The ObamaCare Success Story: Even Republican Enrollees Are Overwhelmingly Satisfied (InfoGraphic)

Posted by on July 10, 2014 at 3:13 pm. 6 Comments :

It has been four months since the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) closed, and the most reliable numbers to date are being released. A new survey by The Commonwealth Fund (pdf) reveals that the program has surpassed all estimates of success and is broadly viewed favorably by the American people. Here are some of the highlights of the survey (InfoGraphic below):

  • With 9.5 million fewer uninsured adults, the uninsured rate for those 19-64 decline from 20% to 15%.
  • The uninsured rate for young adults 19 to 34 declined from 28% to 18%, more than any other age group.
  • In the 25 states (and D.C.) that expanded their Medicaid programs, the uninsured rate for low-income adults declined from 28% to 17% (Texas and Florida – neither of which expanded Medicaid – have the highest uninsured rates).
  • More than half of adults with new coverage said their plan included all or some of the doctors they wanted.
  • More than three of five adults who selected a private plan or enrolled in medicaid were uninsured prior to gaining coverage.
  • Two-thirds of those who found a primary care doctor got an appointment within two weeks.
  • More than three-quarters of adults with new coverage said they were very or somewhat satisfied with it (Including 74% of Republicans, 82% of Independents, and 84% of Democrats.

The fact that so many Americans have benefited from this health insurance initiative is in itself good news. But what should make this front page news is that Republicans enrolled in ObamaCare are just as happy with it as independents and Democrats. This illustrates how far afield the Tea Party Republican political miscreants in Washington have strayed from their own alleged constituents. They are impostors holding the reins of power thanks to a minority of extremists in the party who bother to vote. And if rank and file Republicans ever get motivated to show up at the polls, people like Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann will be lucky to get speaking engagements at trailer-park bible study meetings.

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After enduring the GOP spending four years throwing every mud-soaked brick they could find at ObamaCare, the people have risen above the scare tactics and lies. They rejected the talk of death panels and socialism and economic catastrophe. They saw through the dozens of attempts to repeal the law or challenge it in the courts. And now that they have had a chance to assess it personally, they find that it satisfactorily meets their needs, particularly those who couldn’t get coverage before due to preexisting conditions or financial hardship.

Don’t expect any of this to be reported on Fox News or by any other right-wing media garbage spewer. These are credible results from a respected foundation. They deal with facts and a devotion to representing reality (which, as we know, has a well-known liberal bias). Those are principles that conservative media tries desperately to avoid. If information cannot be used by the right to tarnish the President or progressive causes, it is either ignored or disparaged.

But despite the herculean effort put forth by Fox News, the Koch brothers, and the GOP establishment, the people have made up their own minds. Now if we can just get them to show up at the polls in November and vote for their own best interests, we may be able to roll back the tide of Dark Agist theocons who have infiltrated the halls of our democracy.

ObamaCare Success

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Darrell Issa Discovers More Emails He Can Brazenly Lie About On Fox News

Posted by on July 10, 2014 at 12:14 pm. 1 Comments :

In an entirely unsurprising development, rabidly partisan congressman, and recidivist criminal, Darrell Issa, has popped up again on Fox News to peddle his dishonest allegations concerning the trumped up IRS controversy.

Darrell Issa

The latest wrinkle in Issa’s permanently furrowed brow is an email exchange that he selectively leaked that he alleges is the long-lost smoking gun that proves – well, whatever it is that has his panties in a twist that day. The emails are a discussion between the former IRS Tax-Exempt Organizations division director, Lois Lerner, and Maria Hooke from the IT department, wherein Lerner seeks information regarding document storage. Here are excerpts from the emails:

Lerner: I had a question today about OCS [instant messages]. I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails–so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails.
Hooke: OCS messages are not set to automatically save as the standard; however the functionality exits within the software. […] My general recommendation is to treat the conversation as if it could/is being saved somewhere, as it is possible for either party of the conversation to retain the information and have it turn up as part of an electronic search. Make sense?
Lerner: Perfect.

From this rather innocuous exchange, Issa managed to extract something nefarious. His interpretation points to a deliberate attempt to conceal information from congressional investigators. Here is his analysis as adoringly received by Brian Kilmeade on Fox News:

Kilmeade: What do you get from this correspondence?
Issa: What we get is, perhaps what CNN was asking me for a couple weeks ago – a smoking gun. This is Lois Lerner clearly cautioning people not to say things on email. […] Why? She didn’t want an audit trail for what they were doing, and they were targeting conservatives for their views. No question at all.
Kilmeade: As so many others are choosing not to follow you, we will.

If Issa gets a smoking gun from this, you have to ask what he’s smoking. First of all, Lerner is merely articulating a common business instruction to keep all communications professional. Cautioning her staff about what they say in emails that might later be made public is prudent advice. Not because they are engaging in a cover up, but because people often lapse into inappropriately casual conversations in routine work life. They certainly would not want to have accounts of last night’s party, or off-color jokes, turning up in official investigations.

Issa’s laughably absurd assertion that Lerner is ordering a cover up of emails requires one to accept that she would do such a thing in an email. That would be like calling a criminal accomplice on the phone to tell him not to talk about the crime they just committed because the phone might be tapped. And Issa went further to answer his own question as to why Lerner would issue her cautionary advice. He said it was because she “didn’t want an audit trail for what they were doing.” Of course, the only evidence he has of that is his supernatural ability to read minds.

Perhaps the most blatant distortion Issa whips up refers to Lerner’s response to the IT rep’s explanation of instant message storage. Lerner said simply “Perfect.” Issa contorted that into her being “delighted” that instant messaging wasn’t being tracked. However, that isn’t what the IT rep said. In fact, she said quite the opposite, advising that the messages be treated as if they were saved because either party could do so.

But the worst mangling of this portion of the exchange is that Lerner’s response came immediately following the IT rep signing off her last email by asking “Make sense?” That is what Lerner was responding to when she said “Perfect,” as in “it makes perfect sense.” She was simply acknowledging that she understood the explanation.

This is typical of Issa’s unethical practice of cherry-picking documents from his committee’s hearings that he can spin negatively. It is something that he gets away with because far too many so-called journalists allow themselves to be manipulated by his intentionally deceptive leaks. And, of course, Fox News is all to happy to cooperate with the charade. Already Bill O’Reilly has featured a segment on this subject wherein he referred to these new emails as “hard evidence” of a cover up. Someone needs to give these cretins a remedial course on the meaning of “evidence.”


The O’Reilly Fester: Fox’s Super-Pundit Criticizes Media He Never Watches

Posted by on July 9, 2014 at 4:09 pm. 4 Comments :

Last night on Bill O’Reilly’s show, the Fester aired a segment on whether or not the media can be trusted. You have to wonder whether O’Reilly was looking in a mirror when he came up with this subject.

Fox News - Bill O'Reilly

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However, it wasn’t O’Reilly who went completely off the rails this time. His guest was Charles Krauthammer, widely considered to be the “brainy” Fox fact distorter. Krauthammer was brought in specifically to offer his expertise in media analysis culled from decades of observation and study. Even O’Reilly realized that in order to make informed judgments about something you need to be immersed in it and continually reinforcing your knowledge. It was in that vein that O’Reilly asked Krauthammer…

O’Reilly: You as a commentator…you have to watch the media reports come in. You have to be well informed. You have to be up to date, as do I. Is there anybody that you trust?
Kruathammer: Well, again, apart from Fox, no, of course not.

So the only media outlet that Krauthammer regards as trustworthy is Fox News. That’s a pretty limited range of media sources. Surely he must have reasons for why no other source has any credibility in his view. O’Reilly pressed him (softly) on this to ascertain what he finds lacking at other networks like, for instance, CNN. O’Reilly presumed that “You must watch it.” To which Krauthammer replied…

“I don’t watch it. The only place I watch it is when I’m waiting for an airplane in some lounge somewhere. […] I have not watched a network newscast on any of the three networks in 20 years.”

Well then. No wonder he is considered an expert in media. His opinion is informed by having never seen any of it since Clinton was in his first term in the White House. Krauthammer is the model of the Fox News pundit. He has absolutely no knowledge of, or expertise in, the subjects he is called upon to pontificate about. What’s more, he has no interest in becoming knowledgeable. That’s how we get people like Sean Hannity talking about military operations; or Neil Cavuto talking about climate change; or Steve Doocy talking about the economy; or Sarah Palin talking about anything. It is also how we get O’Reilly talking about race and poverty.

This does, however, explain why Fox News viewers are less informed than viewers of other media – or even people who watch no news media at all. It is a network devoted to mis/disinformation and ignorance. And to their credit, they are quite good at it.


Sean Hannity Hosts Sarah Palin’s Impeach-a-Thon: Third Time’s The Chum

Posted by on July 9, 2014 at 11:04 am. 16 Comments :

Sarah Palin achieved her main objective yesterday with an article on the Zombie Breitbart News website that declared that “It’s Time To Impeach President Obama.” Her objective, of course, was to garner media attention for herself. But aside from the litany of Obama-phobic nonsense that made up the bulk of her rancid rant, the notion that Palin was just awakened by a revelation to discover the imminent need to file Articles of Impeachment against President Obama is another lie perpetrated by Palin and the fawning media stooges that trail after her and lap up the slime left by her immaculate footsteps.

Sarah Palin

The truth is that Palin has previously called for Obama’s impeachment at least twice. It is a common theme among her Tea Party contingent that has never regarded Obama’s presidency as legitimate. Even without resorting to the extremist latitudes of impeachment, the unfiltered accusations that cast Obama as an anti-American socialist, who is deliberately working to destroy the country, are evidence of the depth of the delusion by the paranoid right. Then add in the impeachment mantra and what you have is a manic agitator throwing chum into the water to feed the cravings of the baby barracudas.

Palin’s previous entreaties for impeachment were just as devoid of any factual basis as her latest one. But they were no less ludicrous and lacking substance:

6/13/2014: I sense not enough guts in D.C. to file impeachment charges against Team Obama for their countless documented illegalities.

This was just last month (how soon the feeble-minded forget) and it also cited immigration as the justification for removing the President from office. Never mind that Obama has supported a comprehensive immigration bill that was passed in a rare bipartisan vote in the senate last year, but that GOP Speaker John Boehner has refused to allow it come to the House floor for a vote because he knows it would pass.

10/13/2013: Defaulting on our national debt is an impeachable offense, and any attempt by President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congress is also an impeachable offense.

This is a laughably incoherent remark stemming from the disastrous government shutdown last year wherein Palin is asserting that Obama should be impeached if he defaults on the national debt (which he was trying to prevent the GOP Congress from doing), but also threatens impeachment if he takes steps to pay the debt. A damned if you do, damned if you don’t – ah just damn you to hell for whatever – proposition.

Palin took her Impeach-a-Thon to Fox News last night in a visit to the Sean Hannity show. As usual, her patented brand of word-salad ramblings offered nothing more than frothing hatred of all things Obama. And she also admitted that her motivation for impeachment is based on policy differences, not law, when she said that Obama intended…

“…to fraud the American people on these programs, these policies that he has promised will work or will not impact debts or deficit. These have been lies by our President. Yes, those are impeachable offenses.”

No, they are not. And the Obama administration has actually cut the deficit in half, just as he promised to do in his campaign. But reason never plays a part in Palin’s world. For instance, she also told Hannity that “You don’t bring a lawsuit to a gunfight.” What she is referring to here is, to say the least, obscure. Impeachment is a legal proceeding. So is she now abandoning her call for impeachment and escalating it to a call for armed rebellion? She clearly sees her solicitations as a movement and even said so explicitly:

“If people care about the future of this country and defense of our republic, they will join this cause of Articles of Impeachment against Barack Obama because enough is enough.”

If you have the stomach for it, here is the video of Palin on Hannity. It is the perfect representation of her mental disorder, with a manner of articulation that seems to have been styled by political satirist. Only she is one hundred percent serious. Which makes it both funnier and scarier.

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Impeachment Fever: America Rejected Sarah Palin, Now She Rejects America

Posted by on July 8, 2014 at 5:16 pm. 5 Comments :

The “Quitta From Wasilla” is making headlines again by displaying symptoms of acute Obama Derangement Syndrome. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP nominee for Vice-President, who was soundly rejected by American voters, is now calling for the impeachment of President Obama (again), who was elected twice with significant majorities.

Sarah Palin

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Palin’s panicky challenge to the Psycho Chicken Littles she commands from the parapets of her Facebook page cites the standard menu of wingnut atrocities that Tea Party dimwits cling to so fiercely (i.e. fundamental transformation, American exceptionalism, etc.). What her unhinged freak-out failed to provide were any actual legal justifications for impeachment. You know…high crimes, misdemeanors, jaywalking, anything remotely deserving of removal from office. With a completely empty basket of goodies, Palin launched her tirade saying that …

“Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president. His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, ‘no mas.'”

That’s a nice touch. In that one opening sentence Palin likened President Obama to a wife beater with America as his victim; she pandered to the Latino immigrants she so often disparages by demonstrating her trifling command of the Spanish language, which she and her disciples insist must never be spoken within U.S. borders; and she lied about the President’s record on immigration, which has reduced unlawful entries and increased deportations.

From there Palin portrays the perilous journey of immigrants as a leisure trip wherein the brown hordes will “kick off their shoes and come on in.” It’s just like a big pool party in her view. But even worse, she completely fails to grasp the needs and desires of the American people by misrepresenting their priorities and the consequent duties of the President.

“There is no end in sight as our president prioritizes parties over doing the job he was hired by voters to do. Securing our borders is obviously fundamental here […] communities become unrecognizable and bankrupted due to Obama’s flood of illegal immigration.”

There is a bountiful cache of supid in that paragraph. First of all, what she calls “Obama’s flood of illegal immigration” was put in motion by George W. Bush’s signature on an anti-child trafficking bill in 2008, that requires the government to provide minor immigrants with legal representation and safe and secure housing while awaiting resolution of their status. And Palin did not, and can not, cite an example of a community that is unrecognizable, save for the one she can see from her house in Alaska.

More to the point, Palin’s assertion that immigration is job one for the President ignores the fact that most polls on the priorities of the American people actually put jobs as job one (20%). Immigration, while a serious matter that needs to be addressed, is not particularly high on the list of things Americans want their government to work on. In fact it is often near the bottom of that list (3%).

It is pathetic that people like Palin are making monsters out of children who find themselves in an untenable position. They are alone and frightened by the prospect of being returned to countries where they live in danger and poverty. And now they are further terrorized by insensitive Americans who scream at them and threaten them and put up barricades to prevent them from reaching safe harbor. It’s atrocious behavior that is embarrassing to the majority of Americans who reject such hatefulness.

Immigrant Kids

Palin concludes her rant with a generalized lashing out that offers no substance or reason – just hostility and spittle-inflected animus toward the man that America elected twice and summarily threw her in the political gutter.

“It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment. The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored. If after all this he’s not impeachable, then no one is.”

Palin, like many of her comrades on the irrational right, have no idea what impeachment means or how it is invoked. She failed to provide even a single example of a valid impeachable offense, even though she says that there are many of them. And her hysterical overreach is in harmony with the conservative pseudo-patriots who are salivating at the prospect of winning a majority in the Senate this November so they can pursue their anti-democratic agenda and oust the man that they pledged, from the moment he was inaugurated, to destroy.

For this reason it is imperative that Democrats break out of their traditional mid-term complacency and actually get out and vote this year. If they don’t, they can expect with near certainty that Republicans will try to impeachment Obama. And with that will come all the attendant political soap operas and antagonisms that the nation really doesn’t need as there are numerous other issues to address without having to poison the atmosphere with a politically driven show trial. If after all this Democrats don’t vote in record numbers, they will wake up the day after the election with two year long migraine.


Congress Allocates More Money To Phony Benghazi Investigations Than To Veterans

Posted by on July 8, 2014 at 10:34 am. 2 Comments :

Two months ago GOP House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would concede to pressure from Fox News and the Tea Party by creating the House Select Committee On Politicizing Benghazi. He then packed the committee on the Republican side with rabidly partisan attack dogs, led by alpha dog Trey Gowdy of South Carolina.

Gowdy Doody

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Since that announcement there has been nothing of note to report. There are no scheduled hearings and no estimated timeline for the investigation. Count on it to drag out long enough for Republicans to exploit it during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The one bit of news that has just emerged is that the Speakers office has allocated $3.3 million to the committee for the current year. So after spending untold millions by four other partisan committees who, despite making wild predictions about White House malfeasance and cover ups, never found anything to support their manufactured accusations, they are now proposing to up the ante with no indication that the result will be any different.

To put the budgeting in perspective, the House Veterans Affairs Committee will only be receiving $3 million this year, even though they have more than twice as many members and a legitimate scandal to investigate with legitimate victims who continue to suffer. The Benghazi Circus will spend more in its first year than the Intelligence Committee which deals with numerous international matters that have far-reaching impact on national security.

The financial priority that is demonstrated by these budget choices is evidence that the Republican House is more obsessed with phony scandals and political sabotage than with actually solving real problems for the American people. The tragic events in Benghazi have always been merely a crude weapon for the rightist politicians and pundits who are fixated on destroying all things Obama. And the new committee is just another means of achieving political goals that they couldn’t achieve at the ballot box. This was illustrated with certainty when back in May of 2013, Fox News aired a tribute to their chief, CEO Roger Ailes, for his efforts as “The Driving Force” in “Keeping Benghazi Alive.”

Fox News Ailes Benghazi

This was one of the most brazen admissions of the abandonment of journalistic ethics ever broadcast. The arrogance they display with on-air graphics confessing that they “made terror attack a story” in response to a “push” by their CEO, is unprecedented. Credible news organizations do not permit executives to interfere with editorial decisions. But the operative word there is “credible,” which has never applied to Fox News.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: Tweets That Are Not By The President Are Not By The President

Posted by on July 8, 2014 at 3:51 am. 3 Comments :

It takes a remarkably obstinate personality to insist on a position even after acknowledging that the position is false. But that’s precisely what the editors at Fox Nation did when they reported on an exchange between Jonathan Karl of ABC News and Josh Earnest, the White House Press Secretary.

Fox Nation vs. Reality

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At yesterday’s daily press briefing, Karl sought to determine whether President Obama was responsible for, or aware of, a tweet that was posted by Organizing for America [OFA], a political enterprise that was spun off of the Obama campaign for the presidency. In his preface to the question he appeared to already know the answer, but persisted with his contrived query anyway.

Karl: The President’s tweets – those tweets that go out @BarackObama – I understand those that aren’t signed “BO” aren’t directly written by him. Does he even read the others, does he know they’re going out? Are they reviewed by senior people at the White House or is that just simply OFA doing something on his behalf?
Earnest: The @BarackObama Twitter handle is maintained by OFA. That is the political organization that was the offshoot of the campaign, and that is a Twitter handle that is maintained independent of the White House.

That’s about as clear as it can be said. OFA is an independent operation that is not run through the White House. Neither the President, nor his staff, is responsible for what it posts, unless explicitly signed by the President. Yet somehow the editors at Fox Nation plastered a headline atop this story that falsely states “White House Not Sure If Obama Aware of His Own Tweets.”

The severity of the cognitive disconnect here is magnified by the fact that the video they themselves attached to the story contradicts their own headline. So how can they post a video that declares in absolute terms that these are not the President’s tweets, and still call them his tweets in bold type? Simple. They’re shameless liars. What’s more, the source for the story is the disreputable, GOP-run, Koch brothers affiliated, phony news service, the Washington Free Beacon. They are a brazenly biased organization for whom spreading lies is an integral part of their mission. With deception and disinformation being such an important facet of these operations, you would think that they would be better at it.

The article went on to further discuss the content of the tweet despite having already established that the President had nothing to do with it. In the process, the White House was able to reinforce their position in opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Hobby Lobby case that elevated the rights of a corporation’s religious beliefs over those of the human beings who work for the corporation.

Karl: The tweet I’m gonna ask you about is after the Hobby Lobby decision, it’s a “Throwback Thursday” tweet: “Throwback to last week when a woman—not her boss—made her own decisions about her health care.” Does the president believe that because of the Hobby Lobby decision, women are not allowed to make their own decisions about their health care unless they consult with their boss?
Earnest: That is certainly true of women in some cases, and that’s the concern that this administration has. That the consequence of the Supreme Court ruling is that it will allow bosses to interfere with what the President believes should be the freedom any woman has to make her own decisions about her health care.

While Earnest handily disposed of the clumsy and argumentative question by a reporter who has repeatedly demonstrated his political prejudices, the truly pathetic part of this is the manner in which it was framed by the Fox Nationalists and their pals at the Free Beacon. These folks should try to comprehend the stories they cover before making fools of themselves by authoring articles that are contradicted by the story’s content.


Days Of Our Lies: This Means Warren – The Clash Of Hillary And Elizabeth

Posted by on July 7, 2014 at 9:46 am. 5 Comments :

The saga of the Clinton Dynasty continues on Fox News as they deliver a new episode of their blithering soap opera, Days of Our Lies.

Days of Our Lies

In the last chapter, you will recall that disgraced author Edward Klein laughably asserted that he had access to private conversations between Hillary and Bill Clinton. In those intimate liaisons it was revealed that Hillary was sinking into despair and losing her enthusiasm for public service. That despite the fact that she is handily out-polling all of her potential Democratic and Republican rivals.

The story continues with another excerpt from Klein’s new book wherein he is still managing to get insider scoops that any rational person would know are unavailable to the likes of him. He again cites sources who we are supposed to believe are among the closest confidants to the Clintons, yet are betraying them by blabbing to the right-wing media’s most vociferous and vicious Clinton enemy. Klein’s account of the private world inside the Clinton fortress includes these unlikely scenarios:

“President Obama has quietly promised Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren complete support if she runs for president — a stinging rebuke to his nemesis Hillary Clinton.”

“Obama has authorized his chief political adviser, Valerie Jarrett, to conduct a full-court press to convince Warren to throw her hat into the ring.”

“The Obamas believe that Warren sees things from the same ideological point of view as they do. She is a committed progressive who, like Obama, wants to transform America into a European-style democratic-socialist state.”

“Both Valerie and Michelle Obama have convinced the president that Elizabeth Warren is his Mini-Me.”

Warren, of course, has said repeatedly and emphatically that she is not running for president. She pledged explicitly to finish her term in the senate which ends in 2019. She even signed a letter, along with fellow senate Democrats, urging Clinton to run for President. These are not typical actions by someone plotting to mount an opposition candidacy in pursuit of a shared dream of European socialism.

Nevertheless, Fox News, along with their partner in melodrama, the New York Post (which is also their partner in the notoriously dishonest Murdoch media empire) are providing a platform for Klein’s delusional chronicles. Not only is there no evidence that any of Klein’s ravings are true, there is no conceivable way that he could have had access to the encounters that he is pretending to describe. And to top it all off, Fox illustrates the article with a deceptively edited photo that makes it appear that Obama and Warren are about to lock lips in a heated embrace.

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However, like the soap operas that are broadcast on other daytime television programs, the audience of gullible wingnuts is woefully undiscriminating and will believe whatever is put in front of them by the yarn spinners at Fox. Stay tuned for the next episode of Days of Our Lies, brought to you by Fox News, when Hillary reveals that she is hopelessly in love with daughter Chelsea’s husband, who has gone missing after stumbling unto a mysterious Kenyan birth certificate.


Cliven Bundy 2.0: Fox News Makes Heroes Of American Border Jihadists

Posted by on July 6, 2014 at 3:24 pm. 6 Comments :

The border wars continue on Fox News as the network repeatedly portrays the immigration issue in partisan terms and likens the influx of immigrants to an “invasion” or a conspiracy by President Obama to mint new Democratic voters.

In another new escalation of their radical rhetoric, Fox News is now heralding the participation of right-wing militia organizations who say that they will take it upon themselves to patrol the southern borders (funny that they are never concerned with any other border), an activity for which they have no legal authority.

The Fox Nation website is currently featuring an article that promotes a positive impression of violent and racist extra-legal militias that they describe as “defenders” of the U.S. border saying that…

“We have independent units from the Bolinas Border Patrol and the Central Valley Citizens militia joining forces with independent citizens militia units of Texas to defend our southern border in Texas, to protest Obama’s lawless open borders policies and to rally support for Governor Perry to officially call out Guard units and Texas militia units at his disposal to defend the border!! Lawsuits will not cut it. The invasion is happening now. Action must be taken NOW!!”

Fox Nation

These border jihadists have no official authorization to conduct the activities that they have announced. Any harm that might come to themselves or others would constitute criminal misbehavior for which they could be prosecuted and punished. Their hollow exclamations of lawlessness on the part of the federal government are completely without merit and they offer no argument to support their claims. Contrary to the charge of “open borders,” the Obama administration has significantly improved border security and has actually intercepted and deported more immigrants than their predecessors in the Bush administration.

None of that gets in the way of promulgating false and hysterical allegations that are designed to incite racial disharmony among the Fox News Chicken Littles who see this administration as a sign of the Apocalypse. It is a call to battle in the Texas territories that the righteous must heed, just as they did up in Nevada where deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy amassed militia groups to stare down federal law enforcement agents. That incident ended in a moment of candor with Bundy revealing his racist tendencies and a couple of his former associates murdering two police officers in Las Vegas.

Just to make sure that the message sent to the militia brigades is not misunderstood, the photograph that Fox Nation used to illustrate their border defense jihad was actually taken during the Bundy ranch standoff. It is telling that Fox would use this photo to represent events at the border when it wasn’t taken there. And it is journalistically unethical to do so without proper disclosure. This is a not-so-subtle attempt to interweave the Bundy affair with this new group of lawless missionaries. So even though Bundy was discredited and abandoned after flaming out in the Nevada desert, Fox News is still peddling the agenda of insurrectionists who believe that they can take the law into their own hands.

The ignorance required to link immigration to an invasion is substantial. Invaders are overtly hostile enemy assailants who seek to overthrow the target of their attack. However, no one disputes that immigrants are drawn here by their reverence for American values and opportunities. They are not enemies advancing to conquer. They were invited by the words engraved in brass at the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

With regard to the alleged voter creation conspiracy theory nonsense, even the most liberal interpretation of the immigration policies currently being discussed would require new residents to have been in the U.S. since childhood and to have completed high school or be serving in the military. Additionally, they would would have to pay all taxes and penalties and go to the end of the line to qualify for citizenship. All told it is estimated that it would take about thirteen years to become a citizen with voting privileges.

Unfortunately, the themes being hyped by Fox News are being echoed throughout the conservative media circus. The extremists and wackos who inhabit that realm are eagerly latching on to this new cause for panic. And the possibility of it producing another tragedy similar to the one that cost two Las Vegas police officers their lives is ever more likely.

Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, but with accomplices like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh treating violent criminals like heroes, we may not have seen the worst of this yet.


Fox News Falsely Reports That Court Docs “Shatter” Benghazi Video Narrative

Posted by on July 4, 2014 at 6:33 pm. 3 Comments :

The attempt by Fox News to manufacture a phony version of events leading up to the terrorist attack in Benghazi continues at full speed. The latest chapter in their fictional tale revolves around court documents released by the Department of Justice in a pretrial motion to secure the detention of suspect Ahmed Abu Khatalla. The report by Fox News begins with the allegation that…

“Court documents filed by the U.S. Justice Department in the criminal case against Benghazi attack suspect Ahmed Abu Khatallah provide unprecedented details about the evolution of the assault and further shatter the Obama administration’s initial claim that it sprouted from protests over an anti-Islam film.”

Fox News

The problem with Fox’s reporting is that nothing in the rest of their story supports the charge in their opening paragraph. Not only is there nothing that shatters the claim that an anti-Islam video played a part in the violence that night, there isn’t any reference to the video at all. There is no assertion that the video was a trigger for the attack, and no assertion that it was free of some responsibility for motivating the attackers.

A possible reason for there being nothing conclusive regarding the video is that the court documents referenced by Fox were merely a motion presenting the state’s arguments for maintaining Khatalla in custody while awaiting trial. The purpose of this motion is solely to establish that the defendant is a flight risk and a potential danger to the community. It does not pretend to include every bit of evidence or testimony that will be presented in court.

Nevertheless, Fox sought to portray the motion as containing material that it simply does not contain. That’s why the article never bothers to quote anything from the motion that supports the contention that the video narrative was put to rest. The best they could do was to say that…

“The motion says that in the days preceding the attack, the defendant ‘voiced concern and opposition to the presence of an American facility in Benghazi.'” [and that] “The motion filed this week said Khatallah ‘was motivated by his extremist ideology.'”

There’s no surprise there. The defendant, after all, was a leader of the anti-Western extremist group, Ansar al-Sharia. Of course he was opposed to the American presence on Benghazi. That, however, doesn’t negate the possibility that Khatalla’s plans to attack the diplomatic facility may have been inspired by, or opportunistically coordinated to, the numerous protests that were occurring simultaneously throughout much of the Middle East that were directly the result of the anti-Islam video.

What Fox fails to mention in their story is that Khatalla himself is reported to have admitted that the Benghazi attack was revenge for the video. According to the New York Times…

“What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told other Libyans in private conversations during the night of the attack that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video.”

Fox’s reporting on this is all over the map. Aside from their obsessive fixation on the issue as a cudgel with which to pummel President Obama, Fox has previously labeled Khatalla the ringleader of the Benghazi attack, only to demote him to an irrelevant foot soldier after his capture.

What this tells us is that the value of any element of this story to Fox News is determined solely by its ability to reflect negatively on the President. Consequently, anyone who buys into anything that Fox says is being deliberately and willingly deluded.