to heart and feverishly sought to imply that he was referring to, and insulting, all Republicans. It’s interesting that they would all classify themselves as extremists in order to be included in Cuomo’s criticism. This includes Sean Hannity who threatened to leave New York. Of course, most New Yorkers would volunteer to help him pack. Glenn Beck also chimed in with his standard Nazi-inflected rhetoric, saying that Cuomo’s remarks were similar to those that led to the Holocaust. Then he went further than Hannity, who merely threatened to leave the state. Beck actually threatened to renounce his American citizenship (video below).

Not surprisingly, Fox News was all over this phony controversy. The have run numerous segments portraying Cuomo as intolerant of diversity and berating him for offending his conservative constituents, about whom he was not talking. Beck himself made a rare appearance on Fox with Megyn Kelly where the two of them joined to misinterpret Cuomo’s remarks. But it was only one year ago that Fox News promoted a right-wing group’s plan to build a conservative utopia somewhere in Idaho that explicitly forbade liberals. The Fox Nation headline blared “No Liberals Allowed.”

Fox Nation

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It’s almost too easy to mock this. Notice that on the same graphic as their prohibition against liberals they say “Live And Let Live.” I guess they mean unless you’re a liberal. And contrary to Cuomo, this cult conclave was specifically referring to ordinary citizens with progressive views. The graphic also has icons indicating that there will be no anarchy or peace tolerated in their Randian haven. The website formally discourages prospective liberal applicants saying that they “will likely find that life in our community is incompatible with their existing ideology and preferred lifestyles.”

Glenn Beck, by the way, is also in the utopia business. His Armageddon getaway will be called Independence, USA. Always the entertainer, he is positioning it as a hybrid conservative village/theme park with shops, rides, media studios, and residential tracts. However, like most projects initiated by Beck, this one will also never see the light of day.

The rampant public displays of outrage that emanate from Fox News always have at least a hint of hypocrisy. But when they venture this far into the hypocritical swamp it becomes more comic relief than anything else. The acrimony they hope to incite by deliberately misrepresenting Cuomo’s comments is only made more absurd by the fact that their own advocacy of intolerance is even worse. Lucky for them, their audience is populated by imbeciles who will never put this all together. Their business model works because it requires low-intellect consumers and Fox just keeps making more of them everyday.

Now Fox News Is Organizing ObamaCare Opposition

Posted by on January 21, 2014 at 3:55 pm. 5 Comments :

It has been no secret that Fox News has been a virulent opponent of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) since before it was even passed into law. They aggressively campaigned against its passage and launched a massive crusade to frighten people from taking advantage of the benefits available to them under the law. Now Fox News has taken the additional step of explicitly soliciting viewers to oppose the law.

Fox News

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On a broadcast this weekend, Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer introduced Fox Business Network anchor Gerri Willis to deliver a flawed and misleading report that claimed that most ObamaCare enrollees already had health insurance prior to acquiring their ObamaCare coverage. The report was sourced to Fox’s sister newspaper The Wall Street Journal. Not surprisingly, it was biased by the predetermined viewpoint that is consistent throughout the Rupert Murdoch media empire. It left out or distorted information pertaining to participation in ObamaCare by those who qualified for Medicaid and adult children under twenty-six who were able to be added to their parents policies thanks to ObamaCare.

At the end of Willis’ report, Hemmer asked her a question that led to the unambiguous call to action to their viewers.

Hemmer: If this is a trend that continues, what is likely to happen as a result, Gerri?

Willis: Well I think the chorus of voices for this law to be repealed will grow louder and, frankly, will have to get more support from more and more people, Bill.

By directly appealing to their audience to join “the chorus of voices” opposing ObamaCare, these anchors have proven, once again, that Fox is a political operation and not a news network. They have unmistakably pledged their allegiance to the Tea Party Republicans who have been so determined to undo the legislation that is already bringing relief to millions of Americans.

Earlier the network aired a similar report without the direct appeal. On that segment anchor Julie Banderas and correspondent Doug McKelway took turns deceiving their audience with prejudicially charged rhetoric aimed at slanting the tone of coverage in a negative manner. Note the intentional bias in the bolded text.

Bandares: A stunning new report that is raising serious questions about the effectiveness of the President’s signature legislation.

McKelway: Only 11% of consumers who purchased new coverage under ObamaCare thus far have been uninsured previously. That is a remarkable figure. It means that the vast majority of Americans who have enrolled already had insurance and likely had their insurance policies canceled late last year as a result of the law’s mandate that certain procedures be covered even if the insuree didn’t want those procedures covered. It lends credence to those doubters who say they were mislead before the law’s implementation.

The figures cited in that report were not all that remarkable. One of the goals of ObamaCare was to bring affordable health insurance to people who were being gouged by the profiteers in the insurance industry. Consequently, many people would be expected to cancel their policies in favor of the new, less expensive options that provided better coverage. And McKelway threw in a remark about people who likely had policies canceled, even though that was not a part of the survey on which he was reporting. He simply made that up, just as he did the claim that insurees didn’t want the new procedures that the law mandates.

The only thing that is lent any credence is to those doubters who recognize the blatantly conservative politicking of Fox News. McKelway failed to provide any credible support for his reporting. In fact, the only two people that appeared in his report were Tom Price, a Republican congressman, and a representative of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Koch brothers financed think tank that opposes ObamaCare, denies Climate Change, and lobbies for economic reforms that benefit corporations and the wealthy. That’s Fox’s version of fairness and balance.

If Fox News is going to take an active role in organizing protests against political issues, they ought to be forced to register as a Political Action Committee and have their operations be subject to the laws governing such activities. That would include reporting all of their broadcasts that advocate on behalf of candidates and causes as in-kind political contributions. It would further limit the manner and time in which they can engage in political activities.

If the American political system were actually fair and balanced, the Federal Elections Commission would be slapping fines and injunctions on Fox News for violating federal law. But in an environment wherein corporations are regarded as people, and individuals can donate unlimited funds to candidates anonymously, it will take some time and effort before media enterprises like Fox will be called to account for their perversions of democracy.

So F**king What? The ObamaCare Website Contractor Scandal Delusion

Posted by on January 21, 2014 at 1:21 pm. NO Comments :

You know that things are getting bad for conservative wingnuts when they resort to complaining about President Obama for doing what they previously called for him to do.

Last October the ObamaCare website launched with an historic thud. It barely functioned and was widely deemed to be an embarrassing failure for Obama and CGI Federal, the firm that developed the site. Right-wingers from across the land were sent into a frothing ecstasy as they extended the website’s problems to all of ObamaCare and everything else the President did. One of their most often heard demands was that “heads must roll.”

So you might think that they would have been happy to learn that Obama had fired CGI for the website fiasco. They could have spun it as capitulation to their demands and a victory for their side. But if you thought that, you are not very familiar with their unique brand of psychosis and inbred hostility.

So instead, an article popped up today on the Daily Caller website, a disreputable operation run by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The author is Patrick Howley, whose resume includes an attempt to infiltrate Occupy Wall Street groups to incite violence that he would then blame on the Occupy movement (he failed). The article was then picked up by Fox News for posting on their lie-riddled, hate site, Fox Nation.

Fox Nation

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Howley’s article is a monumentally silly effort to invent a scandal where none exists. The shocking revelation he exposed is that the firm hired to replace CGI had once employed someone who had also been employed by the Obama campaign in 2012. Now try to follow this, because it’s even stupider than it sounds. Rayid Ghani had first worked for Accenture where he did research on consumer behavior. Later he was recruited by Obama’s campaign to work on voter tracking. Today he does not work for either Obama or Accenture, but Accenture has been hired to do continued maintenance on the ObamaCare website. Or put another way, the Obama administration has hired a firm that no longer employs someone who is also no longer employed by Obama. Scandalous, isn’t it?

Howley’s logic is painfully idiotic. He is proposing that you take everyone who has ever worked for Obama in any capacity, find out where they worked previously, and scratch them off of any lists for future employment or contracts. That would probably disqualify most of the Forbes 500 and ten or twenty million people.

To make matters even more comically obtuse, last October Howley wrote an article for the Daily Caller complaining about tangential affiliations between Obama and CGI. In that piece he asserted a wholly unsupported allegation that there was some sort of chicanery in the relationship because Michelle Obama had attended Princeton at the same time as a woman who later became a CGI executive. He made no attempt to prove that they ever met. Once again, Howley’s perverse logic suggests that any company that employs any of the thousands of people who attended the same Ivy League universities as the Obamas is exempt from government work.

So to summarize, Howley alleged impropriety when Obama hired a firm where a Princeton classmate of Michelle was employed, despite showing no connection between them. However, he was not mollified when Obama fired that firm and replaced it with another firm that does not employ a man who is also not employed by Obama. Nice work, Sherlock.

In addition, Howley squeezed another angle into his article that claimed that there were ongoing security threats within the ObamaCare website. He did not in any way substantiate his claim, but he did provide pretty good evidence that no such security exploits exist. He referenced the testimony of an ex-con who was paraded before a Republican-controlled committee hearing to say that breaking into Healthcare.gov “would be a hacker’s wet dream.” That’s actually true. And the fact that it hasn’t happened speaks to the reliability of the security on the website given the desirability of hackers to break it.

This is just another example of what happens when right-wing extremists have nothing of substance to say about policy or process. They scrape the bottom of the scandal barrel in a desperate search for controversy, or least distraction. It is their hope that they can either tarnish their foes with mud or keep them from bringing attention to the fact that the conservative platform consists of little more than repealing ObamaCare, cutting taxes for the rich, cutting benefits for the poor, and regulating the behavior of citizens in the privacy of their homes. That platform, along with alienating women and minorities, is not going to serve them particularly well in 2014, 2016, or beyond.

Martin Luther King: And One Day We Must Ask The Question…

Posted by on January 20, 2014 at 9:04 am. 7 Comments :

Martin Luther King, 1967:

Martin Luther King

“The movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society.

“We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, Who owns the oil? You begin to ask the question, Who owns the iron ore? You begin to ask the question, Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water? These are questions that must be asked.”

Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recife:

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

Pope Francis:

“As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.”

President Barack Obama, 2013:

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it […] Our journey is not complete…”

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Racists Don’t Like Obama Because He’s Black. Who Knew?

Posted by on January 20, 2014 at 8:40 am. 2 Comments :

Trying to point out every occurrence of idiocy by Fox News would drive most people to an asylum. The quantity is just overwhelming and sometimes you have to let some truly mind-boggling treasures of dumbfuckery go by because there just isn’t enough time in the day. But not this one.

[Update: On Martin Luther King Day, Fox Nation decided to move this racially provocative article to the top of their web page with some curious modifications. See below.]

Fox Nation

For more than 50 examples of blatant lies by Fox Nation,
read the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available at Amazon.

The race-baiters at Fox Nation have extracted a single sentence from an extensive (over 16,600 words) article in the New Yorker about President Obama. The obvious intent of this journalistic malpractice is to deliberately convey the false impression that Obama is playing both the victim and the race card.

Now, if this was all that Obama said, he would be unarguably correct. There is no end to the proof of racial animus that has been directed at our nation’s first African-American president. Many of his bigoted opponents barely disguise their racist tendencies. So Obama could not be faulted for observing something that is so indisputably true.

However, as you might already have guessed, that is not all that Obama said. Here is the full quote from the New Yorker’s article:

“There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President,” Obama said. “Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black President.”

So does that sound like a victim or a realist? The New Yorker went on to note the evidence of broad based biases that are reflected in the national character.

“Obama lost among white voters in 2012 by a margin greater than any victor in American history. The popular opposition to the Administration comes largely from older whites who feel threatened, underemployed, overlooked, and disdained in a globalized economy and in an increasingly diverse country. Obama’s drop in the polls in 2013 was especially grave among white voters.”

Nevertheless, they quote Obama defending his critics and warning that their reservations about him should be judged on their merit, not on historical prejudices.

“I think it’s important for progressives not to dismiss out of hand arguments against my Presidency or the Democratic Party or Bill Clinton or anybody just because there’s some overlap between those criticisms and the criticisms that traditionally were directed against those who were trying to bring about greater equality for African-Americans.”

Despite the exceedingly tolerant tone of Obama’s words, the Fox Nationalists knew that their out of context fragment would inflame their audience. And that was their purpose. As evident in the comments on the Fox Nation website, the response was predominately negative and critical of Obama whom they accused of being a thin-skinned, racially motivated, whiner. So…mission accomplished Fox. You successfully riled up a rabble of dimwitted racists just as you hoped. Not that that’s a particularly difficult achievement given the substandard confederacy of dunces that you cultivate.

[Update} Not satisfied with ordinary, everyday race-baiting, the Fox Nationalists chose to take this bigotry-inciting article and boost it to the top of their web page. And notice the modifications they made to make sure none of their cognitively-challenged readers would miss the point: They colored Obama’s name and the word’s “I’m Black” a bright commie red. And they underlined the words “Don’t Like Me,” So happy MLK Day, from Fox News.

Fox Nation

So What’s The Big Story This Week On CNN And Fox News?

Posted by on January 19, 2014 at 1:15 pm. 13 Comments :

Both CNN and Fox News have Sunday morning programs that analyze the media. On CNN it’s Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter. On Fox News It’s MediaBuzz with Howard Kurtz. This morning both programs chose to lead off their broadcasts with the same story that essentially takes MSNBC to task for doing respectable journalism.

CNN, Fox News Go After MSNBC

MSNBC has been at the forefront of the Chris Christie Bridge-Gate scandal from its inception. They broke the story on television with the help of the local Bergen Record newspaper in New Jersey. Since then they have scored some significant scoops that have rattled the Christie regime. One example of that occurred last week when Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer told MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki that the Christie administration held Sandy relief funds hostage to force her to support a real estate project that Christie favored. Not surprisingly, Christie retaliated by dispatching his spokesman to swing back at the messenger:

Christie spokesman Colin Reed: MSNBC is a partisan network that has been openly hostile to Governor Christie and almost gleeful in their efforts attacking him, even taking the unprecedented step of producing and airing a nearly three-minute attack ad against him this week.

Notice that nowhere in that statement did Reed dispute the actual content of MSNBC’s reporting. It was just a self-serving attack on the network’s liberal reputation. The example he offered of an “unprecedented” three-minute attack ad (video below) was really just a thirty second mock video demonstrating how Christie’s opponents could use the scandal against him should he run for president in 2016. And it wasn’t unprecedented either, as Fox News actually did produce a four minute anti-Obama ad prior to the 2012 election that they deleted after it had become an embarrassment.

In a week that included a Supreme Court ruling against Network Neutrality, two speeches by President Obama, and a major book release about Fox News CEO Roger Ailes (The Loudest Voice In The Room), both CNN and Fox led off their weekly media programs with stories about MSNBC’s coverage of Christie. CNN had an on-screen graphic with the pressing question, is “MSNBC Attacking Chris Christie?” While Fox went for the more macho “Christie Declares War On MSNBC.” Of course, everything on Fox News is war (Christmas, class, liberty, capitalism, etc.). Fox also placed Christie’s war with MSNBC at the top of their lie-riddled Fox Nation website. [See the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality for proof of Fox Nation’s catalog of lies]

There was nothing in either program that refuted the factual accuracy of MSNBC’s coverage, but the tone was nonetheless disparaging. The real question, however, is why did they both put this story at the front of their broadcasts. Was it really more important than the other media news of the week? Or were they simply jealous that they didn’t get these scoops themselves? It may be significant that MSNBC had a rare Nielsen ratings victory for the week that featured the Bridge-Gate reporting. Could that have been what drove CNN and Fox to criticize it? Either way it makes both networks look awfully petty for attacking a rival for doing their job.

Lawrence O’Donnell’s fake Christie ad:

The Hilariously Schizo Fox News Explanation For ‘Why Chris Christie will be impeached in 2014’

Posted by on January 18, 2014 at 3:05 pm. 3 Comments :

If there is one thing that you can depend on with Fox News, it’s that anything that ever goes wrong will be attributed to President Obama or some amorphous cabal of evil liberals. And so it is with the tribulations of New Jersey thug/governor, Chris Christie.

Fox News

According to an editorial by former Republican congressman, and current Fox News contributor, John LeBoutillier, the threat to Christie’s governorship and presidential aspirations is rooted in the dastardliness of Democrats. LeBoutillier’s article, titled “Why Chris Christie will be impeached in 2014,” opines that Christie’s future is fatally hampered, not because of the nefarious activities of his closest associates, and perhaps himself, but because Democrats “know how to run a gut-cutting, down-and-dirty-if-necessary investigation against a political opponent.” In LeBoutillier’s myopic and paranoid vision Democrats are an omnipotent force of political vigilantes who have the power to collapse the Christie empire.

LeBoutillier: They know how to take aim – and then keep their eye on the target – no matter what. They know they have most of the media with them – and they thus are not afraid of “over-reach.” And they have the killer instinct that almost all Republicans lack.

Exactly! While Republicans have been politely bashing Democrats as godless socialists intent on destroying America, curtailing freedom, abetting terrorism, and undermining the nation’s financial and moral foundation, all along it has really been the Democrats who have overreached with their killer instinct.

As evidence of this assault on the poor, innocent GOP, LeBoutillier cites the creation of committees in the New Jersey legislature to investigate the budding Bridge-Gate scandal. How dare the Democrats seek to learn the truth about a major political controversy wherein a governor allegedly abused his office for payback against a political opponent. Republicans would never advocate such an inquiry aimed at Democrats – unless it had to do with the IRS and the Tea Party.

LeBoutillier advances the theory that Democrats are haranguing Christie for two reasons, neither of which is that he is suspected of having deliberately caused grave harm to millions of his constituents.

The first reason floated is that Democrats want to get back at Christie for the despicable treatment they have suffered under his leadership as governor. LeBoutillier candidly admits that Christie has been a real cad, calling Democrats “animals” and suggesting that someone should “take a bat” to the Senate Democratic leader. The second reason Democrats have for going after Christie is that they allegedly fear his candidacy for president in 2016. So obviously they somehow convinced his closest aides to embark on a monumentally stupid mission to cripple traffic and commerce so that they could pin it all on the governor. Makes perfect sense.

But here is where LeBoutillier goes off the rails. He also points out that Christie’s own party is loath to support him. Apparently they have not been treated any better than Democrats by the brutish Christie administration. LeBoutillier says that Christie…

“…has systematically bulldozed so many fellow Republicans that they are tentative and tepid in their support. For four years it has been known inside Jersey politics that if you made even the mildest criticism of the governor, he would come after you with a vengeance. Payback and punishment have become the rule over the past four years.”

Reminder: LeBoutillier is a Republican writing an editorial for Fox News. Yet this characterization of Christie affirms those who have criticized him as a bully, a charge that he and his defenders have strongly denied. LeBoutillier’s commentary reinforces the impression of Christie as someone who would participate in a scheme to seek revenge on a political foe. It aligns him with the sentiment expressed by his pal, and Port Authority executive, David Wildstein, who dismissed reservations about children being hurt by saying that it’s OK because “They are the children of Buono voters,” a reference to Barbara Buono, Christie’s Democratic opponent in the last gubernatorial campaign.

LeBoutillier concludes by saying that impeachment is inevitable and that “[Christie] does not survive in 2014.” And while he concedes that Christie has burned a lot of bridges (only figuratively, so far) among his fellow Republicans, LeBoutillier saved his harshest judgment for Democrats. This despite the fact that the only impeachment proceedings in modern times were orchestrated by Republicans in congress who targeted Bill Clinton for his personal misbehavior. There was no credible talk of impeachment of George W. Bush, even after it was certified that he invaded a country on false pretenses. And the past five years has seen numerous GOP politicians and pundits advocate the impeachment of President Obama for nothing more than because they just hate him so damn much.

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Nevertheless, it is Democrats that LeBoutillier castigates as having a “killer instinct” and a determination to impeach the unfairly beleaguered governor. And by asserting that “almost all Republicans lack” those traits, he reveals a remarkable degree of tunnel-blindness and undermines any credibility he might otherwise have been afforded.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Smearing The ObamaCare Navigators

Posted by on January 17, 2014 at 9:41 am. 1 Comments :

Fox News is heavily invested in derailing the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare). They have devoted hundreds of hours of airtime and editorial disinformation aimed at creating a climate of fear in order prevent Americans from learning about and exercising their rights under the new law. The rabid right is so desperate to crush access to affordable, effective health care that they have launched a “Fright Offensive” of unbelievable proportions. The latest example of this is an article on the Fox Nation website with the histrionic title “A Ton of ObamaCare Navigators Are Criminals.”

Fox Nation

For over 50 more documented examples of blatant lies by Fox News,
get the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available at Amazon.

No kidding? So the ghastly prospect of engaging with ObamaCare will now force you to fraternize with criminals – a ton of them. And the evidence of this shocking state of affairs? Well, it’s a little thin to say the least.

The Fox Nationalists linked their posting to an article on the ultra-conservative National Review Online (NRO). The author is Jillian Kay Melchior, a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. The Franklin Center is a Koch brothers-funded enterprise that disseminates right-wing propaganda to the media. In her slanderous article Melchior lays the groundwork for a wholly unsupported proposition that the people recruited to assist citizens with ObamaCare enrollments are a “fishy” and unsavory collection of outlaws. She says that…

“One in seven of New Mexico’s certified Obamacare navigators had a match in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database, according to public records obtained by National Review Online.”

Well, there you have it. ObamaCare is a thinly-veiled assembly of hustlers just waiting to exploit innocent health insurance consumers. This would be even scarier were it not for the paragraph just below that reveals that…

“A hit in the NCIC does not necessarily reflect a criminal conviction. The database can include, for example, arrest records and criminal cases that were dismissed or led to an acquittal, according to the FBI.”

That fact, however, doesn’t deter Melchior from continuing her fear mongering with an ominous warning that ObamaCare Navigators have access to personal information “including Social Security numbers, financial data, and health records.” Of course, this is also true about the employees at every insurance company. In fact, sensitive personal data is accessible to tens of thousands of workers in banks, retail stores, phone companies, etc. But NRO didn’t bother to look into their NCIC records. Neither did they look into the criminal past of members of congress like Rep. Darrell Issa (the most virulent inquisitor of the Obama administration over phony and manufactured scandals), who has a long criminal rap sheet himself. And if Melchior bothered to investigate the nefarious wrongdoers of Fox News she might have found this:

All this proves is that, in any large organization that employs human beings, there will be some percentage who do not meet the standards to which the organization aspires. Their only responsibility is to conduct reasonable inquiries into the suitability of each applicant and perform due diligence to protect those they serve. The ObamaCare programs do just that, as stated in the article by a representative of the New Mexico Office of the Superintendent of Insurance (OSI).

“The OSI receives navigator applications from New Mexico’s health exchange, running them through the NCIC system by name, date of birth, and Social Security number. Applicants who have committed a significant financial crime or were listed on the sex-offender registry are automatically disqualified.

“For other navigator applicants who trigger NCIC hits, three OSI experts then review the results, assessing on a case-by-case basis whether a navigator should receive certification. For example, a 20-year-old shoplifting conviction for an otherwise upstanding citizen might not be disqualifying, while a recent fraud charge could be.”

So the ObamaCare administrators are doing exactly what is necessary to insure the security and safety of private data. Nevertheless, without any evidence of criminal wrongdoing by even a single ObamaCare Navigator, in the past or while performing their current duties, Fox News has made a blanket, declarative statement that “A ton” of them are “criminals.” It’s a brazenly dishonest smear that unfairly impugns good people who have chosen to help others acquire access to life-saving medical care. And it simultaneously seeks to sow suspicion of people and programs that were created to improve the lives and health of every American.

This is typical of how Fox News works tirelessly to spread fear that is based solely on conjecture and innuendo. They invent scandals from sentence fragments and foment outrage from deliberately falsified reporting. It’s a practice that does a disservice to anyone foolish enough to watch the network, but it does an effective job of keeping them squarely in the camp of fools – frightened, anxiety-ridden fools.

OBAMASCARE: Healthcare.gov Passes Security Tests – Fox News Freaks Out

Posted by on January 16, 2014 at 2:23 pm. 1 Comments :

During a hearing today before the House Oversight Committee, Teresa Fryer, the chief information security officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the committee that the Healthcare.gov website had passed all security tests and that she would recommend its continued authority to operate.

Note that this is the same person who testified before the committee last year and expressed serious reservations which committee chairman, and recidivist criminal, Darrell Issa, trumpeted in his attempt to derail ObamaCare. Today, however, he dismissed her validation of the website’s safety and continued to assert, without evidence, that security risks are present. At no time since the website launched has there been any security breach, user information theft or fraud, or any other unauthorized access.

So what does Fox News do upon hearing this testimony? They make a full-court press to double down on imaginary security problems. It is a deliberate effort to spread fear among the American people in order to frighten them away from using the website and learning about the availability of affordable and effective health insurance. The form of Fox’s anti-ObamaCare offensive came in the broadcast of a segment on America’s NewsHQ that alleged that Healthcare.gov is still unsecured.

Fox News ObamaScare

Fox Anchor Bill Hemmer led the segment with a report that offered no support for the assertion that there were any security problems. The entire report consisted of unfounded allegations and speculation. That was followed by co-anchor Alisyn Camerota’s interview of Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz who offered more of the same. When directly queried as to whether there was any verifiable evidence of risk, Chaffetz spun off into pure conjecture and factless rhetoric. No Democrat or ObamaCare supporter was given any airtime.

Fox News - Mitnick

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Reinforcing this faulty foundation, the Fox News website sought out the opinion of criminal hacker Kevin Mitnick. Fox identified Mitnick as “one of the world’s foremost cybersecurity experts,” despite the fact that his hacking occurred twenty years ago in a technology environment worlds removed from today’s. Furthermore, there is no indication in Fox’s report that Mitnick conducted any security assessments of Healthcare.gov. His entire opinion is based on documents from others who also don’t show any results from having tested the site’s security.

Nevertheless, Fox reported that “Mitnick submitted a scathing criticism to a House panel Thursday of ObamaCare’s Healthcare.gov website, calling the protections built into the site ‘shameful’ and ‘minimal.’ That assessment, however, was not backed up by one of Issa’s own witnesses before the congressional committee. Waylon Krush, CEO of Lunarline, told the panel that “There have been no confirmed security breaches or hacks of the site yet, […] The flaws that have been found are mere speculation.”

Fox News is demonstrating their determination to overshadow the real news of the day: that actual testing by responsible authorities has proven the site to be secure. So Fox throws up segments on the air and on the net that have no substance, but that attempt to refute the verifiable facts. And they do so with disreputable characters who have no first-hand knowledge of the subject on which they are commenting.

This isn’t the first time that Fox has recruited sketchy figures to advance their dishonest agenda. Late last year, Fox’s Gretchen Carlson interviewed John McAfee, the notorious developer of the eponymous anti-virus software, who is presently a fugitive from a murder investigation. During the interview, Carlson raised the specter of outlaw hackers laying in wait on the ObamaCare web site. However, neither she nor McAfee actually provide any evidence of such a threat.

So GOP partisans and ex-cons are Fox’s “experts” on website security. And they are summoned forth to give their dubious opinions on the same day that the chief CMS security officer certifies that Healthcare.gov has passed all security testing, which Fox doesn’t report at all. Is it any wonder how Fox viewers have become so painfully ignorant? And that’s just the way Roger Ailes, and the Republican Party, like them.

Gun Permits vs. ObamaCare: Fox News Makes Absurd Comparison and Fails Math

Posted by on January 16, 2014 at 12:33 pm. 1 Comments :

In its unending campaign to malign the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare), Fox News posted an article that adds to the evidence that they are so blinded by their extremist ideology that they can’t think straight.

Fox News

The article was sourced to Watchdog.net, an affiliate of the Koch-brothers financed Franklin Center. It makes an absurd comparison between the number of new applications for permits to carry concealed guns, and the number of new enrollments in ObamaCare. What they have to do with one another is never explained. They might as well have compared the ObamaCare enrollments to the number of new Illinois driver’s licenses or how many shoppers visited the Skokie CostCo.

To make matters worse, Fox slapped a headline on their article that said “In Illinois, gun permit applications outpace ObamaCare sign-ups.” But the first two sentences in the article contradict that assertion:

“In two weeks, nearly 22,000 Illinois residents have applied online for a permit to carry a gun, according to the State Police. About 61,000 have selected an insurance plan through the state’s Obamacare website, according to numbers from the state.”

So to the editors at Fox News, 22,000 applications for gun permits outpaces 61,000 ObamaCare enrollees. That’s a pretty far reach, even for Fox. Something else they don’t mention is that the 61,000 newly insured Illoisians in December represents a nine-fold increase over the previous month. There are no numbers for the previous month of gun permits because January was the first month that they became available.

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You’ve gotta give Fox credit for finding a way to promote gun fetishism while bashing ObamaCare. And while they may not have intended it, there may be a connection between the gun permit and ObamaCare numbers after all. With thousands more people in Illinois carrying firearms, there may soon be a need for greater access to medical care by the people they shoot. Isn’t that a fortunate coincidence?