Fox Nation Lies And Lies

Posted by on May 6, 2011 at 1:03 pm. 1 Comments :

It is important to be accurate here. Fox Nation obviously spins stories to advance the ultra-rightist fairy tales they present as “news.” But they also engage in overt, blatant lying, not mistakes or differences opinions, but outrageous, unambiguous lies. Here are a couple of examples from this morning:


GE’s Immelt Surrenders on Climate
No he doesn’t. The article, sourced to the science deniers at the Fox-affiliated web site, JunkScience, brazenly misrepresents remarks by Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of GE. What Immelt said was that he had some regret that his prior focus on green technology was misinterpreted by critics as downplaying other priorities such as job creation and general business goals. In the article he expressly affirmed his support for Climate Change science and said that GE’s businesses in this area will create between 10 and 15 million jobs. He also said that those businesses will generate $21 billion in revenue this year. That hardly sounds like surrender.

NPR Caught Abusing Taxpayer $
No they weren’t. There was absolutely nothing in this article, sourced to the right-wing Daily Caller, that even remotely suggested abuse of any kind. The Fox Nationalists made it up from scratch. It was an article about NPR’s use of lobbyists to help them preserve the congressional funding that has been under attack since the release of phony sting videos by criminal videographer James O’Keefe. (Those videos, which were published by the Daily Caller, were subsequently proven to have been deliberately edited to create a false impression.) If the Fox Nationalists are implying that any use of lobbyists is inherently abuse, then they are accusing a lot of their pals of being corrupt.

It may seem futile to point to yet another example of Fox News being purposefully dishonest, but the need to be vigilant does not wane just because this band of liars are so prolific. The more we can demonstrate that Fox does not deserve to be believed the better chance we have of altering their behavior and preventing their distortions from taking hold.

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Wall Street Journal Launches Its Own WikiLeaks

Posted by on May 5, 2011 at 5:02 pm. 3 Comments :

The Wall Street Journal has gone into competition with WikiLeaks. They just launched the web site Safehouse where they are soliciting secrets that would ostensibly expose fraud and abuse. The site asks visitors to send in “newsworthy contracts, correspondence, emails, financial records or databases from companies, government agencies or non-profits.”

The interesting thing about this is that it puts the Wall Street Journal in the position of emulating an avowedly anarchist enterprise. I happen to believe that WikiLeaks serves a useful purpose by promoting transparency in public institutions, despite their controversial tactics. There is a role for that in the media as well, but the tactical approach should be consistent with the standards of journalistic ethics.

In that regard the Journal ought not to be encouraging people to break the law. And that is, in effect, what they are doing. The contributions they are seeking are likely to be private materials that are proprietary and confidential. By providing these materials to the Journal, the sources are exposing themselves to legal liabilities. The Journal implies that submissions can be made anonymously, but a reading of the terms of service reveals that the Journal “cannot ensure complete anonymity” and that it “does not make any representations regarding confidentiality.”

In addition, the terms of service, to which you are assumed to have agreed, stipulate that your use may not “violate laws, regulations or rulings, infringe upon another person’s rights, or violate the terms of this Agreement.” Consequently, after taking the risk of providing the data, the Journal sets you adrift legally by holding themselves harmless in the event that your disclosures were unlawful. And to drive home that point they state explicitly that “Dow Jones is not responsible to you in any way for any loss, damage, civil claims, criminal charges, or injury that result, directly or indirectly, from your use of SafeHouse.” So they get all the benefit, but you take all the risk.

It is that sort of disclaimer that differentiates Safehouse from WikiLeaks. Anything you provide to WikiLeaks is completely anonymous without your having to request it. The ghostly, non-profit site exists in a quasi-legal state that protects whistle-blowers without disclaimers and exceptions. The Wall Street Journal exists to make money and spread the rightist ideology of its owner, Rupert Murdoch. That makes dealing with Safehouse a precarious proposition.

Other news organizations are already entering this field. The New York Times and Washington Post are said to have projects in the works. al-Jazeera has already launched its Transparency Unit, which has none of the conditions of Safehouse. Therefore, there are far better options for nervous whistle-blowers than the one offered by the Journal. And remember, the Journal is part of a media empire that includes disreputable outfits like Fox News, the New York Post, and the Times of London.

I would be wary of trusting the Journal in any case due to the general hostility of the right toward WikiLeaks, whom many on the right regard as agents of espionage. There are conservatives who have publicly called for the execution of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ founder. The possibility of the Journal’s editors taking your data and turning you in is not difficult to imagine. With all of their legalese drafted to protect themselves, it doesn’t seem like a particularly safe house.

[Update] Due to the universally negative reception for Safehouse, the Wall Street Journal was forced to issue a press release in response. It said in part…

“There is nothing more sacred than our sources; we are committed to protecting them to the fullest extent possible under the law. Because there is no way to predict the breadth of information that might be submitted through SafeHouse, the terms of use reserve certain rights in order to provide flexibility to react to extraordinary circumstances. But as always, our number one priority is protecting our sources.”

Obviously protecting their sources is not their number one priority because in the sentence just prior they admit that the reservation of “certain rights” takes precedence over the protection of sources. And exercising those rights puts the source at risk. So unless you have some perverse desire to be ratted out, arrested, or sued, stay as far away from this un-Safehouse as possible.


Fox News GOP Debate Rejected By AP (And Candidates)

Posted by on May 5, 2011 at 9:18 am. 1 Comments :

Fox NewsTonight is the night that virtually nobody has been waiting for. Fox News is sponsoring a Republican PR event disguised as a presidential primary debate. The participants are a collection of washouts who are taken seriously by no one and have no plausible chance of election.

Confirmed for this waste of primetime are Gary Johnson, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Tim Pawlenty. The list of those not participating is far more notable: Mitt Romney, Mitch Daniels, John Bolton, Michelle Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, and Donald Trump. Fox News couldn’t even get their own employees, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee, to show up.

Also not showing up will be the Associated Press. In an advisory published yesterday, the AP said…

“This is to inform you that The Associated Press is not planning to cover Thursday night’s Republican presidential candidate debate in South Carolina because of restrictions placed on media access. The debate sponsors, Fox News Channel and the South Carolina Republican Party, will only allow photos to be taken in the moments ahead of the debate and not during the event itself.

These are restrictions that violate basic demands of newsgathering and differ from other debates where more access was granted.”

The reason that the Fox-sponsored affair is violating the basic demands of newsgathering is that they are not a news enterprise. They are a Republican mouthpiece for right-wing propaganda. In that respect this debate is perfectly suited for the network. You can expect some of the most extreme rhetoric to be thrown around by the party’s most extreme elements.

Fox is going all out trying to salvage the event by hyping it incessantly for the past week. Every host of every program has been promoting the debate and interviewing the participants and moderators to pump up viewership. Some are making the ludicrous argument that the top-tier candidates will regret not having attended. They compare it to Rudy Giuliani’s decision to opt out of many of the early primaries in 2008. [Note to Fox: this is a debate, not a primary.] I think it will the participants who end up regretful.

I wish Fox well in promoting this event. The more people that see this circus, the better informed they will be about what a bunch of losers the GOP is harboring. And it is also likely to reflect on the unserious nature of Fox News itself. They have really gone out of their way to produce a comical sideshow that could have just been an episode Hannity, the program it is preempting.


Fox News Gives Bush Credit For . . . Everything

Posted by on May 4, 2011 at 11:22 pm. 4 Comments :

A few days ago President Obama announced to the nation that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in a raid on his compound in Pakistan. Rather than congratulating the administration for having achieved a goal that had evaded the previous administration for seven years, the GOP went on the attack accusing Obama of everything from conducting the mission for political gain to making up the whole thing. Some critics even alleged that Obama had opposed the mission and the military acted in defiance of his orders which, of course, would be a treasonous act punishable by death.

It’s clear that the President’s opponents are simply unwilling to grant him the slightest bit of praise no matter what he does. They are there only to viciously attack him. These are the same people who ridiculed America’s leader being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and who celebrated when the U.S. was not awarded the prestige and economic benefit of the Olympic Games. They take pleasure in seeing the country embarrassed or harmed so long as they can blame it on Obama.

Conversely, they have a severely abnormal obsession with assigning credit to George W. Bush for things he wasn’t remotely involved in. With regard to Bin Laden, Bush famously said that “I don’t know where Bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important.”

Nevertheless, the right is trying mightily to persuade their feeble-minded flock that it was Bush who brought Bin Laden to justice and that Obama was a mere bit player, or worse, an obstacle. This isn’t anything new. Here are a couple of examples of revisionist right-wingisms as envisioned by Fox News:


So while Bush and his cronies drove the nation into the worst economic decline in decades, Fox tried to credit Bush for the recovery that Obama presided over. And when Obama executed his policy to draw down our engagement in Iraq, Fox tried to give Bush credit for that as well. In short, if something bad happens it doesn’t matter how early in his term it is, Obama is the owner and the cause of it. If something good happens it wouldn’t matter if it were the last days of his second term, he is merely a lucky bystander.

This sort of cynical dishonesty would be bad enough if partaken by a partisan politician or pundit, but when it is presented by a so-called “news” organization as fair and balanced reporting it escalates to obscenity. It is proof that when Rush Limbaugh said that he hopes the President (and therefore the country) fails, he meant it, and many of his ideological comrades are feverishly hoping the same thing.


CONFIRMED: Right-Wingers Mostly Wrong

Posted by on May 3, 2011 at 12:12 pm. 14 Comments :

The pundit class in American media has long been deservedly regarded with disdain. They are, as a group, an arrogant collection know-nothings who, via intense self-delusion, think they know it all. I addressed this sorry situation four years ago when I labeled them The PEP Squad: Perpetually Erroneous Pundits. The gist of that essay was to point out that once you become a member of the fraternity it doesn’t matter how much you get wrong, you will still be invited back to deliver more of your bad advice.

Now there is evidence from an academic study of contemporary punditry that shows that the accuracy of most pundits is no better than 50/50. So if you can flip a coin you’re as smart as the average pundit.

The most interesting conclusion of the report is the confirmation that liberals are accurate more often than conservatives. That may be the result of the inherent slant of factual information that was first identified by fake pundit Stephen Colbert who noted that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

The top performer in the study is Paul Krugman of the New York Times. The worst performer is uber-pundit George Will.

The study has some fairly serious methodological flaws in my opinion, including the omission of Fox News from the study. However, the most prominent flaw is that it included currently serving politicians in the roster of pundits. When politicians pontificate on current affairs they are not making predictions – they are campaigning. Therefore, they are not providing their honest opinions about what they believe will happen. They are attempting to influence public opinion to produce the result they hope will happen. To be sure, some bona fide pundits do the same thing, but at least they don’t have the direct conflict of interest that sitting senators have.

It is fairly safe to assume that the results of the study would not change materially if the politicians were removed. Anyone paying attention to media prognosticators over the years already knows that their success ratio is pathetic. If someone in almost any other job made mistakes as frequently as these losers, they would not have a job for very long. But such are the perks of PEP Squad membership.

What we need is a Pundit Certification Council. The purpose of this would be to rate pundits on their accuracy and impose mandatory labels. If they fall in the top third percentile they can be regarded as “experts.” Those in the middle would retain the “pundit” label. And those in the bottom third would have to be designated as “propagandists” wherever they appeared in the media.

This would provide some measure of truth in punditry. It would incentivize opinion givers to strive for accuracy, and give networks, newspapers, etc., a tool to assess the performance of their editorial staff. Then, if they choose to keep propagandists on their payroll, it would be apparent to their viewers and readers. Just imagine tuning in to This Week next Sunday morning and seeing, “George Will, ABC News Propagandist,” in large type below his deceitful talking head.


Judge Dreadful: Andrew Napolitano Mourns Osama Bin Laden

Posted by on May 2, 2011 at 11:18 pm. 14 Comments :

It looks like Fox News may be able to call off their search for Glenn Beck’s replacement. If drooling delirium and glassy-eyed insanity is the criteria, then Judge Andrew Napolitano has the role sewn up. Today he opened his program on Fox Business Network, Freedom Watch, saying…

“Osama Bin Laden assassinated, killed on the illegal whim of the President.”

That’s right. Osama Bin Laden, a brutal commander of terrorists responsible for thousands of deaths, is finally found and dispatched, and Napolitano says that President Obama is the criminal. The only thing Napolitano needs to seal the deal is a blackboard tying George Soros and Van Jones into the operation as well. Napolitano continued…

“Tonight on the docket Osama Bin Laden is dead and the President thinks he has a right to kill whomever he wants so long as the person is a monster and the people support it. Of course the attacks on 9/11 were a horrific tragedy, but killing Osama Bin Laden is a symbol of all we’ve lost in this pointless war on terror and we can’t forget that.”

Whomever he wants? Napolitano thinks that the President’s decision to target the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, who has been the subject of an international manhunt for ten years, is the same as a decision to kill anyone else with whom the President may have a beef. In Napolitano’s eyes there is nothing special about Bin Laden. Napolitano also believes that killing Bin Laden is “a symbol of all we’ve lost.” What would allowing Bin Laden to live and continue to murder innocent people be a symbol of, Judge? And why are you taking Bin Laden’s side in this against your President?

During the program Napolitano correctly criticized the Patriot Act, but conflated that unfortunate infringement of civil liberties with the mission to capture or kill Bin Laden. Despite the fact that the Bush administration exploited 9/11 to pass the bill, it never had anything to do with protecting Americans from terrorism. It was a cynical power grab on the part of Bush and a majority Republican congress (although way too many Democrats voted for it as well). For Napolitano to bring it up in the debate over whether Bin Laden should have been killed makes about as much sense as Beck’s theory that Muslims and teachers unions are conspiring to bring Sharia law to Wisconsin.

This must be Napolitano’s audition reel for Beck’s hour on Fox. And with delusional, fear-mongering material like this he could easily slip into the time slot without any of Beck’s addled fans noticing any difference.

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Osama Bin Laden’s Death Certificate

Posted by on May 2, 2011 at 9:50 am. 12 Comments :

For the non-believers who watch way too much Fox News:


This may seem unnecessary, but I have already seen comments at Fox Nation by “morans” who doubt that Osama Bin Laden is dead. They argue that since Obama has already released phony copies of his birth certificate, why wouldn’t he lie about this too? They demand evidence: certificates; photos; a body; DNA. They think the sea burial is part of the plot to cover up the hoax.

But what would they do with the evidence? Would they accept a certificate of death? Will they conduct their own DNA analysis in a lab in their basement? The real question is: Will they ever get the psychiatric help they need so badly?

On another matter, Sarah Palin posted a message on her Facebook page that thanked everybody but President Obama. She even used weaselly code language to thank those who “laid the groundwork over the years to make this victory possible.” That’s code for the Bush administration and anyone but Obama. Stay classy Sarah.

History will forever record that President Barack Hussein Obama was responsible for bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice. Not George Bush. Not Zombie Reagan. Not Donald Trump. Not Sarah Palin. This is driving the wackoid wingnuts crazy(er).


Mitt Romney: Hang The Obama Misery Index Around His Neck

Posted by on May 1, 2011 at 2:47 pm. 5 Comments :

Last Friday Mitt Romney spoke before a gathering of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded lobbying group that bankrolls the Tea Party. In response to a question, Romney stumbled over language that comes perilously close to a lynching reference:

“Do you remember that during the Ronald Reagan-Jimmy Carter debates, that Ronald Reagan came up with this great thing about the Misery Index? And he hung that around Jimmy Carter’s neck and that had a lot to do with Jimmy Carter losing. Well we’re going to have to hang the Obama Misery Index around his neck. And I’ll tell you, the fact that you’ve got people in this country really squeezed with gasoline getting so expensive, with commodities getting so expensive, families are having a hard time making ends meet. So we’re going to have to do talk about that, and housing foreclosures and bankruptcies and and higher taxation. We’re going to hang him with that — uh, so to speak, metaphorically, with, uh, you have to be careful these days, I learned that — with an Obama Misery Index.”

With so many examples of overt racism threading through the fabric of modern Republicanism, it is tempting to interpret every alleged gaffe in the most negative light. While Romney should know better than to juxtapose the words “hang” and “Obama” so closely (and his attempted recovery shows that he does know), I don’t think this qualifies as a racist remark. He is clearly using the metaphor of “hanging an albatross” around one’s neck, not a noose dangling from a tree. However, he’s still not off the hook (if I may mix my metaphors).

His remarks begin by attributing the Misery Index to Ronald Reagan. That isn’t true.

“The misery index is an economic indicator, created by economist Arthur Okun, and found by adding the unemployment rate to the inflation rate.”

What’s worse though, from a strategic perspective, is that the Misery Index under Reagan averaged 12.19. Under Obama, so far, it is only 11.48. And that doesn’t take into consideration that Reagan had eight years to spread the misery out. Obama was saddled with the worst economic calamity since the the Great Depression and has only had two years to try to correct it. Nevertheless, he is still outperforming Reagan.


[Click to enlarge]

In addition, an analysis of the Misery Index from the Truman administration to the present shows that the misery produced by Republicans (10.64) was significantly worse than that by Democrats (9.17). So if Romney wants to raise the issue and hang it around anyone’s neck, he might not want to stick his out so far without looking at the facts.


Donald Trump’s Skin Is Thinner Than His Hair [Update: Trump Responds]

Posted by on May 1, 2011 at 11:25 am. 12 Comments :

At the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, Seth Meyers mocked both President Obama and Donald Trump. Obama laughed heartily. Trump seethed openly. Clearly he can’t take joke.

Trump’s petulant absence of humor is funnier than Meyers’ jokes. This guy is so full of himself he doesn’t have the good sense to pretend to laugh even though he knows he is on camera. Obviously he is not accustomed to being the butt of jokes. Can you imagine if someone with his emotionally stunted temperament were president? If Sarkozy made a friendly wisecrack Trump would nuke Paris.

[Update] After proving at the dinner that he is an insufferable ass, Trump runs to Fox News this morning to whine to the Fox & Friends Day Care kids that it was a “liberal room” and then blasts Meyers:

“I thought Seth Meyers – his delivery frankly was not good. He’s a stutterer.”

Really? Now he’s resorting to playground taunts? What a pathetic display of immaturity. Trump was obviously unprepared for the attention and seems to believe that he’s unassailable. Before the dinner he was asked by ABC News if he thought that Obama would have any Trump jokes and he said “I wouldn’t think [Obama] would address me.” Good call, Kreskin. Then afterwords he lies saying “Well, I really understood what I was getting into.” Apparently not. And the lameness of his response escalated after that with a ludicrous stab at empathy with the economic travails of ordinary citizens:

“I was certainly in a certain way having a good time listening. I don’t think the American people are having a good time with $5 gas. I was thinking to myself as they were doing this, you know, the American people are really suffering and we’re all [having fun at a gala].”

That didn’t stop him from attending the gala. And if he was thinking about suffering Americans while cavorting with the politicians and celebrities at this event, what does he think about while lounging around in his penthouse or sailing his yacht? Does he really expect that he will be the candidate of the struggling masses when what he is best known for is firing people during a time of high unemployment? That should appeal to distressed voters.

How appropriate that his candidacy is being brought down by a comedian. He really is a joke.


Andrew Breitbart’s Latest Lie Attacks Labor And Academia

Posted by on April 29, 2011 at 5:15 pm. 8 Comments :

Andrew BreitbartJon Lovitz used to have a character on Saturday Night live known a the “pathological liar.” He would simply make up things to impress his associates and, as he settled on the perfect deceit, would exclaim, “Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

Andrew Breitbart has taken this notion to new levels. His capacity for dishonesty is boundless and entirely devoid of shame. The latest episode in his recurring series of video lie-fests takes place at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. The video posted at his BigGovernment blog shows a professor and a guest lecturer engaged in a discussion that includes statements that imply they are advocating violence on behalf of labor interests. “Yeah, that’s the ticket.” The only problem with this expose is that, like just about everything else Breitbart does, it isn’t true.

Judy Ancel, Director of Labor Studies at UMKC, is the professor in the video. She responded to Breitbart’s smear in an email with several examples of how Breitbart fiddled with the content to deliberately convey a meaning that did not exist in reality. For instance, she writes…

Breitbart is a master of taking quotes out of context, deletion of what doesn’t serve his purpose, and remixing to achieve totally different meaning. For example he has me saying:

o Breitbart’s version: “Violence is a tactic and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.”

o The real version: After students had watched a film on the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King, they were discussing nonviolence. I said, “One guy in the film. . . said ‘violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.’. . . ” The class proceeded to discuss and debate this.

It is apparent that Ancel was quoting somebody in the film, not expressing her own views. This is typical of Breitbart and his ilk. It is the point I was making when I posted this video of Glenn Beck admitting that he idolizes Adolf Hitler:

Media Matters has some of the obviously manipulated video as well as the uncut versions that reveal Breitbart’s purposeful deception.

This project has all the earmarks of Breitbart’s modus operandi. It is precisely what he did to Shirley Sherrod. It is the very same tactics he used against ACORN, along with his protege, James O’Keefe. However, there are no credits for the video other than the name “Insurgent Visuals.” It’s odd that no one would want to take credit for what they must regard as a brilliant piece of investigative journalism.

However, after some investigation of my own, I discovered that Insurgent Visuals has a web site. Surely there would be some indication of who was responsible for this story. Nope. Just a short statement on their “About” page saying “We are a small collective of motivated political actionists intent on changing the world.” They are also intent on hiding their identity.

So I continued my investigation and discovered that Insurgent Visuals also had at one time a blog at BlogSpot. The blog was no longer available, but I was able to access it via Google’s cache. Once there I noticed that the blog’s contributors were Bruce Bronson, and some guy named — James O’Keefe! Who’da thunk it? So O’Keefe, a well-known lying video manipulator may have had an invisible hand in Breitbart’s new anonymous smear campaign. He’s certainly the guy I would call if I wanted to produce a phony videotaped assault on someone.

Prof. Ancel’s response to the video is worth reading in full. It outlines the dishonesty that Breitbart perpetuated as well as her outrage at having the privacy of her students violated and the forum for free expression in the classroom replaced with a chilling mood of fear and distrust. The email in full follows:
 
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