On the day following the largest entertainment event in history, the folks at Fox behave with an uncanny predictability. With a live audience spanning 8 continents, four television networks, and record-setting access to live streaming over the Internet, Live Earth took it’s place in history and in the hearts of citizens of the world who care about their only terrestrial home. On Fox News, however, it’s a different story:

Writing for Junk Science: Live Earth’s Gross Groupies, Steven Milloy asks:

“Why is NBC airing Al Gore’s Live Earth concert this weekend? Why are Democrats, who claim to support the Fairness Doctrine, not objecting to this outright gift of unequal broadcast time to just one side (theirs) of a controversial political issue?”

Gross groupies? Milloy was inspired to pen this nonsense by Fox’s John Gibson, which may account for its foundation of ignorance. Both Milloy and Gibson assert that Democrats, as a group, are advocating the return of the Fairness Doctrine. This makes me wonder where they were last week when a majority of Democrats voted in favor of an amendment by Mike Pence to ban the FCC from using any funds to reinstate the fairness rule. We mustn’t let mere facts get in the way of perfectly good disinformation.

Even if it were true, the complaint that Democrats owe it to pollution proponents to allow them equal time during the Live Earth concerts is disingenuous at best. In fact, I would wager that those Democrats who are in favor the Fairness Doctrine would gladly hand over air time to Milloy and Gibson in exchange for a comparable accommodation from Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, Carlson, Beck, etc.

But Milloy goes even further to concoct a conspiracy on the part of General Electric, the largest defense contractor in the world, whom he accuses of being in cahoots with lefty environmentalists. He hypothesizes a plot centered on GE’s greedy quest for more green – by which he means money:

“GE’s ostensible rationale is that it hopes to profit by selling high-priced global warming-related and alternative energy products, ranging from solar panels and wind turbines to compact fluorescent lightbulbs and nuclear power plant technologies.”

This is an uncharacteristic attack on the free market by Milloy who is adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The CEI is a radical think tank that is funded by the Scaife family, Ford, Texaco, Amoco, Philip Morris, and other conservative and pollution-friendly corporations and foundations. Since when did these trickle-down economists become disdainful of giant corporations aspiring to enhance income generation? If it were any industry other than eco-business they would be solidly behind the company’s efforts grow their business. But just last week, the director of energy and global warming policy at CEI, Myron Ebell, appeared on MSNBC’s Tucker to denounce Al Gore as a liar who “makes stuff up,” and asserted that the climate crisis is nothing more than a scheme by modern-day Commies:

“Global warming is a phenomenon of the left and the left is all about redistributing income.”

The Milloy article appeared on FoxNews.com as part of a regular feature called “Junk Science.” The column runs once a week with its decidedly rightist perspective on science and the environment. There is no comparable column on FoxNews that offers an alternative opinion. The list of headlines at the site could be reprinted in The Onion without editing and make for great comedy. Yet Milloy seems oblivious to the hypocrisy of calling for equal time from Live Earth while authoring one-sided tracts for Fox News who also don’t bother to provide opportunities for opposing view points.

Newspapers are spitting out editorials on the Bush commutation of Scooter Libby’s jail sentence like bullets from an AK-47. Editor & Publisher has compiled a bunch already and there are a couple of strikingly notable standouts in the group. See if you can spot them:

New York Times: “…in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.”

Washinton Post: “…reducing the sentence to no prison time at all, as Mr. Bush did – to probation and a large fine – is not defensible.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “President Bush’s commutation of a pal’s prison sentence counts as a most shocking act of disrespect for the U.S. justice system.”

Denver Post: “Libby should be held accountable for his crimes.”

San Francisco Chronicle: “President Bush sent the message that perjury and obstruction of justice in the service of the president of the United States are not serious crimes.”

Wall Street Journal: “By failing to issue a full pardon, Mr. Bush is evading responsibility for the role his administration played in letting the Plame affair build into fiasco…”

New York Post: “Bush knows a pardon is warranted. He should grant it.”

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “The trial amply demonstrated that he stonewalled. Like President Clinton’s 11th-hour pardons of an ill-deserving few, this commutation is a travesty.”

New York’s Daily News: “Thankfully, Bush did not pardon Libby outright, but time in the slammer was in order. Sixty days, say, wouldn’t have hurt the justice system a bit.”

Chicago Tribune: “Bush sent a terrible message to citizens and to government officials who are expected to serve the public with integrity.”

Arizona Republic: “President Bush whipped out a get-out-of-jail-free card. This is the wrong game to play on a very public stage.”

San Jose Mercury News: “Other presidents have doled out pardons and the like […] But few have placed themselves above the law as Bush, Cheney and friends repeatedly have done by trampling civil liberties and denying due process.”

Sacramento Bee: “[Bush] has done himself no favors on that count by commuting the prison term of I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby.”

Dallas Morning News: “…the last thing this president needed was to further antagonize Capitol Hill regarding abuse of executive power.”

Rocky Mountain News: “…the president should have restrained his compassion – and delayed his commutation – for at least a few more months, lest he be perceived as subverting justice”

Did you spot them? That’s right, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, and his object of desire, the Wall Street Journal. I can hardly wait to see what Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and the rest of the Fox News law and order crowd have to say.

“Heavily Doctored” by MTV’s venerable newsreader, Kurt Loder, is an embarrassingly flawed and tendentious attack on Michael Moore’s new documentary “Sicko“. This tediously protracted diatribe is neither a review nor a balanced examination of the important public policy issues raised by the film.

The article begins with Loder reciting several of the health care horror stories exposed in the film. His tone is deceptively favorable as he describes the purpose of good muckraking. But it doesn’t take long for him to plant his ideological flag. After alleging that Moore is a brazen con man who cherry-picked facts and manipulated interviews, Loder lobs this rhetorical grenade:

“As a proud socialist, the director appears to feel that there are few problems in life that can’t be solved by government regulation…”

Moore regularly articulates his pride in being an American – and one who advocates the fruits of capitalism for himself and all Americans. But Loder doesn’t stop with this ad hominem insult. He continues with the utterly false and unsupported (and prejudicially phrased) assertion that “Americans have never been keen on socialized medicine.” Someone needs to introduce Loder to the most popular government-managed programs ever created – Social Security and Medicare. Additionally, polls show that Americans would overwhelmingly approve of a national health insurance program, even if it would require higher taxes (64% for, 35% opposed).

Still, Loder persists in mischaracterizing the reality of the health care crisis and the response to it in the United States and around the world. In a rebuttal to Sicko, he offers up a short and undistinguished 2005 documentary called “Dead Meat.” This film is the flip side of Sicko, recounting alleged horror stories of government-managed health care. Although he devotes six paragraphs to the film, Loder neglects to provide some illuminating facts about Dead Meat and it’s producers.

The film made its debut at the Liberty Film Festival, which describes itself as “a forum in the heart of Hollywood for conservative and libertarian filmmakers.” In 2006 the festival operations merged with ultra-right wing provocateur David Horowitz‘ Freedom Center.

The film’s credits include special thanks to the rightist Manhattan Institute, the Pacific Research Institute, and the Heartland Institute. The latter is particularly notable for its refusal to acknowledge the dangers imposed by global warming or smoking – both of which they feel are frauds based on junk science. All three institutes are partially funded by pharmaceutical companies or lobbies.

The producers have also released films critical of immigration reform protests and what they perceive as a left-wing assault on free thought in U.S. universities.

Health care expert, Loder, doesn’t hesitate to dispense advice on policy matters. His prescription for reform is firmly planted in the free-market medicine camp. And despite the fact that there is nothing identifying this article as an editorial, it is overflowing with opinion and innuendo. Here is another example of his insertion of bias that is presented without context but with the expectation that we accept it on faith:

“When governments attempt to regulate the balance between a limited supply of health care and an unlimited demand for it they’re inevitably forced to ration treatment.”

Loder doesn’t seem to appreciate that there is no system that produces a greater degree of rationing than one that denies care to all but the fortunate. The kind of system that is presently in place in the U.S.

The rest of the article provides incontrovertible evidence that, in addition to being an inferior analyst and a prejudiced observer, he also lacks any sign of a sense of humor. He totally misses the satirical points made in episodes involving French excesses in care and the now famous Guantanamo landing. As such, Loder proves that he is ill-suited for this type of assignment. His readers would be better served if he would just put his sunglasses back on and take his mark on the red carpet in time to welcome back the Spice Girls.

Update: I was just alerted to this column wherein Loder predicted that “An Inconvenient Truth” would win the Oscar for best documentary:

“Actually, the best film in this category is Amy Berg’s devastating “Deliver Us from Evil,” a true investigative report on a shameful cover-up by the Roman Catholic Church of 20 years of child-molesting by one of its priests, Oliver O’Grady. But Al Gore’s environmental alarmism – much of it since heavily questioned – no doubt plays better in Beverly Hills.”

Loder is apparently fully subscribed to the anti-science, free market philosophy of the three institutes cited above (whom I will now refer to as the “Dead Meat Coalition” because that perfectly describes the contents of their craniums).