GOP Debate On Fox Business Wants To Know: Whose Plan Would God Endorse?

Posted by Mark NC on November 10, 2015 at 11:04 pm. 8 Comments :

The rancorous aftermath of the Republican debate a couple of weeks ago on CNBC laid the foundation for a comparison to what Fox News would do when they hosted their second GOP debate on their sister network, Fox Business. The hype prior to the FBN affair was all about how they would show the rest of the press how a debate should be run.

Well now we know. Rather than questions about whether Donald Trump is a cartoon candidate (which deserves further scrutiny), Fox’s Neil Cavuto, the Glenn Beck of business news, sought to ascertain the candidates’ positions on tax policy. And opening that segment of the program, Cavuto turned to Ben Carson and asked…

Seriously? That was the first question asked on the subject of taxes. And it was rather contentious framing that pitted Carson against Trump, something Republicans railed against after the CNBC debate. And yet, following this debate Fox will undoubtedly spend untold hours exalting themselves as superior debate hosts and praising how they put on a more serious, less combative candidate forum.

It may indeed have been a program more closely in tune with their audience who likely support the notion of a faith-based tax policy. Perhaps the next Republican debate can be an American Idol spin-off called “God’s Favorite,” where candidates compete to see who gets voted out of Heaven.

Anyone who has researched the tax plans of the GOP field, however, will not be surprised by the reliance on faith. They all create varying degrees of additional debt with Trump’s topping out at more than $10 trillion over ten years. The Rev. Ted Cruz continued sermonizing with a comparison of the IRS tax code to the bible. You’ll never guess which one he preferred. But the sin of lying was given short shrift. PolitiFact examined recent representations by some of the candidates and rated them all less than truthful.

So did Fox achieve their goal in presenting a less antagonistic debate that focused on the issues and served the interests of voters? Well not if disseminating real information is the standard of judgment. At no time during the debate was it brought up that these candidates were pitching tax plans that exploded the debt. That seems like something that voters would want to know.

In the end, though, if the voters were not served, the candidates were. They got pretty much exactly what they wanted: A forum to articulate their views without any serious challenge. The debate was more of an extended infomercial for the candidates who were permitted to spin, lie, and even promote their websites in a brazen appeal for cash. Which actually is kind of a perfect synergy for a GOP (Greedy One Percent) debate on Fox’s money-media network.

GOP Debate On FBN To Be Moderated By The Glenn Beck Of Business News

Posted by Mark NC on November 9, 2015 at 3:34 pm. 5 Comments :

The Republican candidates for president are preparing for their next televised debate tomorrow on the Fox Business Network. It is rather peculiar that FBN was selected as a debate host considering that their program ratings are so low that Nielsen doesn’t even publish them. This debate was a gift from the Republican National Committee to their benefactor and overlord, Rupert Murdoch, who is desperate for anything that might goose the numbers.

In the wake of the last GOP debate on CNBC, FBN is facing certain challenges to their production. The candidates were so outraged at what they regarded as unfair treatment that they banded together in a show of unity to force all the subsequent debate hosts to bend to their will. Embarrassingly, they couldn’t even manage that protest and eventually dropped their demands.

Still, there will be competing pressures on FBN and their moderators, Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo. Candidates will watching to see if they are hammered with “gotcha” questions (which to Republicans are any questions they can’t answer). But if the moderators go soft they will be pilloried as stooges for the GOP who didn’t have the cojones to address serious issues or differences between the candidates. It will be interesting to see how they walk that tightrope.

There may be some surprises, but for the most part this debate will shun controversy. What can be assumed with some confidence is that the moderators will avoid anything that might reflect badly on the candidates. They will skew closely to the Fox News bias in favor of electing Republicans. Questions will framed as how the GOP will differ from the commies in the other party. And leading that parade will be Neil Cavuto, the Glenn Beck of business news.

Cavuto’s presence on Fox News and Fox Business (where he is the Senior VP and Managing Editor) is a relentless barrage of hyper-partisanship and crackpot conservatism. His commentaries are boorish assaults on Democrats and liberals. He is a serial interrupter of anyone who holds a different opinion than his. And his analysis always manages to put progressive policies and achievements in a negative light. For instance, he was fond of calling the historic market gains that occurred in Obama’s first term as a “bear market rally.” And that was when he wasn’t calling it the “Bush recovery.”

For your entertainment pleasure, the list below demonstrates some of his more outlandish pronouncements:

On the Iran nuclear deal Cavuto said that “We are helping the very folks that may have had a hand in 9/11.” But there is no evidence that Iran had any role in the Al Qaeda attack.
Cavuto opined that if Benghazi had happened on George W. Bush’s watch he would have been impeached. However, there were thirteen deadly attacks on diplomatic facilities during Bush’s presidency, but no impeachment, no hearings, not even any notable criticism.
Cavuto demeaned people who received government aid as lazy moochers who believe that “as long as Uncle Sam’s got my back I can lay back.”
Cavuto slammed efforts to raise the minumum wage because when he worked at a fast food restaurant in his youth he considered it a great learning and growth opportunity. But when adjusted for inflation, he was earning $2.22 more than the current minimum wage.
In one of his tirades against Climate Change he railed that “it is freezing across the entire globe.” Of course, only an idiot would say such a thing, particularly when almost every year for the past decade ranks as among the hottest ever.
His report on ObamaCare featured high grade fear mongering and a title warning about “National Healthcare: Breeding Ground For Terror?” That’s right. In Cavuto’s world health care equals terror.

This is the sort of fringe crackpottery that is right at home on Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze or Alex Jones’ InfoWars. But Cavuto practices it on both his Fox News and Fox Business shows. He invites guests to appear with equally outlandish conspiracy theories with which he generally agrees. He engages in non-stop, brazenly partisan, propagandizing on behalf of the conservative agenda of his network bosses, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Cavuto is a Tea Party boosting, climate science denying, harbinger of economic Armageddon. And tomorrow night he will moderating a Republican primary debate. Should be fun.

The Reviews Are in: Donald Trump Bombs On SNL

Posted by Mark NC on November 8, 2015 at 4:10 pm. 18 Comments :

Now that is it’s all over, it turns out that the hype that engulfed Donald Trump’s appearance on Saturday Night Live was more entertaining than the actual show. There are barely any reviews that have anything positive to say about either Trump’s performance, or that of the regular cast and writers.

The big problem with Trump hosting the show, and the reason the protests were so pronounced, was never about the debate between opposing political ideologies. It was about the noxious validation of an unrepentant hate monger. Would SNL proffer an invitation to a KKK leader if they thought it would produce big ratings? One can only hope not. Likewise, the role of political satire is not to suck up to the rich and powerful, but to slather them in mockery. On that level SNL failed miserably.

Even with regard to ratings, SNL failed to achieve much of a victory. The program did not break any records. It did exceed their other programs over the past three years (not a long time frame for a show that’s been on the air for more than forty years), but fell below such non-talents as Sarah Palin and Charles Barkley. And the reviews for Trump were decidedly unflattering to say the least. Here’s a short sampling of the damage:

New York Times: “S.N.L.” stuck with obvious, anemic political riffs and apolitical sketches that were cringeworthy all around.
Los Angeles Times: “SNL” seemed so bent on appearing nonpartisan that it over-compensated and forgot its actual mandate: Be funny.
The Wrap: In its 41st season, the show would rather play along with the wealthy and powerful than satirize them.
Yahoo TV: Host Donald Trump kicked off this week’s Saturday Night Live with an opening monologue that demonstrated all the reasons it wasn’t a good idea for him to host SNL. […] The only entity that came off worse than Donald Trump was SNL.
Variety: Most of the sketches involving Trump were weak, timid or predictable.
Time: His episode of SNL was among the most anodyne in the show’s recent history.
Washington Post: Trump’s sorry night on ‘SNL’: An overhyped bummer for us all.
Townhall: Trump on SNL Was Dull, Unfunny.
Greg Gutfeld, Fox News: They deliberately wrote nothing, as a protest. It’s like a restaurant cook spitting on someone’s food.

The last two in this list were specifically included to show that it isn’t just the “liberal” media ganging up The Donald. Gutfeld’s paranoid observation that there was a conspiracy by the writers to tank Trump is especially ludicrous. Why would they do so knowing that it would make them look just as atrocious as their star? They have their own careers to consider.

The one moment in the show that was universally applauded was Larry David’s heckling of Trump’s opening monologue wherein he called Trump a racist. David was cashing in on the actual offer by Latino activist group Deport Racism to pay $5,000 to anyone in the SNL audience who called Trump a racist on the air. The group says that it will honor the offer and pay the prize to David (not that he needs it). SNL’s attempt at a preemptive strike to dilute the impact of an audience member disrupting the show backfired because David’s disruption got far more people talking about Trump’s bigotry than an unknown person in the audience would have.

Trump, on the other hand, was stiff and painfully humor-challenged. What’s worse, he managed to make himself appear even less presidential than he has on the campaign trail this year (not an unimpressive feat). It probably won’t hurt him among his supporters because, by definition, their judgment is pitifully defective.

But the real losers in all of this are NBC, who reversed their pledge to cut ties with Trump due to his offensive remarks, and SNL, who are demonstrating a crushing weakness in what should be their core comedic competence. It’s a sad decline for the program that seems to be accelerating downward. And following this disgraceful capitulation to a bully bigot, you have to wonder what’s next for SNL.

Ted Cruz Super PAC Brags That He ‘Makes Things Happen,’ Like 1,000 Mass Murders Since Sandy Hook

Posted by Mark NC on November 7, 2015 at 3:55 pm. 7 Comments :

Texas Senator Ted Cruz sure loves him some guns. His affection for assault weapons is so fierce that he brags about using them to cook bacon. He portrays himself as a defender of the Constitution whose Second Amendment he distorts by ignoring the “well regulated militia” clause.

Now a Super PAC working on his behalf has produced an ad (video below) aimed at taking down fellow Republican Marco Rubio. In the course of the attack on Rubio it veers to the right to direct some fire at President Obama. Unfortunately, it misses the target and results in severe harm to some truly innocent bystanders. The ad says that…

Indeed, Cruz was one of the leading opponents of measures to protect children and others from the horrific tragedy that befell the residents of Newtown, Connecticut. The fact that twenty children can be slaughtered by gunfire from a military-style assault weapon in their elementary school classroom, and nothing is done about it, is due in part to the determination and indifference of Ted Cruz to “make things happen,” or more precisely, to make things NOT happen, because that’s the only skill he’s demonstrated in his single senate term.

So thank you, Sen. Cruz, for ensuring that future citizens will be just as vulnerable as those kids. Thank you for standing up for the gun manufacturing lobbyists at the NRA instead of the victims and their families. You’ll be glad to know that your efforts have already resulted in nearly 1,000 more mass shootings in the United States just since the December 2012 massacre in Newtown. The shooters in those incidents killed at least 1,251 people and wounded 3,602 more. You must be so proud. Your senate colleague, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, responded to the ad with an impassioned righteousness.

“Ted Cruz makes things happen,” should become the new slogan of his campaign. And so long as voters know that the things that he makes happen are threats to the welfare of all Americans, the nation will renounce his dangerous agenda. What’s more, his policies that include the repeal of ObamaCare, the destruction of Social Security, tax cuts for the wealthy, the crippling of the middle-class, never-ending war, and demolishing the wall between church and state, will hurt every other American. And that agenda is shared by all of his Republican pals running for the presidency. Yes, Republicans make things happen. Very, very bad things.

Ben Carson’s Brazen Dishonesty Still Isn’t As Bad As His Glaring Lunacy

Posted by Mark NC on November 6, 2015 at 8:45 pm. 7 Comments :

The recent revelations about Ben Carson’s proclivity for embellishing his life story are certain to present him with problems going forward. He has now been found to have been less than truthful about a scholarship offer to West Point. On the same subject he said that he met with General Westmoreland at time that he was hundreds of miles away. His recollections of childhood hostility have come under scrutiny for having changed in substantive ways on each telling. The tale of cowardice in a fast food restaurant when he directed a gunman to assault someone else has no evidence of ever having occurred. He appears to be making up his legend as he goes along.

As serious as that sort of mendacity is, it is still not the biggest problem with Ben Carson and his improbable candidacy for president. That’s because, in just the past few days, Carson has added to a series of strikingly ignorant commentaries. It is truly baffling that a respected neurosurgeon can utter such nonsense. It is equally baffling that so many Americans can be fooled into supporting him. And the examples herein don’t even include the stupendously idiotic assertion that the great pyramids of Egypt were built to store grain.

The three most blatantly harebrained remarks that Carson made this week should make any voter cringe. For instance, defending his absence of political experience, Carson conceded that…

The argument that a lack of political experience is an endorsement of one’s fitness to be the Leader of the Free World makes about as much sense as a brain surgeon boasting that he’s never actually performed surgery. But Carson’s comment is also off base because nearly every signer of the Declaration of Independence had elected office experience. Whoever is doing Carson’s research should be fired.

In another attempt to exalt the inexperienced, Carson turned to the bible and constructed an analogy that in his dementia he must have thought supported his argument. he said that…

Is he now advocating that all shipbuilders be interrogated to assure that they have never actually worked on ship construction? Just hire the ones with the most piety and confidence that God will guide them to build a nice boat. What’s more, Carson is comparing the seaworthiness of Noah’s Ark, a vessel for which there is no evidence that it ever sailed, or even existed, with the infamous Titanic. The logical flaw in this analogy is that the Titanic, which existed, was extremely well built. It didn’t sink due to any construction or design flaw, but due to the bad navigation and judgment of the captain and crew who steered it into an iceberg. Consequently, this analogy undercuts Carson’s point, because it’s the experience of the sailors that would have made the difference.

The introduction of God into Carson’s political philosophy occurs with great frequency. He freely mixes religion into matters of politics and science. For instance, he believes that the Big Bang Theory and evolution are the work of Satan. However, he also believes that…

Who knew that the Lord Almighty was directly responsible for Fox News and for making it available to Carson? What’s more, who knew that Fox News is the only reason that the United States is not a tiny communist island? The notion that America would have fallen into the sphere of Soviet style communism, but for the existence of a cable news network that is watched by about one percent of the population, is further evidence of Carson’s acute derangement. What kept America from becoming Cuba prior to 1996 when Fox was launched?

Indeed, it is important to be able to believe what those who aspire to lead the nation say. Hillary Clinton is getting a lesson in the value of trust herself. But she doesn’t go around spouting fables as facts and turning history into mythology. So Carson, as many people are now learning, may be a bald-faced liar, but that isn’t nearly as bad as his being a totally unhinged schizoid who is convinced that God sent him to save America and the world.

[Update:] As if to affirm his utterly insane perspective, Carson went on an epic rant complaining that the media was responsible for his misrepresentations of reality. In the course of his barely lucid explanation he rattled off a bunch of old and widely debunked conspiracy theories about President Obama, saying “I do not remember this level of scrutiny for one President Barack Obama when he was running.” He included: Frank Marshall Davis, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Obama’s “sealed” academic records. Of course, upon examination, there was either no truth or nothing controversial in any of these issues. But more to the point, and despite his faulty memory, they were all scrutinized by the media in far greater depth than anything Carson has experienced yet. Why he doesn’t recall months and months of endless reporting on these and other phony issues is another reason to question his fitness for office.

Racists On Fox News Are OUTRAGED At People Protesting Donald Trump’s Racism

Posted by Mark NC on November 5, 2015 at 1:22 pm. 20 Comments :

Barring any last minute surprises, a couple of days from now Donald Trump will take to the stage of Saturday Night Live to engage in an evening of carefree hilarity. The program’s network and producers have so far shown no inclination to respect the millions of Americans who are offended by Trump’s undisguised bigotry, which to them is no laughing matter.

The opposition to Trump’s hosting gig has grown significantly with petition drives (here and here) that have gathered over 350,000 signatures. Nevertheless, NBC doesn’t seem to be the least bit dissuaded from permitting Trump to host their iconic comedy program even while Trump is the leading advocate for boycotting NBC/Telemundo’s Republican primary debate (the only GOP debate with a Latino sponsor).

The SNL controversy has been played out across the media spectrum including, of course, Fox News where the audacity of people protesting the repackaging of hate as comedy would not be tolerated. For example, this morning on Fox’s Outnumbered they did a segment about the protests that featured one of the hosts, Katie Pavlich, making a determined effort to outdo Trump’s own racism.

Pavlich led off by regurgitating Trump’s repulsive insult to millions of peaceful, hard-working undocumented American residents, saying that they are rapists and murderers. Furthermore, she seems to believe that there are no Latino activists working every day on the issues related to crime and violence in their communities. And based on that ignorant assumption, Pavlich blames Latinos for the horrible lies that Trump tells about them. But she wasn’t finished.

First of all, what Pavlich characterizes as both a stereotype and “the truth” is actually patently false. Studies have proven that immigrants are less likely to be criminals than the native-born. So maybe it is people like Pavlich that should stop shooting off their mouths until they rid their communities of criminal activity. Also, the notion that nobody can protest an injustice until every shred of any other bad behavior is eliminated, whether related to the protest or not, is just plain idiotic. Were that the standard, no one could ever protest anything.

So Pavlich made a compelling case for racists who want to distort the facts and spread fear and prejudice. And her co-hosts on the program unanimously agreed with her hate mongering. It was a nauseating display of unity for shameless bigots, but not surprising for Fox News. And when confronted with this sort of assault aimed at people exercising their constitutional right to protest, there is only one reasonable response, and it was made by these enlightened kids:

Fox News Continues To Donate Millions Of Dollars Of Airtime To Donald Trump

Posted by Mark NC on November 4, 2015 at 9:23 pm. 6 Comments :

The one thing that people will remember most from the Republican primary campaign of 2016 is going to be the fantastical story of a megalomaniac billionaire named Donald Trump. And the reason that he is going to be remembered is because Fox News contributed untold millions of dollars worth of valuable airtime to his campaign. Well, that and his penchant for being a boorish, conceited, loudmouthed, ignoramus.

Donald Trump News

It’s somewhat ironic that the richest man in the race (in history) to run for the presidency is being given so much advertising time for free. After all, he can afford to pay for it. And yet, month after month Fox News has made a gift of their time to the wealthy candidate. In their latest analysis of time distribution to Republican candidates, Media Matters shows that, once again, Trump has been the recipient of more of Fox’s generosity than any other candidate.

The unfairness and imbalance of the airtime differential is, as Trump might say, “Huuuuge.” He was featured on Fox for a total of four hours and twenty-seven minutes in October. Coming in at a distant second was Rand Paul with a comparatively measly one hour and forty-four minutes, or less than half of Trump’s time. Everyone else, of course, scored even less than that.

To put the distribution of time in perspective, Trump actually got more airtime than the combined total of nine of his GOP rivals (Bush, Cruz, Kasich, Graham, Santorum, Fiorina, Jindal, Pataki, and Gilmore). With that kind of promotion he could outsell Coca-Cola. And since there is no equal time provisions for news organizations, Fox can continue to blanket their air with Trump while burying his opponents.

One of the ways Fox pushes Trump to their audience is by airing most of his public addresses live in their entirety [Fox is not the only network guilty of this, as noted here]. They do this despite the fact that there is rarely, if ever, anything newsworthy about them. And they pointedly refuse to do this for any other candidate. Can you imagine the response if Hillary Clinton insisted that Fox air her speeches in full every day?

Another interesting observation is that Trump has achieved this status as Fox’s most frequent flier even though he has been embroiled in a series of very public and hostile feuds with the network. He has viciously insulted Megyn Kelly (whose show he still has not been on since their break up), and encouraged his supporters who expressed their intention to boycott Fox. Yet the network still keeps their nose a dark shade of Trumpish Brown. Just think how much more he would have been on if they were on good terms the whole time.

This past week there was a mini-tsunami by the GOP candidate club over what they thought was ill-treatment by CNBC during a debate they sponsored. Their anger resulted in a meeting to unite the candidates against the media overlords who were oppressing them. One of the outrageous demonstrations of brazen unfairness regarded the unequal time allotted for questions to each candidate. But if they were so disturbed by CNBC not giving each of them equal time during that one debate, then why aren’t they the least bit bothered by Fox News favoring one candidate over all the others for months on end? Shouldn’t they be holding meetings to castigate Fox News and to reform the way Fox News treats them all?

That’s not likely considering that the post-debate meeting they held to reform the debate process produced a letter to the networks with a list of demands that explicitly excluded Fox because “people are afraid to make Roger [Ailes] mad.” And so the status quo will flow on without interruption. And Trump will continue to get special treatment while his opponents grin nervously, beg for scraps, and beam their gratitude for whatever they get.

The GOP’s Debate Dysfunction Is A Mirror Image Of Their Governing Dysfunction

Posted by Mark NC on November 3, 2015 at 11:21 pm. 13 Comments :

Anyone who is surprised by the clumsy efforts of Republicans to try to manage their circus of a primary hasn’t been watching what they have been doing in Congress for the past several years. Their legislative record is by far the least productive in modern times with both the fewest bills passed and the fewest hours in session. They have developed a reputation as ineffective, incompetent, and obstructionist, even failing to pass their own bills.

The recent calamity surrounding their election of a new Speaker, following the wingnut driven exile of John Boehner, didn’t do much to enhance their reputation. They eventually settled for Paul Ryan, who doesn’t want the job and is despised and distrusted by their right wing “Freedom” caucus. What the Tea Party has wrought for the GOP is The Congress That Can’t Govern Straight. And not surprisingly, the resounding chaos and absence of leadership that is emblematic of the GOP’s congressional majority is precisely what is being seen in their response to what they regard as a poor debate performance.

Following the debacle at CNBC, the candidates attempted to band together to insist that reforms be made in order to avoid the messy affair that took place last week. They resolved to produce a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that would include a list of demands to present to the media organizations that produce and broadcast the debates. But as soon as it began the edges started to fray leading to a complete collapse. Within days the congregation of candidates fell apart. Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and John Kasich have said that they will not sign on to the draft MOU. Carly Fiorina didn’t even send a representative to the meeting. Chris Christie called out his rivals for complaining and boasted that all he needs is a stage and a podium (a line that Trump later stole, after he had already done his share of whining). Consequently, the group’s MOU appear’s to be a non-starter.

The whole process, however, was a catastrophe resulting in a set of criteria that was in no way different than what was already being done. In other words, it was a lot of frantic bluster that changed nothing. If you compare their demands to the debate agreement drawn up between the campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012, you are not going to find much difference. What’s more, nothing in the MOU would have prevented any of the things that occurred during the CNBC debate to which they so fiercely objected. So what’s the point?

Some of the candidates had suggestions for reform that never made it into the MOU. Ted Cruz expressed his desire to see the debate moderators limited to registered Republicans like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin. Because these respected journalists would bring a air of dignity and rationality to the debate. Ben Carson floated the idea of not broadcasting the debates on TV. He also lobbied for a two hour time limit with all 15 candidates in the same debate. Each would get a five minute opening and closing statement. Of course that would take two and a half hours.

Clearly these people cannot be taken seriously. It is unlikely that they even intended to pursue these debate negotiations. All they really wanted was an opportunity to bitch about the media, an easy target and a reliable applause line. But it wasn’t the media in general, just a specific subset that irks them. That would include anything in the NBC family and any network with a foreign sounding names (i.e. Telemundo). To be fair, Jeb Bush asked that Telemundo’s debate be reinstated, but Trump quickly slapped that down saying that if it was he would walk. There was one network though that got a free pass. All the parties agreed that the debate demands would not apply to Fox News because “people are afraid to make Roger [Ailes] mad.”

If there is one thing that is obvious about this charade, it’s that it couldn’t possibly succeed. Republicans aren’t really looking for fairness or balance in their debates. They want to turn the debate into an infomercial for the GOP. The networks could never agree to that. And with all of the infighting and conflicting priorities among the candidates it was destined to disintegrate. And like everything they have tried to do Washington, Republicans have proven once again to be bumbling fools.

MSNBC’s Scarborough Has On-Air Mental Breakdown Over Liberal Media Myth

Posted by Mark NC on November 2, 2015 at 6:22 pm. 12 Comments :

The resident Republican blowhard on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, has staked out his post as the network’s voice of rightist disinformation. He commands his three hour block of airtime like a junta leader, ordering the topics of discussion and interrupting his guests incessantly.

This morning Scarborough appeared to have a severe cognitive collapse during a segment about the Republican Party’s debate-o-phobia (video below). Like most of his ideological allies, he is suffering from the delusion that the American media, owned by a handful of megalithic, multinational corporations, is dominated by liberals. Scarborough set off on a rant about the absence of conservatives on nightly news programs, Sunday shows, and in the executive suites. He badgered his guests to come up with examples of Republicans in those roles, and insisted that they could not do it.

Setting aside the fact that Scarborough conveniently leaves out Fox News, the most watched, and therefore mainstream by default, cable news network, he repeatedly spits out this challenge to his colleagues, who are not particularly well informed on the subject. For instance, Mark Halperin, the senior political analyst for MSNBC, responded sheepishly saying “Joe, I agree with you 100%.” No one else on the panel was able to take up Scarborough’s challenge either.

For their future reference, they may want to note that Chris Wallace, now the anchor of Fox News Sunday, hosted NBC’s Meet the Press for a year. Tony Snow, who went on to serve as press secretary for George W. Bush was the first host of FOX News Sunday. Diane Sawyer anchored ABC’s World News Tonight for five years after serving as a press aide to Richard Nixon. So Scarborough’s sweaty insistence that no one can name such people is demonstrably false.

Scarborough kept switching from asking for on-air-personalities to executives in charge of the news operations. On that front there are right-wingers like David Rhodes, the current President of CBS News who had a similar position at Fox for fifteen years. Ken Jautz, the head of CNN, is the man who gave Glenn Beck his first job on television. NBC is now owned by Comcast, whose Roberts family owners are notorious righties.

There are certainly more conservatives in television newsrooms, but it’s hard to pin them down with proof. That’s because most career journalists are careful to avoid any open expression of partisanship. So people like CBS’s Scott Pelley, or NBC’s Chuck Todd, and many more, may have distinctly conservative views, but they have never worked for a GOP senator or made a donation to any political campaign, or even registered with a party, so there is no hard evidence. And the same is true for journalists who are accused of being liberals. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there. And it doesn’t warrant the loony outburst that Scarborough let loose today. If anything, the fact that no one at the table could cite any of the people mentioned above is proof that the media is conservative, and blind to their bias.

Super Sleuths At Fox News Finally Find Hillary Clinton’s ‘Smoking Gun’ Email

Posted by Mark NC on November 1, 2015 at 3:56 pm. 36 Comments :

On Friday the latest batch of nearly 7,000 of Hillary Clinton’s emails were made public. As with with prior data dumps, conservative media feverishly combed through the documents desperately seeking some damaging material with which to put Clinton out of their misery.

Most of what they found was precisely the boring material that Clinton has been telling everyone would be there for months. There was nothing incriminating, or even controversial. The best they could come up with were emails that exposed her as inquiring about the use of smileys on her phone and having communicated with Ben Affleck. It’s not the stuff on which impeachments are based. That is, until Fox News stepped up to uncover the biggest bombshell to date that may upend her campaign for the presidency: “Hillary’s Email Subject Read ‘GUNMEN Try To ASSASSINATE Head Of Libyan Army’ But That’s NOT What She Wrote About…”

That’s right! The former Secretary of State exchanged emails with a top aide that were not related to what was written in the subject line. Assemble the firing squad!

What we have here is a situation wherein Clinton aide, Huma Abedin (whom most wingnuts are certain is a mole for the Muslim Brotherhood), sent Clinton an email with an attached article from the Associated Press about an event in Libya nearly a year before the famous Benghazi attack. So Clinton took advantage of the email to reply with something else that was on her mind without bothering changing the subject line.

Millions of Americans do this every day without being accused of treason. But to the brainiacs at Fox News this was so significant that they posted it to the very top of their Fox Nation website, where it remained most of Sunday morning. [When they eventually updated the site it was with another article about Clinton that implied she was headed for jail] After all, this is big news. And notice their use of caps that were not used on the actual email.

The absurdity of this article was evident in the graphic that the Fox Nationalists were kind enough to include. It shows the exchange between Clinton and Abedin, with the ominous parts highlighted in red.

If this is the sort of “journalism” that Fox News thinks will bring down Clinton, they are pitifully delusional. Although it is typical of their lame efforts in the past to attempt to turn completely trivial events into full-fledged scandals. Jesse Watters has proven himself to be an immature, logic-challenged, amateur in his role as editor of Fox Nation, as well as his duties as staff doofus on Bill O’Reilly’s show.

The only thing this type of story can accomplish is to set the saliva glands of the dimwitted Fox audience to flowing uncontrollably. But that isn’t a particularly difficult task. All you really have to do is show them a picture of Clinton or President Obama with a swastika and stink lines and these miscreants will guffaw and wave their Gadsden flags.

The Internet's Chronicle of Media Decay

Month: November 2015

GOP Debate On Fox Business Wants To Know: Whose Plan Would God Endorse?

GOP Debate On FBN To Be Moderated By The Glenn Beck Of Business News

The Reviews Are in: Donald Trump Bombs On SNL

Ted Cruz Super PAC Brags That He ‘Makes Things Happen,’ Like 1,000 Mass Murders Since Sandy Hook

Ben Carson’s Brazen Dishonesty Still Isn’t As Bad As His Glaring Lunacy

Racists On Fox News Are OUTRAGED At People Protesting Donald Trump’s Racism

Fox News Continues To Donate Millions Of Dollars Of Airtime To Donald Trump

The GOP’s Debate Dysfunction Is A Mirror Image Of Their Governing Dysfunction

MSNBC’s Scarborough Has On-Air Mental Breakdown Over Liberal Media Myth

Super Sleuths At Fox News Finally Find Hillary Clinton’s ‘Smoking Gun’ Email

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