Sarah Palin: If He’s Good Enough For Ted Nugent…

Posted by on February 20, 2014 at 2:47 pm. 10 Comments :

We haven’t heard much from Tea Party queen Sarah Palin lately. That may explain why she is now taking desperate measures to draw attention to herself.

Sarah Palin

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In the state of Texas there is a budding gubernatorial contest that is certain to make waves. Democrats are likely to nominate State Senator Wendy Davis who rose to prominence during a heated state senate session where Republicans sought to ram through a legislative package that would have severely hampered access to reproductive health clinics for women in the state. Davis led a filibuster that, at least temporarily, blocked the legislation.

On the other side, Republicans are leaning toward the current state Attorney General, Greg Abbott, who is an arch-conservative Tea Party candidate with some unsavory friends. One of those friends is aging schlock-rocker Ted Nugent. When news broke that Nugent would appear on the campaign trail with Abbott, the candidate was forced to respond to critics who questioned how he could share the podium with a hostile, foul-mouthed, misogynistic, hate monger, who recently called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel.”

This is where Palin comes in with an endorsement for Abbott. But in her Facebook post she didn’t enumerate Abbott’s qualifications for the governorship. She didn’t reel off a list of accomplishments as Attorney General. She didn’t even praise his personal set of values that are aligned so closely to Palin and her Teabaggery. Nope. All she said was…

“If he is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me!”

That’s an astonishingly low bar for someone who wants to be governor. But it is about as high as Palin can see. You may recall that her own turn at governing a state ended when she quit midway through her first term after being resoundingly bitch-slapped by America in her bid to move to Washington, D.C. But to cite Ted Nugent’s support as a reason to back Abbott stretches the boundaries of sanity. Essentially Palin is saying that if Abbott is good enough for a draft-dodging, pedophile, who has publicly advocated violence against his political foes (especially women), then she is all for him. Here is an example of the kind of vision that Palin admires in Nugent:

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

And if that doesn’t set your heart to palpitating, how about this (video below)…

“I was in Chicago last week I said, ‘Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk?’ Obama, he’s a piece of sh*t and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns. Let’s hear it for him. I was in New York and I said, ‘Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch.’ Since I’m in California, I’m gonna find Barbara Boxer she might wanna suck on my machine guns. Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore.”

That’s the level of citizenship and patriotism that Sarah Palin regards as so exemplary that she would base her support for the governor of Texas on the favorable assessment of the crackpot who spewed it. It just shows how low these cretins will stoop to garner the support of even the most repulsive wing of their wretched party. We can only hope that the people of Texas are paying close attention and will look to a more respectable source for advice on who should be their next governor.

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Congenital Liar James O’Keefe Makes False Charges Of Illegality Against Battleground Texas

Posted by on February 20, 2014 at 3:45 am. 11 Comments :

James O’Keefe has just released the latest of his long-running series of intentionally deceitful videos. In this episode O’Keefe returns to one of his favorite themes: harassing civic-minded volunteers who commit their time to registering voters and honoring America’s tradition of democracy. If there is one thing that extremist conservatives like O’Keefe hate, it’s people participating in the electoral process or helping others to do so. Especially if they are minorities, the poor, and other disenfranchised citizens.

James O'Keefe

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The new video purports to have captured illegal activity engaged in by volunteers for Battleground Texas, a local organization that promotes voter participation. O’Keefe’s hidden camera records a volunteer named Jennifer Longoria describing a part of the process for engaging voters and encouraging them to turn out on election day. Longoria explains that Battleground Texas keeps contact information gathered from the voter registration forms they collect. It is this practice of saving names and phone numbers that O’Keefe alleges is illegal.

The only problem with O’Keefe’s allegation is that it is utterly false. What O’Keefe did was to clip a portion of the Texas election code that says “The registrar may not transcribe, copy, or otherwise record a telephone number furnished on a registration application.” What he either fails to understand, or is deliberately misrepresenting, is that this section of the law applies only to the Registrar of Voters and other county officials. It does not apply to the volunteers or organizations that distribute and collect voter registration forms. In fact, the Texas Secretary of State website addresses this matter directly in their “Frequently Asked Questions” for volunteers:

Q: May I photocopy a completed application before turning it in to the county voter registrar?

A: No. Section 13.004(c-1) of the Code requires the county voter registrar to ensure that certain information, such as the telephone number, on a registration application is redacted from photocopies of voter registration applications from her office. In our opinion, this means that a photocopy of an application must come directly from the county voter registrar’s office, so that he or she may ensure the required information has been blacked out or otherwise obscured. With that said, we believe that a volunteer deputy registrar may photocopy the receipt. You may also copy the relevant information from the application in writing just as you would be able to do if you went to the registrar’s office and pulled a copy of the original application.

So actual photocopies are not allowed, but manually recording the data is expressly permitted. And that’s all that Battleground Texas is doing. The purpose of the applicable code is to prohibit confidential voter information from being published or otherwise made public by people on the government payroll who could have motive and opportunity to abuse their power. But Battleground Texas is not a government agency, nor are they publishing any of the data. Also, the information defined as confidential is specified in the code and includes things like the social security number and driver’s license number, but not the phone number.

The fact that James O’Keefe is thoroughly shredding the most basic standards of ethical journalism should not surprise anyone. His previous escapades have resulted in his arrest and conviction in a Louisiana senator’s office, and a legal order to pay a $100,000 settlement to a former ACORN employee he defamed. He himself has broken voter registration laws in a failed attempt to defend suppressive voter ID legislation. And let’s not forget his sleazy plot to seduce a CNN reporter aboard his “Love Boat,” or harassment allegations by a former associate that he tried to drug and kidnap her. His videos have been criticized by a broad array of media analysts for editing that blatantly misrepresents reality. Even Glenn Beck condemned his deceptive tactics.

However, what is truly disturbing is that, after having established a reputation as a shameless scam artist, there are still media outlets that provide a platform for his lies. Almost as soon as O’Keefe posted the new video it was picked up by Fox News on their Fox Nation website. From there it was swept up into the conservative media vortex that includes National Review, Breitbart News, WorldNetDaily, NewsBusters, FreedomWorks, The Daily Caller, Townhall, Human Events, TeaPartyOrg, and conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones’ Infowars.

Despite sensationalistic headlines about “Busted Dems,” none of these so-called news enterprises bothered to actually look into the law and ascertain whether a violation had occurred. They have simply taken the word of a known purveyor of falsehoods. That’s because their role is to distort and confuse rather than to inform. And that’s why O’Keefe can always find an outlet through the wingnut-o-sphere to peddle his phony investigations that invariably attack disadvantaged Americans and are a coordinated part of the Republican war on voting. The state of Texas has one of the lowest rates of voter participation in the nation, and O’Keefe and his GOP allies want to keep it that way.


Charles Krauthammer Of Fox News Has Hillary Clinton Amnesia

Posted by on February 19, 2014 at 2:48 pm. 7 Comments :

Often portrayed as the intellectual voice of contemporary conservatism, Fox News pundit Charles Krauthammer seems more like a doddering old coot with a touch of dementia. How else to explain the whimpering challenge he issued during an interview on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Tuesday. It was also picked up for a segment today on Fox News.

Fox News

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Krauthammer: When people talk about Hillary being a superb secretary of state, I just ask one question. Name me one thing, just one, not three, give me one thing she achieved in her four years as secretary of state. I have yet to hear an answer. … She traveled a lot. So did Marco Polo. And you want him to be president?

Obviously the rightist audience listening to Hewitt’s program wouldn’t want Marco Polo because he was an illegal immigrant pretty much everywhere he went. But as to the substance of Krauthammer’s inquiry, you would have to wonder who he was asking. Most likely it was other wingnut enemies of Hillary Clinton who wouldn’t give her credit even if they could cite something positive.

It would not be difficult, though, for Krauthammer to get an answer to his question if he really wanted one. Or maybe The Google is just too confusing to him. Here is, not one, but eight achievements for which Clinton can take at least partial credit (h/t The Week):

1. The liberation of Libya
Clinton was among a group of administration officials urging Obama in 2011 to help Libyan rebels overthrow longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, over objections from Defense Secretary Roberts Gates and others.

2. The opening-up of Myanmar
In 2012, Clinton became the first secretary of state in 50 years to make an official visit to Myanmar, part of the Obama administration’s efforts to reward the ruling military junta for taking concrete steps toward a freer society.

3. Playing peacemaker in the Middle East
In late 2012, Clinton brought all her diplomatic resources to bear during a bloody outbreak of violence between Israel and Arab militants in the Gaza Strip, performing a whirlwind tour of the region that many credited with helping prevent an all-out war.

4. Freeing a Chinese dissident
Clinton’s May 2012 visit to China, ostensibly about mutual economic and security concerns, was ensnared in a full-blown diplomatic emergency, after human-rights dissident Chen Guangcheng escaped house arrest and took refuge at the U.S. Embassy.

5. Killing Osama bin Laden
Clinton was not intimately involved in the clandestine operation to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011, but she will be indelibly linked to the moment, thanks to a photograph showing her real-time response to the operation in the White House Situation Room.

6. Tightening sanctions on Iran
Clinton announced new sanctions on Iran with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, played an important role in the U.S.’s efforts to win international support to isolate Iran economically. The sanctions have been the most severe Iran has ever dealt with.

7. Isolating Syria’s Assad
Clinton condemned atrocities committed by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and played a central role in the administration’s efforts to corral international support against the regime.

8. Fighting for women’s rights
One of Clinton’s main initiatives as secretary of state was to champion the cause of gender equality, one of the hallmarks of her political career that stretches back to her days as First Lady.

Fox News, of course, isn’t interested in having an honest discourse on this subject. The truth is that Krauthammer never expected an answer to his disingenuous inquiry. Just floating the question raises the doubts for which he is aiming. He knows that most people can’t extemporaneously recite the accomplishments of any Secretary of State, or most other government officials.

In all likelihood Krauthammer himself could not cite any of Condoleezza Rice’s accomplishments when she headed the State Department. And he would certainly have forgotten the six times American embassies were attacked on her watch. With the frothing intensity that Fox has attacked Clinton over the tragedy in Benghazi, just imagine how much more severe their rage would be if Clinton had six Benghazis like Rice did.


CONSPIRACY: Republicans Want The IRS To Go After The Tea Party

Posted by on February 18, 2014 at 3:43 pm. 3 Comments :

It’s hard to know how to present the discussion that took place this weekend on Fox News. During their recurring segment on Political Insiders, Fox contributor Pat Caddell floated his theory that it is Republicans who are responsible for the alleged targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRS (video below).

False Flag

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Caddell: The establishment Republicans want the IRS to go after the Tea Party. Got it? They want to go after the Tea Party. Because the Tea Parties are an outside threat to their power hold. And, I’m telling you, the lobbying, consulting class of the Republican party, the Republican leadership, who have been attacking the Tea Parties and alienating them, they want the IRS doing this.

If that’s true, then Caddell has uncovered a clandestine plot by the GOP to sabotage their strongest conservative allies and most reliable Republican activists and voters. Did the Republicans infiltrate the IRS and orchestrate a strategy to deny Tea Partiers tax-exempt status? Did they conduct sham hearings in the House, led by the crusading committee chair (and recidivist criminal) Darrel Issa, all the while maneuvering secretly to oppress Tea Party organizations and cast the blame on Democrats? It’s not unlike a scenario I mockingly offered last year that accused the GOP of a False Flag Operation.

It’s kind of a brilliant plan that would stifle intra-party rivals while putting Democratic foes in a negative light. And there are elements of the story that could be corroboration for such a plot. For instance, it turns out that the IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, and Lois Lerner, the head of the agency’s Tax-Exempt Organizations division, were Republicans hired by George W. Bush. So it never made sense that they would be engaged in a conspiracy to help Democrats silence the Tea Party.

On the other hand, Caddell could be in the throes of severe dementia resulting in his imagining a wild conspiracy wherein the GOP is just another enemy of the patriots waving tea bags around. If his musings hold weight, should we expect Issa to convene new hearings indicting Republicans for their complicity in the alleged scandal? For that matter, can we expect apologies from Issa, and dozens of other Republican politicians and pundits, who falsely accused the Democrats of conspiring against the Tea Party?

So which is it? Is Caddell breaking news or smoking crack? It’s often hard to tell with many of the ludicrous theories that waft from the halls of Fox News.


Tastes Like Watergate: An Illustrated Guide To A Fox News Obsession

Posted by on February 18, 2014 at 1:30 pm. 6 Comments :

If there is one thing you can credit Fox News with, it is their tenacious determination to stand by even the most ludicrous figments of its overactive and politically twisted imagination. Once they sink their teeth into a story, nothing – and certainly not exculpatory facts – will dampen their resolve to peddle their delusions to their dimwitted viewers.

The string of pseudo-scandals that Fox has nurtured for most of the past six years has not produced a single shred of evidence of any wrongdoing by President Obama or his administration. Even with the aid of a bitterly partisan and hostile Republican majority in the House of Representatives conducting dozens of hearings, issuing subpenas, calling witnesses, compiling thousands of pages of documents, and staging theatrical press events, they have still failed to make a case against the President or any of their other targets.

What they have done is to compile an impressive record of psychotic obsession with prosecuting the White House for whatever they thought might stick if rubbed in hard enough. And in an effort to make the slander even stickier, they stirred in a generous heap of Watergate analogies. For instance…

Fox News Watergate Obsession

Never mind that none of these alleged scandals were ever proven in any way, despite hundreds of hours of congressional hearings and investigations by the right-wing press. It’s interesting that Fox is fixated on aligning Obama with disgraced former president Richard Nixon. The only thing they are succeeding at is reminding people that it is Republicans who are responsible for this sort of criminality. But that won’t stop the folks at Fox. Look for them to dig up some new affair that they will equate with Watergate. Maybe he has been covering up his actual golf score, or perhaps the scandalous revelation that he has been dying his hair gray to garner sympathy (oh wait, that one has already been done).


Fox Business Network Debunks Fox News/Koch Brothers ObamaScare Story

Posted by on February 17, 2014 at 1:58 pm. NO Comments :

From the very first days of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) Fox News and other right-wing media have work their butts off trying to frighten people away from it. Their ultimate goal is to sabotage the program by suppressing participation. But with more than three million enrollments, and millions more covered by Medicaid or parental plans, the Fox strategy appears to be failing miserably.

That, however, has not dampened their resolve to do damage to the program and the millions of Americans who are already benefiting from it. Recently an ad that was produced by the Koch brothers-financed Americans for Prosperity, featured a Tennessee woman who suffers from Lupus. In the ad Emilie Lamb claims that she was forced from a state-sponsored insurance plan (which conservatives usually oppose) that cost her $57.00 a month, to an ObamaCare plan that cost $373.00. On the surface that sounds pretty awful. But as usual, there is much going on just below the surface.

Fox News

Consumer Reports health care expert Nancy Metcalf, writing for the Fox Business Network, added some necessary context to this story. Her article titled “Don’t be fooled by another ‘Obamacare horror story,'” spells out why Lamb’s claim that her previous policy satisfied her needs may not have been entirely true. For instance, Lamb’s CoverTN plan had a cap of $25,000, but Metcalf notes that most Lupus patients spend far more than that each year for routine medication and doctors visits. If she has a flare up or requires treatment for more severe symptoms, Lamb’s medical expenses could easily exceed six figures. Metcalf writes that…

“Under her old plan, they would not have been covered. Under her new plan, they will be. I used HealthCare.gov’s window-shopping feature to identify what she purchased: a Platinum plan with a $1,500 out-of-pocket limit. There is no deductible, 25 percent coinsurance for pretty much all services, and, most critically, no upper limit on what the plan will pay out for medical care. So if she ever has a complication of her disease, or needs one of those expensive drugs, the most she’ll have to pay out of pocket in a year is $1,500. The insurance company will pick up the rest of the tab, no matter how costly.”

One of the incentives for implementing health insurance reform was the number of bankruptcies filed by working Americans whose insurance failed to cover them after they had the audacity to get sick. While Ms. Lamb is understandably disturbed by the higher premiums she is facing now, it is preferable to a financial (and health) disaster should her disease take a turn for the worse. In addition, the evidence actually suggests that Lamb’s costs will be lower under ObamaCare due the $1,500 annual out of pocket maximum, and the absence of any lifetime cap. Under her previous policy she would be responsible for much more over time.

The Koch brothers and Fox News have been relentlessly hyping this story as proof that ObamaCare has not served patients like Lamb. They have featured it on the air with reports that provide no opinion counter to that of the Fox angle. They have posted it on their lie-riddled community website, Fox Nation. They published an op-ed by Lamb in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. So it is somewhat curious that they permitted their hype to be debunked on their little-viewed Fox Business Network website.

This may be their way of buying a little insurance of their own. When the bottom falls out of their propaganda machine, they can claim that they were “fair and balanced” after all. Even though their blurb on the FBN blog can never match the magnitude of their attacks on ObamaCare throughout the rest of their media empire. And don’t expect to see Nancy Metcalf providing Fox News viewers with her analysis anytime soon. She’s not likely to be invited onto the O’Reilly Factor given the factual nature of her reporting.

To Fox, it’s best to keep people like Metcalf segregated to the FBN web ghetto so the Foxbots aren’t exposed to the sort of truthful information that contradicts conservative spin and rattles right-wing media.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: ObamaCare Is NOT Recruiting Undocumented Immigrants

Posted by on February 15, 2014 at 3:08 pm. 7 Comments :

Fox News has labored vigorously to establish its reputation as America’s whites-only cable news channel. Simultaneously they have distinguished themselves as the nation’s foremost purveyor dishonest and politically biased “reporting.” But every now and then they manage to score extra points by melding these two achievements into a single story. That goal was realized today by Fox’s community website, Fox Nation, with help from their disreputable pals at Breitbart News.

Fox Nation

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The headline declaring that “ObamaCare [is] Recruiting Illegal Immigrants” is absolutely, provably false. As is the content of the article that says in the opening paragraph that “Covered California–the flagship of state Obamacare exchanges–is recruiting illegal (“undocumented”) immigrants to sign up for the program, regardless of their eligibility.”

There is no truth whatsoever to that claim. But adhering to factual reporting has never been the mission of Fox News. It’s especially humorous that Joel Pollak, the BreitBrat author of the article, attempts to align his bogus assertions to Republican congressman Joe Wilson who, you may recall, shouted out “You lie,” during President Obama’s 2009 State of the Union speech when the President stated that the Affordable Care Act would not cover undocumented immigrants. Pollak believes that Wilson is due an apology based on his deeply misconstrued interpretation of a page on the Covered California website.

The shoddy news sleuthing by BreitBrat Pollak turned up a page that informed readers that they did not need to worry if they were “undocumented and want your family to enroll in health insurance. That was the spark that set fire to Pollak’s active imagination. Without wasting any effort on reading further or trying to understand the context, Pollak concluded that this was an attempt to enroll undocumented immigrants in ObamaCare, which the law explicitly prohibits. This is what the very first paragraph on the page actually said:

“According to the laws and implementing regulations, the information provided by individuals for coverage can not be used for purposes other than ensuring the efficient functioning of the insurance market (Covered California) or administration of the program, or to verify certain eligibility determinations including verification of the immigration status of these people.”

If Pollak had the comprehension skills to grasp this, he would have noticed two things: 1) The page is assuring applicants that the information they provide will not be shared with immigration agencies. And 2) That verification of immigration status will be a determinant condition of their eligibility.

The importance of the first item is to reassure people that an application will not result in an investigation or potential deportation. Many Latino families have mixed immigration statuses and they are sensitive to the possibility that their families could be separated. Consequently, they refrain from enrolling in benefits programs like ObamaCare. That means that many people who are actually citizens (i.e. children who were born here, or naturalized adults) would be deprived of services to which they are entitled because of their concern for other family members who may not be documented. This assurance allows them to apply without having to fear unrelated consequences.

The second item should be an assurance to bigots like Pollak that no undocumented immigrants would receive health care benefits under ObamaCare. It is an explicit declaration that citizenship is required for eligibility. And it is what makes Pollak’s assertion that illegal immigrants are being recruited regardless of their eligibility such a blatant lie.

It’s interesting to note that the Fox News Latino website does not have a story on this matter. Fox News Latino often takes positions that sharply contrast with those of the Fox News mothership. It is their way of trying to lure in the fastest growing demographic in the country without alienating them the way Fox News does. Although, there is a story that addresses the administration’s efforts to reach out to Latinos. And in that story they correctly point out the dilemma of mixed immigration status families who worry about separation, saying that “One big issue is that the law requires that those seeking coverage provide the immigration status of members of their household to determine eligibility.” That is what the page on Covered California is there for – to alleviate that concern.

It is remarkably dishonest and unethical to portray the information provided on Covered California as attempting to recruit undocumented immigrants to enroll in ObamaCare. Yet that is precisely what Breitbart and the Fox Nationalists did. And they did this despite the fact that the correct information was plainly in front of them on the same page. Therefore, it can only be assumed that they knew the truth and deliberately chose to ignore and/or distort it. But that’s the one thing that is not surprising about this. That is, in fact, standard operating procedure at Fox News.


ABC, CBS, NBC Criticized By Fox News For Being Just Like Fox

Posted by on February 13, 2014 at 1:18 pm. 4 Comments :

From it’s very inception Fox News has been the most adversarial news network that ever took to the air. Even it’s slogan taunted competitors by inferring that they were not “Fair and Balanced.” Whenever they see an opportunity to criticize other media, they leap on it with the ferocity of ravenous jackal. Such is the case with a report today on the Fox Nation website. The headline indicted the broadcast news programs for partisan bias saying that “ABC, CBS, NBC Report Ray Nagin Conviction, Neglect To Mention His Political Party.”

Fox News - Nagin

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Oh My God! That is a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. Any so-called “news” enterprise that would so brazenly distort the facts of a story in this manner should be ridiculed and ostracized from the community of reputable journalists. They should surrender their credentials and slink away in shame.

The only thing worse than neglecting to note the political party of a convicted former mayor would be to neglect to note that the network making the criticism did the very same thing. That’s right…When Fox News reported on the conviction of Nagin they also left out any mention of his party affiliation (video below). Shepard Smith broke into Gretchen Carlson’s program with a two and a half minute “Breaking News” alert that covered just about everything else that is known about Nagin, complete with graphics and video. So it would be difficult to argue that they didn’t have enough airtime or time to prepare.

The Fox Nationalists sourced their story to the ultra-rightist media bashers at the Washington Free Beacon who wrote that…

“CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and ABC World News broadcasts gave brief mention to the conviction of former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin Wednesday on 20 federal counts, including bribery and conspiracy, but all three omitted the fact that he was a Democrat.”

It says something about the research skills (or the rank dishonesty) of these supposed media analysts that they managed to monitor the big three nets for what they regard as flawed reporting, but failed to catch the same omission by the top-rated cable news network that shares their ideological bias. They would certainly never bother to complain about Fox when it, on multiple occasions, misidentified Republican scoundrels as Democrats without ever correcting the record.

Fox News Mislabels

On a more substantive note, the complaint that network news failed to mention that Nagin is a Democrat may not be a particularly serious oversight. When Nagin was indicted, the news spinners at NewsBusters made a similar complaint about network news reporting. What none of these stories mention is that Nagin’s party designation was a fairly fluid matter. As I wrote at the time…

“The right’s panic over whether or not the media should have identified Nagin as a Democrat ignores the fact that his association with the Democratic Party was a matter of political opportunism. Nagin had been a registered Republican for most of his adult life. He only switched parties when he decided to run for mayor of the heavily Democratic city of New Orleans. Even after his election he associated with, and behaved as, a Republican. As mayor he routinely favored the interests of his business constituents over the people. He was an avid supporter of George W. Bush prior to his election, and GOP governor Bobby Jindal afterwards.”

So it isn’t really much of a blunder to leave out the party affiliation of a slippery character like Nagin. In fact, if identifying his party were considered integral to the story, a responsible journalist would note that Nagin was more of a Republican than a Democrat. But if Fox is going to go out of their way to make their competitors look bad for leaving this information out, then they ought to include themselves in their criticism if they really want to be fair and balanced.


Putin On The Twits: Fox News Regulars Infatuation With The Russian Dictator

Posted by on February 12, 2014 at 1:51 pm. 10 Comments :

Try to imagine the reaction from Fox News and conservative politicos and pundits if President Obama or any other Democrat lavished praise on a foreign dictator. Consider the severity of the tongue lashing that would ensue, with blistering allegations of collusion, betrayal, and even treason. Tea Party Republicans would be drafting articles of impeachment, and thinly disguised comments advocating assassination and secession would flood the Fox Nation website.

So how then to respond to yet another Fox News contributor expressing his admiration for Russia’s strongman, Vladimir Putin? Dr. Ben Carson wrote an op-ed today that honored Putin for criticizing the United States for “becoming godless and moving away from Christian values.”

Carson: While we Americans are giving a cold shoulder to our religious heritage, the Russians are warming to religion. The Russians seem to be gaining prestige and influence throughout the world as we are losing ours. I wonder whether there is a correlation.

In two sentences Carson has displayed two examples of acute dementia. First, where Carson gets the idea that Americans are giving a cold shoulder to religion is a mystery. For good or ill, this is still a deeply pious nation with a huge majority of professed Christians. Second, Carson is advancing an incomprehensibly absurd notion that Russia is gaining prestige at a time when they are being excoriated for their bungled Olympics, and their support for the brutal Syrian regime of Bashir Assad is straining their international relations.

Carson is no stranger to delusional hyperbole. He has recently equated homosexuality with bestiality, ObamaCare with slavery, and demonstrated that he isn’t afraid to tread on Godwin’s Law by warning that our government is “acting like the Gestapo.” But he isn’t alone in these detours from reality either.

A fool’s parade of Fox Newsies have jumped on the Putin bandwagon. They include military analyst K.T. McFarland, anchor Martha MacCallum, anchor Tucker Carlson, and commentator Charles Krauthammer. And the affection from the Fox crew did not go unnoticed in Russia. An article published in Pravda last year with the fanciful title, “Why Conservative Americans Admire Putin,” gives a pretty accurate account of the commonalities between the Tea Party and the Politburo:

“With no hero to save them they become frustrated and look to Putin, [whom they see] kneeling at Christ’s Holy Sepulcher which Obama never does when visiting Jerusalem. They see him going to church when they know Obama favors Muslims who attack Christians and their churches. They see Putin establishing laws to protect the church and laws against homosexuality. This they admire and this brings them hope. Hope in their upside down world where there is a leader willing to follow Christ. They have no Reagan but they see Putin whom they wish was their president.”

So really, what it all comes down to is worshiping Christ and demonizing gays. As the Russians fall in line on those priorities, the American right has fallen in love with the Russians. Putin can be their Zombie Reagan. But you have have to wonder how far this could go. There are lots of villainous tyrants and demagogues who meet some of these prerequisites. Al Qaeda, for instance, is as stridently anti-gay as they are pro-theocracy. Right-wingers should love that. And you know who else hated gays? Hitler! Plus, if they pray hard enough, they may convince God to bless them with this:

Putin/Palin 2016


Fox News Wants Some Examples Of Tea Party Racism They Say Does Not Exist. So…

Posted by on February 11, 2014 at 1:12 pm. 63 Comments :

Last Saturday more than 80,000 people in North Carolina gathered to march in protest of the Republican mission to strip minorities of their civil rights and gut the social safety net for low-income citizens. It was the largest protest march since the peak of the civil rights movement in 1965.

So how does Fox News cover this news-making event? By having Sean Hannity send an African-American Tea Party leader to ambush and embarrass the marchers. How else would Fox do it?

Fox Nation

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Hannity’s “correspondent” was David Webb, founder of TeaParty365, Fox News contributor, and Breitbart News columnist. Webb landed at the protest with a bag of questions that had nothing to do with the agenda for the march. He harangued the protest’s organizers with off-topic questions (the video of which cut out most the answers). Then he asked a few participants if they thought Obama is a successful president. Most answered correctly that he has been obstructed at every turn by Republicans committed to blocking anything he proposes, even if it was originally a GOP initiative.

However, the feature of the video was Webb asking marchers to give examples of racism by the Tea Party. This is the sort of ambush tactic that serves no purpose other than to create a negative impression of the respondents. First of all, Webb’s video showed him interviewing only four people out of the more than 80,000 who attended the march. Without the uncut footage we have no idea if there were forty others who supplied Webb with bona fide examples of Tea Party racism that he left on the cutting room floor. It’s easy to splice together just the remarks that make his point and discard the rest.

Furthermore, the respondents were not official spokespeople for the protest and they did not come prepared to have answers for Webb’s loaded questions. It’s unreasonable to expect that random citizens participating in a march to protest specific policies of North Carolina’s ultra-right Republican administration will be carrying documentation of Tea Party racism to an event that isn’t related to that subject. Yet that is precisely what was expected of the four victims of Webb’s inquisition. Fox Nation even placed a story about this at the top of their website with a sensationalized headline that implied that liberals as a group were unable to cite examples of bigotry in the Tea Party. Maybe they should ask more than four liberals before making such a ludicrous assertion.

That said, I wouldn’t want Fox News, Sean Hannity, and David Webb to be disappointed by not getting a substantive response to their inquiries. Therefore, they might want to look into the Tea Party agenda for evidence of racism. For instance, their reactions to the recent commercials for Cheerios (with a biracial family) and Coke (with a multilingual rendition of America the Beautiful) revealed a thinly disguised prejudice for anything not purely of Euro-Caucasian descent. Then there were the infamous Birthers whose allegations are inherently racist. The Tea Party’s opposition to social safety net programs is often portrayed as a response to the lazy moochers in the inner city they regard as the beneficiaries. Then there is their advocacy of voter ID laws that largely impact minorities, as well as seniors and the poor. And they continue to refer to undocumented residents as “illegals,” even if they broke no laws. The Tea Party’s legislative and social agenda is rife with this sort of bigotry.

For more evidence, note the frequency with which Tea Party leaders are caught saying out loud things that are overtly racist. For instance this Arkansas Tea Partier, or this one in California, or this former chairman of the Tea Party Express.

And if that isn’t enough, take a look at these images gathered from Tea Party rallies and websites:

Fox News - Tea Party Racism

Of course, Hannity and Webb would never address these examples that they disingenuously requested. Their intent from the outset was to let the question hang out there unanswered to leave the false impression the charges of racism were unwarranted. But any paying attention knows the truth about the Tea Party, and a little research confirms it. Too bad Fox News viewers will never see it.