Stephen Colbert Takes On The Totalitarian Bicyclista Conspiracy (Video)

Posted by on June 14, 2013 at 3:38 pm. NO Comments :

When a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board speaks out about the imminent threat to America’s freedom posed by subversive bike riders, you sure hope that somebody is listening and is prepared to act. Thank God for Stephen Colbert.

Stephen Colbert
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The Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz took to the airwaves to warn America about the these vile bicyclistas and the government stooges who enable them. While she declined to speculate on what is in “the mind of the totalitarians running this government,” she pointed out that…

“We now look at a city whose best neighborhoods are absolutely…“begrimed” is the word…by these blazing blue Citibank bikes.”

Exactly! It’s an abomination that must not be tolerated by freedom-loving patriots. Colbert quickly recognized the wisdom in Rabinowitz’s criticism and leaped to her defense. He astutely noted that nothing begrimes a community more than a row of two-wheeled, people-powered, vehicles that eschew the fossil fuel that is the blood coursing through America’s oily veins. Colbert lamented what would become of our neighborhoods if the bicyclistas get their way:

“Now when you’re ambulating about the historic West Village, a gaudy blue rack of bikes will take away from the simple beauty of the Cherry Boxxx Discount Dildo Shop.”

Well said. That’s the way to stand up to these peddle-pushers who, like their comrades in the drug trade, are determined to make us all slaves to a perverse and anti-American lifestyle “choice.” And it’s only a matter of time before the bi-cycle Mafia slides down that slippery slope and openly advocates gay-cycle decadence that will rip apart the fabric of our culture.

Watch the video and prepare to be outraged.

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Sarah Palin Returns To Fox News: Two Desperate Peas In A Pod

Posted by on June 13, 2013 at 4:49 pm. 5 Comments :

This has got to be a hoax. I waited a couple of hours just to make sure there wasn’t a late breaking announcement that the the whole thing was a prank cooked up on Twitter. But so far, the news is holding up.

Sarah Palin has been rehired by Fox News.

This is fantastic news. With all of the dark reckonings in recent weeks – the IRS, Syria, tornadoes, etc. – this could not have come at a better time. It has literally brightened my day. And that’s true even though Greta Van Susteren thinks that Palin’s return will drive liberals crazy. Yeah, right. Crazy with joy.

Sarah PalinYou still have to wonder just how desperate both parties must have been to renew their vows (ironically on the same day that Rupert Murdoch announced that he and his third wife are getting divorced. Coincidence?). Fox had managed to unload some ratty baggage when they ousted Palin. Her star had fallen in every venue. Her books weren’t selling. Her cable reality shows were canceled. Her movie flopped. All she had left was her Facebook postings. That paints a pretty good picture of why Palin would be anxious to grab some attention.

As for Fox, after the 2012 election debacle they hired losers like Allen West, Scott Brown, Erick Erickson, Herman Cain, and Mark Levin. Apparently that star-studded roster was not enough. So they have come a-courting Palin. It’s likely they got her at bargain basement prices. After they split in January, Howard Kurtz reported that Roger Ailes had offered her a low-ball contract at a fraction of her previous salary.

We’ll see if Palin manages to earn her keep this time around. An estimate of her prior stint showed that Fox had paid her $15.85 per word for the three year term of her contract. At the time I speculated that they could get her for $15.85 per hour in six months, which is right about now. I sure hope Fox didn’t overpay.


Glenn Beck Welshes On Promised Info To ‘Take Down The Whole Power Structure’

Posted by on June 13, 2013 at 12:11 pm. 11 Comments :

A few days ago Glenn Beck claimed that his vocal cords were paralyzed and he was unable to speak. He then delivered a ten minute sermon with cue cards on the need to end the division in America and to come together with love. This was just one day after he called Michelle Obama a monster.

Beck has been plagued in the past by a variety of health problems including hemorrhoids, blindness, nerve damage in his hands and feet, and of course, paranoid schizophrenia. So it was not surprising to hear about his latest medical tribulations. There seems to be one whenever he needs to boost his media quotient.

Glenn Beck
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But yesterday, apparently, his voice was miraculously back and in fine form. All the better for him to declare that he was in possession of earth-shattering news that will “rock” the country. Let me allow Beck to explain it himself (video below):

“This country is, I believe, going to be rocked in the next 24 hours with some things that are going on in Washington and beyond that we found out about yesterday. And we will be telling you in great detail in the next 24 hours. […] You are going to witness things in American history that has never been witnessed before. We have a whistle-blower on something. […] My people have seen one document. One. This one document would take down pretty much the whole power structure. Pretty much everything. […] It will take down the GOP. It will take down the Democrats. It will take down many members of congress. It will take all of them down.”

Are you scared yet? Beck insisted that this information was so damaging that his source was in fear for his life. Beck also said, contradicting his voiceless condemnation of divisiveness, that this will divide the nation. That’s a curious assertion, because if it is going to take down Democrats and Republicans, who is there left to divide?

Well, it has already been more than 24 hours since Beck promised to unleash his explosive dialogue. He has completed his broadcast today with no mention of the power structure’s take down. This can only mean one thing…

Apparently the power structure has taken down Beck. Someone has obviously gotten to him. Maybe his paralyzed vocal cords were a warning. What other explanation could there be for his not making even a single reference to his shocking announcement yesterday? If there were any hope that Beck is still acting of his own accord, he could easily have said that circumstances required him to delay the disclosure, or that he is conducting further investigation. He could even have said that his source turned out to be wrong. But to go completely silent on the matter after yesterday’s impassioned proclamation is just too much to dismiss cavalierly.

It’s safe to assume that his source has been terminated and now Beck is racked with fear for himself and/or his family and has decided to clam up. Or perhaps he is being watched by a shadowy figure just out of camera view. It could be the agents of Agenda 21, or the Common Core conspirators, or the UN’s gun confiscation squad, or even the {gasp} IRS. For now, whatever he planned to reveal will remain a mystery for such time as Beck’s safety has been compromised.

But fear not. Beck’s infamous bravery (see his confrontation with frightful professional wrestlers) and devotion to country will propel him to find a way out of this nightmare and he will fulfill the mission for which God has selected him. After all, he has seen “the finger of God,”

Glenn Beck - Finger of God

Just stay tuned to his radio program, subscribe to his Internet videocast, buy his books, and send him any spare change you find in the sofa cushions. That’s surely the best way to help him now in his hour of need.


Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Honored By Ultra-Rightist Bradley Foundation

Posted by on June 13, 2013 at 9:30 am. 6 Comments :

Roger AilesConfirming what everyone with a pulse already knows, Roger Ailes, the CEO of Fox News, is a revered figure in the realm of wealthy, right-wing, evangelical, political manipulators. The latest evidence is the tribute to Ailes from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, an organization that rivals the Koch brothers for their advocacy of extremist conservative issues. Huffington Post reports that…

“Over the past decade, the Wisconsin-based Bradley Foundation has given away more than $400 million to fund conservative causes, including school voucher campaigns, anti-union ‘right to work’ laws, pro-marriage initiatives, global warming denial groups and efforts to combat voter fraud.”

The Bradley has also been one of the biggest funders of AstroTurf Tea Party groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, as well as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a secretive assembly of corporations and politicians who draft custom legislation to enrich themselves.

In his acceptance speech, Ailes spewed typically jingoistic rhetoric that reeked of American supremacism. His words betray a repulsive bigotry that seeps into the reporting on Fox News every day.

Ailes: “We have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by others, many who of whom want to impose their culture and laws under the manufactured utopian idea that all cultures are equal and most are better than America’s.”

Ailes doesn’t say who the “others” are who have been manipulating us. However, his use of the term is just the sort of divisive alarmism that bigots generally employ. Ailes also doesn’t bother to describe what the American culture is. Considering that the United States has grown out of a wildly diverse population of immigrants, it would be difficult to define a specific set of cultural elements that compose an American identity, unless it is one of wild diversity. In which case, it is the imposition of other cultures that has specifically shaped what is unique about us.

Nevertheless, Ailes goes on to state that…

“Traditional American culture influenced me greatly as I created the Fox News Channel for Rupert Murdoch. We knew that a fair and balanced news channel could succeed, as long as no views were rejected and conservative views were allowed to be heard.”

It’s interesting that he claims to reject no views, but only stipulates that conservative views be heard. That subtle prejudice is affirmed in the following paragraph where Ailes praises his network for reporting stories that others do not. He cites as examples the Dr. Gosnell story, the trumped up Benghazi hysteria, and the IRS/Tea Party affair – all conservative leaning news items. And with regard to the IRS, Ailes ventures off into conspiracy theory lunacy by advancing nutty allegations about the hiring of some 16,000 armed IRS agents enforcing ObamaCare (when is he going to give Alex Jones a show on Fox?).

As if to tie up his speech with a demonstration of the ignorance and shallow thinking that is so rampant on Fox News, Ailes makes the absurd (and factually erroneous) statement that…

“You know how I know this is a great country? Because everybody is trying to get in, and nobody is trying to get out.”

First of all, it is ridiculous to try to establish America’s greatness by what those on the outside think. There are at least as many foreigners who hate, or disapprove of, America, as admire it. What’s more, there are millions of people who want to get out of America. Three million leave every year. As for the people trying to get in, they are not doing so because America is great. They are coming because America is rich. Contrary to the worshipers of wealth with whom Ailes associates, that is not the same thing.

It is entirely appropriate that Ailes would receive this tribute from an organization that celebrates Randian-style greed and selfishness. And his acceptance speech perfectly illustrates his devotion to that philosophy. It’s just too bad that the $250,000 award is going to someone who is already a multimillionaire, and whose life has been dedicated to hiring other rich people to tell middle-class people to blame the poor for all of their problems.


On Fox News GOP Rep Lies, Accuses Glen Greenwald Of Threatening To Out CIA Agents

Posted by on June 12, 2013 at 6:40 pm. 3 Comments :

Remember when Fox News was OUTRAGED at the possibility of the United States government prosecuting a reporter for doing his job? It was only a couple of weeks ago. At that time their own James Rosen was revealed to have been conspiring with an employee of the State Department to acquire and publish classified documents concerning sensitive operations in North Korea.

The news of Rosen’s involvement in the matter, and the government’s investigation of him, sent Fox News squawking heads into a tizzy. They complained loudly and repeatedly that it was unconscionable that a reporter would be subject to such an unthinkable burden merely for doing what any respectable reporter would do under the same circumstances. Never mind the fact that Rosen was not conducting routine investigative reporting. He was caught persuading a source to break the law in order to advance his own political agenda. He literally told his source that he wanted to “force the administration’s hand.”

Fox News

Well, that commitment to the First Amendment was decidedly short-lived. Today on Fox News, Megyn Kelly hosted GOP Rep. Peter King to discuss King’s remarks regarding Glen Greenwald, the reporter who broke the NSA story. King had previously said that he believes that Greenwald should be arrested and prosecuted for his reporting. When Kelly gave King an opportunity to clarify his position, King said…

“In this case, when you have someone who has disclosed secrets like this and threatens to disclose more, then to me yes, there has to be…legal action should be taken against him. […] No right is absolute. Obviously, freedom of the press has to be cherished in this country, but in this case where some people are glorifying Snowden and making him a hero, and now acting as if Greenwald was a legitimate journalist.”

Kelly sought to make the connection between Greenwald and Rosen, asking King if there was a difference. King thinks there is:

“James Rosen never said he was going to release information that was going to kill Americans. He was never going to release the names of CIA agents and operatives around the world.”

Well, as Greenwald noted today on “All In with Chris Hayes,” he never made any such threat. He further insisted that he doesn’t even know the names of any covert CIA agents or operatives. King’s accusation was entirely made up. But that didn’t even matter, because when Kelly asked him if Greenwald should be prosecuted for anything he has already done, rather than something King is afraid he will do in the future, King responded in the affirmative.

Throughout this interview there was no sense of outrage, no horror that a government official – the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee no less – was advocating the prosecution of a reporter for doing his job. There was none of the indignation that Fox showed for Rosen expressed for Greenwald. There wasn’t even any push back at King’s allegation that Greenwald was threatening to take actions that would kill Americans, an allegation that if proven could result in Greenwald being executed for treason.

This is about as clear a demonstration that Fox’s concern for freedom of the press is a charade. They couldn’t care less about the First Amendment except in situations where they can exploit it for political advantage. Greenwald is a legitimate journalist (unlike Rosen who is a political operative), but when his rights are threatened by a lying congressman, Fox News thanks the congressman and moves on to their next story. Remember that the next time somebody on Fox pretends to be shocked by some scandalous event in the news.


Fox Nation vs. Reality: Impeach Obama Rally Causes 10 Mile Yawn

Posted by on June 12, 2013 at 3:41 pm. 6 Comments :

The folks at Fox Nation must be getting pretty desperate for any slime to fling Obama’s way. Clearly the parade of phony scandals has failed to convince the President to resign and join a Muslim monastery, so they are grasping for ever shorter straws in an effort to break Obama’s back.

Today the Fox Nationalists reported that an “Impeach Obama” rally in Southern California organized by confirmed birther had snarled traffic for 10 miles.

Fox Nation
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First of all, anyone who has ever driven in Southern California knows that there are very few 10 mile stretches of highway that are not snarled at almost any time of day. That said, the particular claim in this case was easily disproved by photos supplied by the source for the story. One glance shows that traffic was moving fairly well. It also shows that the rally was a pathetic affair that brought out only six or seven nutcases who were unable to articulate an actual reason to impeach the President. Their signs carried unrelated messages concerning Benghazi, immigration, guns, and something about cults. This also further confirms earlier reports that these Teabaggers have not gained any ground in the wake of recent political melodramas.

The organizer was long-time birther, Roger Ogden. He has been advocating for Obama’s impeachment for years. He continues to believe that the birth certificate the White House posted was a fake. He also defends comparing Obama to Hitler and the Nazis. I’m not sure whether Ogden is a LaRouche follower, but there was at least one LaRouche sign at the rally.

I don’t particularly care what a loser like Ogden does on his spare Saturday mornings, but the fact that Fox News saw fit to feature this non-event on their web site says something about how frantic they are to invent a new controversy. But what made them think that a lame handful of wingnuts on a freeway overpass would have a better chance of stirring up trouble than the pseudo-scandals that have already flopped, I’ll never know.

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Tea Party Groups Suing The IRS Never Suffered Any Harm

Posted by on June 12, 2013 at 10:29 am. 14 Comments :

The more we learn about the IRS allegedly targeting Tea Party organizations for political purposes, the more it appears to be a thinly disguised scam by conservatives to whip up phony scandals in order to tarnish President Obama and his administration.

Never mind the fact that every named IRS employee connected to the alleged targeting just happens to be a Republican, today, Mother Jones Magazine has done the journalistic legwork of examining the pending lawsuits filed by the various Tea Party groups and has found that they are mostly frauds with little chance of success in the courtroom. The Mother Jones article goes into detail about why these cases are unlikely to prevail, but one of the key revelations sheds light on how suspect their motives really are.

Tea Party
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The most high profile of the cases is the one brought by uber-rightist legal publicity hound Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice. He has assembled 25 Tea Party groups into an action seeking both administrative and financial relief. The problem is that he is suing under a provision that addresses cases where applicants were seeking tax-exempt status for donations (501c3), but whose applications were denied or delayed. However, 23 of the 25 plaintiffs were not seeking tax-exempt status at all. They were merely applying for non-profit status (501c4). Therefore, the delays (there were no denials) would not have harmed the organizations fundraising ability because they were never structured to give donors a tax break.

That is a significant discovery because these hoaxters have been whining for weeks that their efforts to raise money were hampered by the IRS actions. As it turns out, there was nothing stopping them raising funds other than the fact that most Americans were repulsed by their extremist, right-wing agenda.

In addition, the complaints of the Teabaggers reveal that the IRS had good cause to subject them to extra scrutiny. They openly admit their belief that the IRS actions contributed to the electoral losses of Mitt Romney and other Republicans who may have won if these groups were not hamstrung by bureaucracy. But not only was there nothing preventing them from engaging in their work, their admissions show that they were, in fact, political operatives and not entitled to preferential tax treatment.

So once again, reality has encroached on the designs of the Tea Party to position themselves as “social welfare” organizations with no political motives. From the start they were deeply entangled with the Republican Party and their mission was always to advance GOP candidates and policies. And now we see that they are abusing the legal system for undeserved relief and for, of course, publicity. Expect these cases to be dismissed in short order, after which the Teabaggers will bellow some nonsense about the liberal courts denying them justice.


Rupert Murdoch Seeking Billion Dollar Payoff To Avoid Criminal Prosecution In Hacking Scandal

Posted by on June 11, 2013 at 2:09 pm. 6 Comments :

In what may be the biggest scandal in the history of journalism, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation was caught hacking into the phones, emails, and computers of thousands of people, including private citizens, royals, celebrities, politicians, and even a kidnapped schoolgirl who was later found dead. It’s a story that got international attention everywhere but on Fox News, where Murdoch explicitly refused to discuss it with his sycophantic anchorman.

The fallout from that affair has been wide-reaching with dozens of News Corp. employees arrested and/or fired. Murdoch’s CEO of the UK publishing division is currently awaiting prosecution. The “News of the World,” at the time England’s largest circulation paper, was shut down. And today the Telegraph is reporting that Murdoch’s News Corporation expects that it…

“…will pay to put an end to the [U.S. Department of Justice’s] investigation into the company’s UK newspaper arm, News International, before it goes to a full trial.

“The DoJ is investigating News Corp for potential breaches of America’s Foreign And Corrupt Practices Act, which outlaws police bribery and can result in major penalties.”
[…]
“It has been reported that it could agree a settlement of $850m or more.”

If Murdoch is willing to shell out nearly a billion dollars to make this go away, he is in effect admitting guilt. That is not exactly a figure consistent with a nuisance suit. To be sure, Murdoch has a lot riding on this. His son James is in the legal line of fire. The recent corporate split dividing his news publishing division from the entertainment group will put more pressure on the news side to be profitable, and a criminal investigation won’t advance that goal. (Side note: Fox News was placed in the entertainment group when the companies split).

Fox News Murdochalypse

It is still somewhat surprising that news of these shenanigans have not been covered in much detail here in the U.S. Particularly in light of the near hysteria over the NSA’s collection of the phone records of Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing. This disparity in reporting reveals an egregious hypocrisy. Why is Fox News so outraged over the privacy violations of a government agency that justifies its actions as necessary to obstruct terrorists, but they aren’t the least bit concerned about privacy violations by a corporation whose only justification is greed?

Obviously, the answer is that Fox News has a vested interest in suppressing news that reflects poorly on itself. But just as much, they have a partisan interest in hyping news that damages their political enemies. And for both of these reasons, Fox should never be referred to as a “news” network. They are an ultra-rightist PR agency. They should not be allowed to buy their way out of legal jeopardy. Those responsible for the hacking deserve to be tried, convicted, and punished. And that includes Murdoch.


Fox Nation vs. Reality: Surveillance Flip-Flops A One-Sided Phenomenon

Posted by on June 11, 2013 at 10:23 am. 5 Comments :

One of the few encouraging aspects of the current controversy over the privacy intrusions of the NSA is that civil libertarians from across the political divide are in agreement that government is overstepping its authority. When both Michael Moore and Glenn Beck say that whistleblower Edward Snowden is a hero, there seems to be a ray of hope that something might be done about rolling back the invasive policies of George Bush’s Patriot Act Doctrine.

Of course, it is way too much to expect the serial liars at Fox Nation to embrace a moment of bipartisanship and parlay it into constructive action for the betterment of America. Their headline this morning mutilates the substance of a new poll by the Pew Center and the Washington Post:

Fox Nation vs. Reality
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By declaring that “Dems Flip-Flop on Surveillance When Obama in WH,” the Fox Nationalists ignore the fact that Republicans flipped also. In fact the Democrats’ flip was almost identical to the Republicans’ flop. The Washington Post, whose headline (“Who loves surveillance? It depends who’s in the White House”) was accurate, reported the poll’s results showing that Democrats’ approval for national security over privacy increased by 27 percentage points since the Bush years. On the GOP side such approval dropped by 22 points. The plain conclusion is that approval is often a function of who’s doing the snooping. But Fox read these poll results and deliberately misrepresented the facts to show only a flip-flopping Democratic position.

Additionally, there is some nuance to the variations in the poll questions asked. In 2006, Democrats expressed their disapproval of Bush’s policy because it eavesdropped on the actual phone conversations without obtaining a warrant. Today Democrats are expressing approval of a policy that does not listen in on the calls, but only stores information like phone numbers and dates. Plus, Obama’s NSA gets a court’s OK to do even that. This mitigates to some extent the degree of flipping that can be attributed to the Democrats.

What does not change is the fact that no administration should be permitted to broadly collect private data on American citizens who are not under investigation for some criminal activity. That principle is being advanced by conscientious Americans of all political stripes. It’s unfortunate that Fox is so obsessed with partisan animus that they cannot fairly report a story that unites the nation. Rather than being honest and responsible, Fox is being divisive and is creating barriers to moving the nation in a positive direction that even their own viewers would support.


Bombshell Disclosure That Tea Party Targeting By IRS Conducted Mainly By GOP Is Suppressed By Fox News

Posted by on June 10, 2013 at 10:56 am. 8 Comments :

The truth about the alleged targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRS continues to leak out, but not with much help from Fox News. For weeks now, Republicans in congress and the conservative media, led by Fox News, have been struggling to find links between the Cincinnati IRS office, where targeting was said to have occurred, and the White House. Their failure to turn up any such links has clearly frustrated them, resulting in their making embarrassing assertions about their “gut feelings” and abandoning any pretense to engage in factual discourse.

False FlagThe latest revelation to cast doubt on the GOP’s scandal mongering is the disclosure by Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings who announced yesterday that it is was a manager in the Cincinnati IRS office who instigated the Tea Party reviews. The manager also identified himself as a conservative Republican and insisted that the review policy was wholly contained in his office and did not involve the White House. He is the latest named source in the affair that has turned out to be a Republican. Previously, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, and Lois Lerner, the head of the agency’s Tax-Exempt Organizations division, were revealed to be Republicans hired by George W. Bush.

With such disclosures it makes it difficult for informed citizens to conclude that there was any political chicanery orchestrated by the White House to disadvantage conservative groups. But it is also difficult to be informed when media such as Fox News deliberately suppresses key facts about the matter.

After Rep. Cummings told CNN about the Cincinnati manager’s testimony, and GOP Committee Chairman Darrel Issa’s refusal to release the transcripts, Fox News reported only that Cummings thought the hearings should be wrapped up. In several segments spanning Fox & Friends and Happening Now, the Fox presentation of the story left out the key fact that the witness was another Republican and thus, not an Obama functionary. As I noted previously, there has not been a single partisan Democrat identified at the IRS who had anything to do with the application reviews.

The desperation of Fox News to prolong the season of pseudo-scandals is glaringly obvious. They can’t be bothered to report breaking news that disputes their predetermined biases. They also cannot allow guests to engage in fact-based discourse, so they rudely shout them down and then demand that their microphones be cut. That’s what happened when Democratic strategist Julian Epstein was interviewed by Fox bully and serial interrupter, Neil Cavuto:

Fox is behaving like an impudent child that hasn’t gotten his way. They want a scandal so badly and they will hold their breath until they get one. And if the facts don’t support their fabrications, they ignore them and the people with the effrontery to be honest information brokers. That’s just part of the reason that nobody outside of Fox’s studio and fan base regard them as journalists or give them any credibility.