Month: January 2014

Fox News On Mute: Federal Judge Rules Against Challenge To ObamaCare Subsidies

Posted by on January 15, 2014 at 1:57 pm. 2 Comments :

A couple of conservative activists sought to cripple the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) by filing a lawsuit that challenged the authority of the federal health care exchanges to offer subsidies to those who purchased insurance through them. It was a weak argument from the start, but one that had the potential to undermine ObamaCare because thirty-six states chose not to build their own exchanges. Consequently, the feds stepped in to provide residents of those mostly Republican-led states with access to health insurance and the subsidies to which they were entitled under the law.

Fox News

Today Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia shattered the dreams of right-wingers everywhere by ruling against the plaintiffs in the most severe terms. In his decision Judge Friedman wrote…

“Plaintiffs’ proposed construction in this case – that tax credits are available only for those purchasing insurance from state-run Exchanges – runs counter to this central purpose of the ACA: to provide affordable health care to virtually all Americans. Such an interpretation would violate the basic rule of statutory construction that a court must interpret a statute in light of its history and purpose.”

While Fox News is quick to jump on the most trivial legal setbacks for ObamaCare, they have yet to report on this ruling at all. Just last month Fox reported that the same judge declined a request by the Department of Justice to dismiss the case. But now that a ruling has been issued that upholds the law, Fox has gone silent.

Instead of responsibly updating their audience on a story they previously covered, Fox has once again made the old Benghazi hoax their top story. This is a familiar pattern for Fox: Go nuclear on any news that negatively impacts the President or liberals – Go mute when the story turns out to be unfavorable for the right.

Hooray For Income Inequality! Or As Fox News Calls It ‘Income Opportunity’

Posted by on January 14, 2014 at 3:13 pm. 1 Comments :

Whenever Fox News encounters a progressive concept that they have difficulty refuting, they resort to redefining the terms of the debate. This was illustrated recently when they took to calling the government shutdown a “government slimdown,” as if it was a benign weight-loss program rather than a $24 billion boondoggle. It’s what turns free-market health insurance reform into socialized medicine. It’s tactic that is inbred into their political playbook, even going so far as to hire a “word doctor” to create an alternative language for their propaganda.

Now Fox News is pitching a new phrase to replace “income inequality,” which describes the gap between America’s ultra-wealthy and the average citizen. The current gap is greater than it has ever been, and the consequences are starkly negative for the nation’s economic health. The public is acutely aware of this problem and supports reforms aimed at resolving it. Therefore, unable to come up with a rational counter argument, Fox has introduced a new way of dressing up the problem that makes it seem all warm and fuzzy. They now call it “income opportunity.”

The new phrase debuted today when Fox News reporter, Doug McKelway, filed a story on the subject and noted that some amorphous congregation of anonymous critics are seeing the bright side of the loss of America’s middle class:

McKelway: Some critics say there is another side to income inequality. That’s income opportunity. For instance, as economic inequality between rich and poor has grown, women’s economic status has increased.

Really? So Fox News is now spinning this as a women’s rights issue. That makes sense because Fox has been such a stalwart defender of women’s rights. Like the right to be subjected to involuntary vaginal probes, or the right to be forced to carry a pregnancy to term, even if the father was a rapist. McKelway then deferred to an academic from Chicago (one of those rare times when Fox regards academics as credible sources), who took this reasoning even further saying that…

“Inequality, in terms of the gap between low and high wage people was creating opportunities for everyone, but women were especially able to leverage them. And that’s why you have so many women breaking the glass ceiling in recent years.”

Indeed. Opportunities for everyone have been gushing from the severe division between the rich and the poor. Never mind that this assertion was not supported by any facts, it must be obvious because, well, he said so. And who could have failed to notice that women have been crashing through the glass ceiling in unprecedented numbers. That’s why today “women currently hold 4.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEO roles.” And it also explains why, as of 2012, women are still paid only about 76.5 percent of what men are paid. And that’s actually a decline from 2010.

Finally, when McKelway completed his report, Fox anchor Jenna Lee injected another angle of inquiry to refute the fact that income inequality is necessarily to blame for any ill effects on the economy. Once again the anonymous specter of “some argue” entered the discussion when Lee posited to McKelway that…

“Some argue that the issue is less about the economy and more, really, about family.”

Of course it is. McKelway took the baton and ran down a series of reasons why the lack of opportunity is all due to poor people often being single mothers with less than college educations. And that state affairs couldn’t possibly be because they are poor to begin with, could it? No, they all started off well-to-do, then dropped out of Stanford and had babies, and that led to their eventual poverty. But don’t bring any of this up because, if you do, you’ll be accused of waging a class war.

Fox News

These are the sort of theories that go over well with the deceitful Fox News editors and their dimwitted viewers. And it’s all made possible by inventing language that is deliberately meant to mislead. Remember that the next time you find yourself in the midst of a government slimdown and some socialist tries to sell you health insurance that infringes on the income opportunity of being one of the 99% of Americans who isn’t a billionaire.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Obama Terrorist Amnesty Myth

Posted by on January 14, 2014 at 12:16 pm. 1 Comments :

From nearly the beginning of Barack Obama’s first campaign for the presidency, he had advocated shutting down the Constitutional cesspool that is Guantanamo Bay. The very concept of it violates legal principles that have been part of the American ethic for decades. Plus , Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, and his 2008 Republican opponent, John McCain, had the the audacity to completely agree with him.

However, the goal of closing the prison camp has been stymied by Republicans in congress who invoke irrational fears of terrorists moving into the house next door to yours. Enter Fox News, who predictably pile on to advance the theory that Obama is providing aid and comfort to the enemy. The Fox Nation website is doing its part by posting an article with the sensationalized headline, “Obama Parole Board Frees Al Qaeda Terrorist Deemed ‘Too Dangerous To Be Released.”

Fox Nation

See Fox Nation vs. Reality for over 50 more documented examples of Fox lies.
Available at Amazon

The first, and most obvious, problem with this is that the terrorist in question has not been been freed as the headline says. There has simply been a determination that he is eligible to be transferred from Gitmo to Yemen, his nation of origin, but only after sufficient security arrangements have been settled. That means that if he is released, it will be into the custody of Yemen’s prison system.

Furthermore, the Fox Nationalists linked to an article by the right-wing legal hacks at Judicial Watch, where they spent most of their time spinning a tale of a different former Gitmo detainee, Sufian bin Qumu, who is alleged to have “participated in the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Libya.” What Judicial Watch doesn’t disclose is that Qumu was released in October of 2007 by George Bush to Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi later released him in an amnesty for political prisoners.

Of course, it is not possible for the U.S. to anticipate every future action by a foreign government and, to some extent, Obama has to rely on the assurances of Yemen that they intend to keep their prisoners locked up. But Fox News is quick to smear Obama as aiding and abetting terrorists for something that has not even taken place yet, while at the same time remaining silent about Bush, when both were executing the same policy. Fair and balanced my ass.

Christie’s Bridge-Gate Scandal Boosts Rachel Maddow To Ratings Victory Over Fox News

Posted by on January 13, 2014 at 6:32 pm. 17 Comments :

Rachel Maddow

The dominance of Fox News in the Nielsen ratings for cable networks has not been seriously challenged for most of the past several years. There have been periods that looked promising for the competition, particularly the months between the Democratic National Convention and the presidential election in 2012. During that time MSNBC was beating Fox on a regular basis as President Obama was doing the same to Mitt Romney. That trend was still in effect as late as January of 2013 when Fox reported steep declines in the key 25-54 demographic, while MSNBC shot upward.

Fox-MSNBC Ratings

However, that state of affairs did not hold as the nation settled into a new year with the excitement of electioneering behind them. There would be little drama in the ratings race for the next few months. Eventually, Fox would enjoy a rebound as they ramped up their coverage of various scandals that they had been carefully crafting with their Republican allies. But even then they were suffering losses of the younger viewers that advertisers favor.

Last week, however, saw an unexpected bounce for MSNBC, and particularly Rachel Maddow. Her ratings in the demo thrust her into the number one spot for the whole week, ahead of Fox’s newly minted prime time star Megyn Kelly. Chris Matthews also benefited by tying the week with Greta Van Susteren, and Lawrence O’Donnell scored clean victories over Sean Hannity on a couple of days. This turnaround was surprising during a post-holiday lull, but there is a possible reason for it.

Maddow and her colleagues may have Chris Christie to thank for their ratings success. Their rising fortunes began at the same time that Maddow broke the story of the George Washington Bridge tantrum thrown by the Christie camp as political payback to unsupportive Democrats.

Let’s face it…Scandals have the same power to drive ratings in political news as they do in soap operas. The last ratings spike that Maddow enjoyed was when a video of Romney appeared showing him casting aside 47% of the American electorate as lazy moochers. And, as mentioned above, Fox exploited their own scandal sheet last may to recover from a long slump.

What this tells us is that, in order for MSNBC to consistently rise above Fox, they need to have as effective a scandal factory as Fox has. That’s a tall order because Fox has big head start in manufacturing fake scandals and the phony outrage that accompanies them. And for a network like MSNBC that has yet to exhibit much of an aptitude for inventing controversies that don’t exist in reality, they have some catching up to do.

Of course, Republicans have been more than generous in producing scandals for themselves, as the Christie affair so clearly demonstrates. The problem is that the so-called liberal media has not been especially good at taking advantage of the opportunities that were laid in their lap. But if MSNBC or CNN want to seriously challenge Fox’s ratings dominance, they had better show some improvement in that area in the future.

Breitbart ‘News’ Invents Quotes To Smear CNN

Posted by on January 13, 2014 at 1:39 am. 4 Comments :

There’s an old saying that wisely counsels to leave well enough alone. Unfortunately, the Tea-guzzlers at Breitbart News have dismissed that advice and unleashed an assault against CNN and its chief, Jeff Zucker. Never mind that CNN has devolved into a nearly useless platform for right-wing propaganda as evidenced by their recent interview of Glenn Beck by Beck’s own employee, S.E. Cupp. But that’s not good enough for the BreitBrats. Now they are launching an attack on CNN that is so feeble they had to make up quotes to hammer them with.

Breitbart News

The title on Breitbart’s article is “CNN To Republicans: Drop Dead.” Of course, no one on CNN ever said or even implied that. The flimsy impetus for the citation occurred in an article that was a slobbering love sonnet to Fox News by BreitBrat Tony Lee, whose feathers were ruffled by a remark made by CNN’s Zucker at a TV convention. Zucker responded to a question about a recent Fox criticism of CNN by correctly pointing out that “I think we all know what’s going on there. The Republican Party is being run out of News Corp. headquarters [and] masquerading as a channel.” Zucker was merely acknowledging the obvious: that the cozy relationship between Fox and the GOP is a well documented fact. [Note: Fox happily reposted the Breitbart article on their own web of lies, Fox Nation]

BreitBrat Tony rushed to Fox’s defense with a quote by the Chairman of the Republican Party, Reince Preibus who denied that Fox was his party’s mouthpiece saying “Hey Jeff Zucker, we’re the Republican Party and we speak for ourselves, pal.” Sure they do. They just do it mostly on Fox News, and when they aren’t available, Fox does it for them.

Lee then gets to the point by alleging that “It’s an interesting strategy Zucker has: trash the Republican Party and, by extension, all Republicans.” Except where in Zucker’s remarks did he trash the Republican Party? He merely noted that Fox is a GOP friendly network, which no one who is paying attention would dispute. Zucker’s comments were not even directed at Republicans at all. They were characterizing Fox News’ obvious partisan bias. But apparently associating Republicans with Fox News constitutes “trashing” in Lee’s view.

The rest of the article went on interminably about how Fox is beating their competition in the ratings, as if that had some relevance to the subject or to the measure of news quality. Lee’s conclusion, therefore, was summed up in the article’s second made up quote: “These factors led The Hollywood Reporter to declare that Roger Ailes and Fox News had won the cable news wars.” The only problem with that is that the Hollywood Reporter declared no such thing. In fact, it was Ailes himself who made the declaration in an interview with the Reporter.

It takes an astonishingly low grade level of comprehension to take a quote by Ailes and attribute it to the Hollywood Reporter simply because that’s where it was published. But the quote itself was deliberately misleading and self-serving, as one might expect coming from the the CEO of Fox News about his own network. The only people who still believe that cable news quality is measured by ratings are the marketing and the PR departments. The truth is, in a point made often here at News Corpse, is that being number one is only a measure of popularity, not quality. After all, McDonalds is the number one restaurant in America, but very few people would say that it is the best quality food in the country. However, they do have something in common with Fox News:

Fox News / McDonalds

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Obama ‘Seizes’ Control Of Courts By Following The Constitution

Posted by on January 12, 2014 at 2:05 pm. 2 Comments :

Hillary Clinton once said that if President Obama walked on water he would be criticized by Republicans for not being able to swim. Sadly, the point Clinton was making about the knee-jerk hostility of the right does not go nearly far enough. For example, this week the Fox News community website, Fox Nation, took a swipe at Obama’s judicial nominations with an article titled “Obama Seized Control Of ‘Second Highest Court’ In The Nation.”

Fox Nation

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

The Fox Nationalists cribbed this item from the ultra wingnut brigade at Newsmax, who nurtured a conspiracy out of the rather routine process of filling vacancies on federal courts. Writing for Newsmax, John Gizzi said that…

“In November, Obama effectively gained control of the 11-member court when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid triggered the ‘nuclear option’ — reducing the threshold needed to stop a filibuster from 60 votes to a simple majority.”

Putting this assertion into the context of reality, a state of consciousness that conservatives deliberately avoid, one would first have to recognize that Harry Reid only moved to modify the Senate rules because Republicans had abused them in an unprecedented manner. While filibusters were once employed as a last ditch effort to derail legislation that a member simply could not abide on principle, today’s GOP made it a routine procedure by filibustering virtually everything that came up for a vote. This was particularly egregious when it came to the confirmations of administration appointees and judges. It was a tactic aimed at gutting the authority of the executive branch of government that, for the first time in history, was headed by an African-American.

As a result of the filibuster reform, Obama’s nominees for judicial posts were able to be confirmed by a majority vote in the senate. This is sometimes called “democracy.” Subsequent to confirmation, however, Obama has no control over the decisions by his appointees who are independent and have lifetime tenure. So there is no truth to the assertion that Obama has seized control of anything.

Newsmax went on to quote the rightist Heritage Foundation lawyer, Hans von Spakovsky (a cartoon villain name, if there ever was one), complaining that by filling the court’s vacancies, it would then have a majority of jurists appointed by Democratic presidents. In the view of von Spakovsky that was some sort flaw that artificially prejudiced the judiciary. To the contrary, that is precisely how the Framers intended the system to work. Over time the courts would represent the political diversity of the populace as democratically expressed by their vote for the presidency.

All that Obama has done, with help from the senate, is to carry out his duties as stipulated by the Constitution. It is the president’s responsibility to place nominees before the senate for confirmation when a vacancy is created. There is no reference whatsoever to filibusters in the Constitution. So the charge that is being made that Obama has “seized control” of the courts is unarguably false. But that never stops Fox Nation from publishing such charges. In fact, it probably makes it all the more likely.

Sarah Palin Rehired At Fox News To ‘Piss Off’ People And Other Tales Of Temper Tantrums

Posted by on January 11, 2014 at 11:29 am. 7 Comments :

What does Fox News CEO Roger Ailes have in common with New Jersey governor Chris Christie? They are both bullies who enjoy taking out revenge on their political enemies in the most childish way possible. [They are also a couple of jerks whose chunky frames are only outweighed by their inflated egos, and who have a deep and perverse mutual affection for one another] By now everyone knows how Christie sought to punish Democrats in Fort Lee by shutting down lanes on the George Washington Bridge, creating severe traffic jams, costing millions in productivity loss, and potentially endangering people’s lives. And now we learn, from Ailes himself, that his emotional maturity is similarly stunted.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter this week, Ailes was asked “Why bring back Sarah Palin just a few months after not renewing her contract?” His answer exposes him as a petulant little twerp who may be too senile to continue running a national news network.

Ailes: I’m not a defender of everything she says. I don’t hear everything she says. But I know she represents a certain group of people who rose up against their own party, which you rarely see. I probably hired her back, if you really want to get to the bottom of it, to give her a chance to say her piece and piss off the people that wanted her dead.

Indeed, Palin represents a certain group of Tea-sodden people, but they are fervently supportive of the far-right wing of their party (as is Ailes) and would never consider voting for anyone but a Republican. The fact that Ailes can’t cite as reasons for Palin’s rehire her superior intellect or insightful analysis says much about his disdain for both Palin and his audience. His management philosophy at Fox appears to include a mandate to inflict revenge on liberals who don’t even watch the network. In reality, the people who dislike Palin (this author included) couldn’t be happier that she is back on Fox News making an ass of herself and the network.

This isn’t the first time that Ailes has made a personnel decision that is rooted in childish vengeance. Last year, in a fawning biography that Ailes himself had solicited, he told the author why he had kept Glenn Beck on the air long after he had decided that Beck was a divisive figure who was costing the network advertising revenue. The reason Ailes gave for putting off Beck’s departure was that he “didn’t want to give MoveOn and Media Matters the satisfaction.” So Ailes permitted Beck to continue broadcasting his race-baiting, Nazi-inflected, conspiracy theories for several more months because he would rather poison the airwaves (and the minds of his viewers) with lies and hatred than to let his ideological adversaries think they had scored a victory.

Another example of the juvenile (and paranoid) brand of Ailes’ management style was revealed in an article this week in the Daily Beast. David Freedlander wrote in “Fox’s War Against Ailes Biographer” about the lengths to which Ailes will go to attack journalists who dare to write anything about the cable news overlord:

“Fox News has been waiting for [Gabriel] Sherman’s book [The Loudest Voice In The Room] to come out. According to interviews with a half-dozen former employees of what is known as the Fox News ‘Brain Room,’ the brain trust at the network has been following Sherman’s work for years. Although the so-called ‘Brain Room,’ located in the basement of Fox News studios, was supposed to be dedicated to research for the networks programming, two former news librarians describe an environment where they were frequently called to do opposition research about media reporters who were writing about Fox News or Ailes. Former employees described being tasked to investigate reporters from a variety of beats, including hunting down personal information such as voter registration that was used to determine how ‘Fox-friendly’ the reporter was.”

The use of a newsroom’s assets and personnel to carry out private vendettas is plainly unethical, as noted by NPR’s media reporter David Folkenflik. Folkenflik was himself a victim of Fox’s wrath and gave the Daily Beast his assessment of the toxic environment at Fox News:

“They are on a wartime footing. They approach this stuff in a very different way, in the way that a PR shop in a political campaign would. It is hard to imagine any other serious news outlet — The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN — handling negative news stories in this way.”

And that’s pretty much the gist of it. Fox is perpetually at war. It is a theme that permeates their broadcasts whether it’s about a Class War or a War on Christmas, there is a built in hostility at Fox that infects its personnel on and off the air. It is why they regard anyone who disagrees with their editorial viewpoint as a hostile adversary. And that precise language was used in an ad that Fox placed in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post:

Fox News Ad

[Update 1/11/2014] In response to Ailes claim that he rehired Palin to piss people off, Palin took to her Facebook page to say “Funny. I accepted for the same reason!” Proving that both Ailes and Palin are too stupid to grasp that her critics aren’t the least bit pissed off by her coming back to Fox and spewing her laughably ignorant drivel.

Ted Cruz Predicts ‘Lawlessness On A Breathtaking Scale’ By The Next Republican President

Posted by on January 10, 2014 at 2:31 pm. 7 Comments :

Ted Cruz has distinguished himself as the GOP’s answer to conspiracy theory superstars like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck. His wild imagination and fantastical declarations stretch the boundaries of absurdity. Consequently, it is fitting that his latest attack on President Obama contains a hidden warning about future Republican presidents. It’s a concession to the unprincipled nature of the conservative movement and particularly the Tea Party faction.

Ted Cruz

Cruz spoke at a policy orientation conference for the Texas legislature held by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). The TPPF has a conservative pedigree that includes the State Policy Network, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and numerous Koch brothers affiliated entities. Their agenda focuses on cutting government programs and taxes (i.e.Social Security, education, etc.), opposing health care reform, climate change denial, and generally advancing the interests of big business and energy enterprises.

In his keynote address, Cruz attacked Obama as “dangerous and terrifying” due to what Cruz alleged was “lawlessness on a breathtaking scale.” The Statesman reported Cruz as saying that…

“…from giving relief from deportation to some young unauthorized immigrants to enforcement of drug laws to waiving rules for Obamacare, the president has acted by executive fiat in defiance of the rule of law.”

Of course, there has been no legal finding that the President has violated any law with respect to the issues Cruz enumerated, or any other issue. These are nothing more than the typical ravings of a Tea Party extremist who wants very badly to denigrate a president he despises.

However, in the course of his rhetorical assault, Cruz reveals something about his own party’s unethical aspirations when he says…

“My message to all the Democrats and all the liberals is, what do you think about the next president, maybe a Republican, having the power Barack Obama has as a president who is not bound by the law?”

Setting aside for the moment that, as president, Obama has not exercised any executive authority not exercised by his predecessors, the upshot of Cruz’s warning is that, whatever you think of the legality of Obama’s actions, you cannot depend on Republicans to behave any differently. Cruz is confessing that the GOP will resort to lawlessness once they obtain power. That’s not a particularly compelling campaign platform. Just imagine the bumper sticker: Vote Republican if You Like Criminal Tyranny!

The bottom line is that Cruz doesn’t have any evidence, other than his conspiratorial hallucinations, that Obama has broken any laws, but if he has, Republicans will follow suit if given the opportunity. It’s similar to the GOP’s response to Sen. Harry Reid modifying filibuster rules in the senate. They claimed that it was an unprecedented assault on democracy – and that they do the very same thing if they assumed control of the chamber. So much for integrity.

In the end, America is better off with leaders who aspire to uphold the law and the Constitution, even if they sometimes fall short of their goals. At least they have ethical goals and they will be held to a standard of honor that can be measured. That’s far better than the admitted lawlessness that Cruz is proposing because, once you have declared your intention to ignore the law, as Cruz has done, you can dismiss those who criticize you for it. After all, you told them what to expect if they vote for you.

No Kidding, Snerdley: It’s Safe To Say That Fox News Is ‘In The Christie Camp’

Posted by on January 10, 2014 at 10:01 am. 3 Comments :

Everyone has something to say about the revelation that Chris Christie’s office was intimately involved in the closing of the George Washington Bridge despite their prior denials. This includes Rush Limbaugh who made what might be the understatement of the decade:

“The media, with the exception of Fox, which is probably – it is safe to say – in the Christie camp, the media is salivating now at the prospect that Christie’s career is over.”

Ailes/Christie

Never mind Limbaugh’s ridiculous notion that the media that created Christie and made him a household name is suddenly anxious for him to fade into oblivion. If there is one thing we know about the media it’s that they crave the sort of ratings-rich melodrama that would almost certainly envelope a Christie vs. Clinton campaign in 2016. So no knowledgeable person would accuse the media of yearning for an election season without Christie [Note: No knowledgeable person – so that rules Limbaugh out].

However, Limbaugh’s observation that Fox News is “in the Christie camp” is as startling as the discovery of Mexican Viagra in Limbaugh’s medicine cabinet. And it isn’t just because Fox News is the cable subsidiary of the Republican Party (or is the GOP a subsidiary of Fox?), there is also the fact that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes had actively solicited Christie to run for president in 2012. What’s more, the relationship between the two went even deeper than that as Gabriel Sherman reported two years ago:

“Chris Christie had dinner with Fox News chief Roger Ailes last summer, and the two had a phone conversation a few months ago in which Ailes encouraged Christie to run for president. When Gawker requested access to any official records of such interactions under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, they were blocked by a claim of executive privilege, meaning the New Jersey government considers Ailes an adviser to Christie.”

Sherman’s unauthorized biography of Ailes, “The Loudest Voice In The Room,” will be released next week and may contain more details of this relationship. In the meantime, there is ample evidence that Fox News is already running interference on behalf of Ailes’ crush. As Media Matters noted, Fox spent less than fifteen minutes reporting the breaking news about Bridge-gate, far less than other news outlets. When Fox did commit to cover the story they framed it as a demonstration of Christie’s “lesson in leadership.”

This obvious bias in favor of Christie should not surprise anyone. When the CEO of a cable news network has personally pursued you to become a candidate for president, it is indeed “safe” to assume that they are in your camp. Expect the love affair between Fox and Christie to continue until it becomes untenable to prop up a blatantly corrupt political bully. But don’t worry, Fox will survive the break-up and rebound quickly to former crushes like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Case Of ObamaCare’s Uncooked Books

Posted by on January 9, 2014 at 1:50 pm. NO Comments :

The burden of coming up with ever newer and more hair-raising scandals against the Obama administration must be wearing heavily on the Fox News flunkies assigned to that task. What else could explain the article posted to Fox Nation that alleged that Mark Udall, the Democratic senator from Colorado, had “Asked State to Cook Books on ObamaCare Numbers.”

Fox Nation

For more documented examples of Fox Nation’s dishonesty,
read the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality, available at Amazon.

The article alleged that “Udall’s office pressured the Colorado Division of Insurance to downplay the number of insurance cancellations caused by the rollout of ObamaCare.” However, the evidence of that claim was not provided. The Fox Nationalists linked their article to a column on the uber-rightist Breitbart News, where a concerted effort was made to spin the story in the most negative manner possible. At issue were the number of Colorado residents who had policies canceled by their insurance companies, and were not given an opportunity to renew them or switch to a similar policy.

Only by following a trail back several more steps to the original source in the Denver Post was the truth revealed.

“Many of the cancellation notices, however, also contain language allowing customers to renew their existing policies.

“One consumer advocacy group said that while the impact on the small number facing an absolute cancellation is real, ‘there’s been a lot of hype and not a lot of drilling down into the facts.'”

So, in fact, many of the alleged cancellations were not really cancellations at all because the customer was permitted to renew the policy. Sen. Udall simply wanted the number of cancellations reported to reflect that fact. But in pursuit of another phony controversy, the Fox Nationalists, in conjunction with the BreitBrats, manufactured a marauding senator putting pressure on a beleaguered bureaucrat.

As usual, there was no controversy, there were no cooked books, and the only departure from the truth was by the fabulists at Fox News.