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

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

Rachel Maddow

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

Fox-MSNBC Ratings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Breitbart ‘News’ Invents Quotes To Smear CNN

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

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

Breitbart News

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

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

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

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

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

Fox News / McDonalds


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

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

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

Fox Nation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fox News Ad

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


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

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

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

Ted Cruz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Ailes/Christie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fox Nation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Unbelievable: How Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Distorted A Middle School Election

Posted by on January 9, 2014 at 11:16 am. 1 Comments :

By now anyone who is paying attention knows that Fox News is a disreputable purveyor of heavily biased propaganda on behalf of the Republican Party and conservative politics. The network openly favors GOP/Tea Party pundits and politicians and has even been caught reporting Republican press releases verbatim as if they were independently sourced news stories.

Roger Ailes

Now an excerpt from an upcoming biography of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes provides an outstanding illustration of the mindset that runs Fox News. The book, “The Loudest Voice In The Room” by Gabriel Sherman, was excerpted in New York Magazine and includes a passage about how Ailes intervened with the reporting in a local newspaper he owns in Putnam County, New York, where he lives in a mountaintop estate. The entire excerpt offers a revealing look into the thought processes of Ailes as he seeks to dominate any environment in which he resides – even a small upstate New York hamlet and its local news, schools, and government.

Another drama erupted after a reporter named Michael Turton was assigned to cover Haldane Middle School’s mock presidential election. After the event, Turton filed a report headlined “Mock Election Generated Excitement at Haldane; Obama Defeats McCain by 2–1 Margin.” He went on, “The 2008 U.S. presidential election is now history. And when the votes were tallied, Barack Obama had defeated John McCain by more than a two to one margin. The final vote count was 128 to 53.” Reading the published version a few days later, Turton was shocked. The headline had been changed: “Mock Presidential Election Held at Haldane; Middle School Students Vote to Learn Civic Responsibility.” So had the opening paragraph: “Haldane students in grades 6 through 8 were entitled to vote for president and they did so with great enthusiasm.” Obama’s margin of victory was struck from the article. His win was buried in the last paragraph.

Turton was upset, and wrote a questioning e-mail to [editor Maureen] Hunt, but never heard back. Instead, he received a series of accusatory e-mails from the Aileses. Turton had disregarded “specific instructions” for the piece, Beth wrote. “Do you anticipate this becoming an ongoing problem for you?” A short while later, Roger weighed in. Maureen Hunt’s instructions to focus on the school’s process for teaching about elections had been “very clear,” he wrote, and Turton’s “desire to change the story into a big Obama win” should have taken a backseat. Ailes described himself as “disappointed” by Turton’s failure “to follow the agreed upon direction.”

The unfolding of events in this deliberate act of interference with a journalist’s role in reporting the news mirrors perfectly the sort of heavy-handed control that Ailes wields over Fox News. It is easy to see the parallels between this microcosm of journalism and the obvious distortions of reality that occur on Fox News every day.

This excerpt is a tantalizing morsel of what the book promises to deliver when it is released later this month. It is written in a compelling way, with credible sources, profound revelations, and dramatic flair. Consequently, we can expect Fox News to mount a fierce smear campaign against the book and its author as its release nears and in the weeks that follow. Indeed, it has already begun.


Fun With Rush: Limbaugh Explains How The Dreaded Polar Vortex Was Created By Liberals

Posted by on January 8, 2014 at 1:15 pm. 8 Comments :

The ignorance that infects much of the rightist punditry has been an inexhaustible source of both frustration and humor. And no one exemplifies the pitiful state of conservatism better than the de facto head of the Tea-publican Party, Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh

Now that much of the midwest and northeast regions of the United States have been inundated with historically frigid weather, El Rushbo has dusted off his fake degree in meteorology to explain it all to his dittohead audience. The resulting rant is so hilariously absurd that it needs little commentary to fully appreciate the depths of its dementia. So without further ado, here are some choice excerpts from Limbaugh’s Monday broadcast about the “Dreaded Polar Vortex” that he says was created by the left to “make you think winter is caused by global warming.”

“So, ladies and gentlemen, we are having a record-breaking cold snap in many parts of the country. And right on schedule the media have to come up with a way to make it sound like it’s completely unprecedented. Because they’ve got to find a way to attach this to the global warming agenda, and they have. It’s called the ‘polar vortex.’ The dreaded polar vortex.”

“Do you know what the polar vortex is? Have you ever heard of it? Well, they just created it for this week.”

“Now, in their attempt, the left, the media, everybody, to come up with a way to make this sound like it’s something new and completely unprecedented, they’ve come up with this phrase called the ‘polar vortex.'”

Exactly. They just came up with it like seventy years ago. The truth is that scientists have been studying it for decades. Here is a brief primer on the Polar Vortex that Limbaugh should have read before making an ass of himself.

“They’re in the middle of a hoax, they’re perpetrating a hoax, but they’re relying on their total dominance of the media to lie to you each and every day about climate change and global warming. So they created the polar vortex, and the polar vortex.”

“Whatever it is that keeps the polar vortex vortexed in the Arctic Circle is vanishing, and that cold air is coming to us. Normally it stays up there. But now it’s down here. How did it get here? That’s the deepening mystery. That is the crisis. That is what is man-made. Man is destroying the invisible boundaries that keeps that air up there.”

Actually, it isn’t a mystery at all. Unless you are struggling to find new ways to make your dimwitted listeners even more stupid than when they first tuned you in.

“You take a 30-year-old. To him, history began the day he was born. He doesn’t know how cold it was 70 years ago unless he’s told. He doesn’t care. He thinks what’s happening now is either the best or the worst, whatever it is, ever. Everybody thinks that. Everybody’s historical perspective begins with the day they were born,.”

Where does Limbaugh get this stuff? And how brain damaged do you need to be to actually believe it?

“If man is responsible for this cold snap, then how’s it gonna end up back in the forties and thirties in places it’s below zero today? Who’s gonna change whatever it is their doing and keep the cold air at the North Pole? Well, to me it’s a logical question. If man’s causing this cold snap, then who is the man behind the curtain that’s gonna end the cold snap, and why? Why doesn’t he keep it cold? Why doesn’t the polar vortex stay vortexed?”

Apparently Limbaugh thinks that in order for Climate Change to be plausible, there must be some guy sitting in an office behind a console with buttons and levers that control the Earth’s weather. My guess is that it’s either Lex Luthor or Montgomery Burns.

“The Democrat agenda is: ‘We’ve got to get people’s attention distracted from Obamacare.'”

Here is a brief primer on the previous issues that served as distractions from ObamaCare.

“I’m constantly searching for ways to be more persuasive, to be taken seriously, ’cause I don’t make things up. I mean, I’m not into that. I don’t want to advance myself through falsehoods. I have an agenda, too, and I don’t want to be advance it falsely. I don’t want people believing what I say if I’m lying to ’em — and, consequently, I don’t lie.”

Ummm…..Well then, explain the next comment.

“Global warming is a great example. It’s a full-fledged, now documented hoax.”

Near the end of Limbaugh’s dissertation he quotes Lauren Friedman of Business Insider saying that “Polar vortexes, though, are nothing new.” That would seem to contradict his insistence that the whole thing was invented last week by liberals plotting to advance the Climate Change hoax. It certainly reveals that he was aware that the phenomenon existed long before this week’s weather crisis. Nevertheless, Limbaugh continues to pretend that he doesn’t lie, and he wants you to know that he is your only source for the unvarnished truth.

“Now, I’m here to assure you this is a crock, but this is how the left works, and you don’t have anybody in the media questioning this.”

Thank goodness Limbaugh is here to point out all the crocks that might otherwise overwhelm us with devious crockery. Notably, among the media that is not questioning this Polar Vortex is Fox News. They have been blanketing their network with frantic reports of “Extreme Weather” throughout this ordeal. They have correspondents bundled up like Eskimos across the affected areas corroborating the intensity of the arctic cold. So it would seem that Fox News is an accomplice of the left-wing cabal manufacturing the Polar Vortex hysteria. With a conspiracy rooted this deeply into the very center of the conservatives main media outlet, the future may prove to be very cold indeed for Limbaugh and his disciples.

[Update 1/8/2014] PolitiFact evaluated Limbaugh’s Polar Vortex rant and, contrary to his assertion that he doesn’t lie, designated it a lie of the “Pants On Fire” variety.

PolitiFact: “Limbaugh claimed the media made up the ‘polar vortex’ to bolster global warming. What the cold snap does prove, he says, is Arctic sea ice is not melting — that global warming is a hoax.

“Climate scientists told us his rant is wildly misinformed.

“The polar vortex has been a part of science for decades, and it certainly does not prove that sea ice is not melting.”

PolitiFact did not address the potentially catastrophic environmental hazard that would occur if Limbaugh’s super-sized trousers were actually ablaze. Goodbye ozone.


Sarah Palin’s Alien Love Child Is A Distraction From ObamaCare By The White House

Posted by on January 7, 2014 at 11:08 am. 4 Comments :

The troubled rollout of the website for the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) has been a persistent irritation for the Obama administration. This despite the fact that many of the metrics used to measure the program’s success have been drifting into positive territory. For instance, millions of previously uninsured Americans now have coverage for the first time. About 2.2 million have enrolled via the state and federal exchanges, which is about two-thirds of the number that was set as a benchmark by the Congressional Budget Office. Millions more have qualified for Medicaid or have been added to their parent’s plans, both opportunities made available by the ACA.

While the media maintains a relentlessly negative tone when reporting on the issue, the American people still have a favorable view of ObamaCare. Consequently, Fox News and other conservative players are pressing a strategy that alleges that anything the White House says or does that is not about ObamaCare is a deliberate attempt to distract from the issue. Should the President have the audacity to perform the duties of his office, his critics accuse him of obfuscating for political purposes. This means that he cannot move forward on his previously stated agenda on the economy, on the minimum wage and unemployment, on immigration reform, on the environment, or on foreign affairs and diplomacy, without being accused of orchestrating a distraction from ObamaCare.

Fox News, as usual, is taking the lead on this tactic by reporting that Obama’s recent talk about income inequality is just such a distraction, even though he has been talking about that throughout his presidency. Fox raised the distraction allegation on the air with an interview of former Bush crony, and current GOP SuperPAC-Man, Karl Rove. They also made it the headline feature on their website, adding the angle of class warfare to the charge of distraction. For the record, class warfare has been raging for years in this country. It was started by the rich and any objective appraisal of the situation would have to conclude that the rich are still winning.

Fox News

The recent talk of income inequality being a ploy to shift focus from ObamaCare is hardly the first issue that has been exploited for that purpose. The media has made the same stale accusation for a variety of issues that are generally considered to be a part of any president’s responsibility. For instance:

It doesn’t seem to matter what this White House does. If it doesn’t involve ObamaCare then it is a distraction from it. Of course, if they were to focus exclusively on health care, their critics would then accuse them of neglecting all the other critical duties of the presidency. This is the sort of shallow and partisan politicking that is engaged in by people who don’t have substantive points to make. Because Republicans have no agenda for the nation other than repealing ObamaCare, subjugating women, minorities, and gays, expanding the proliferation of guns, and cutting taxes for the rich, they are forced to resort to these lowbrow methods of attacking the President for doing his job.

Be prepared for more of this in the coming election year. Already we have a GOP congressman predicting that Obama will start a war in an effort to deflect from ObamaCare. It’s only a matter of time until reports about Sarah Palin’s alien love child are making headlines at Fox News as just another attempt by Obama to distract Americans from the health care reform that they presently view favorably.

Sarah Palin