Shill Baby Shill: Sarah Palin’s Subscription Website Is Just Another Scam

Posted by on February 14, 2015 at 2:09 pm. 17 Comments :

In recent days there has been a flurry of activity (mostly concentrated within the Republican National Committee and Fox News) asking in faux-worried tones where Hillary Clinton is hiding. Of course, Clinton is neither a public official nor a candidate for office, so her whereabouts are strictly her own business. Nevertheless, the “Hillary Hiding” campaign was created by the RNC and Fox picked it up verbatim to enhance their already festering anti-Clinton programming. And as usual, they have a severely myopic view of the world and are oblivious to the missing persons among their own ranks.

In case you missed it, Sarah Palin has an Internet “channel” where subscribers can pay $9.95 a month to get her stream of unconsciousness meanderings on the issues of the day. The website, which launched just six months ago, tantalizes prospective fans with the promise that you can…

“Connect with me every day here in my home in Alaska and on the road in our great country! Ask me anything. Every week I answer your questions. Plus, be the first to see my ideas for America and my take on the big issues of our time.”

Where's Sarah Palin?

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[Note 7/7/2015: Palin has announced that this channel is going dark on August 1, 2015]

The only problem is that she has not updated the site with any new content for the past ten days. Subscribers might be wondering just what they are paying for right about now. Her last post was on February 5 and addressed the “big issue of our time” of how the ultra-affluent attendees of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland arrived in private jets. Oh my. For some reason Palin is disparaging the one-percenters (aka business leaders, aka job creators) for enjoying the lifestyle that God intended for them to have by virtue of their ability to create wealth.

Ever since that post her site has been silent. However, we ought not to jump to conclusions because in early January there was a similar ten day absence of Palin’s unique vision of America’s condition. So in the first two months of 2015 Palin has already shorted her subscribers at least 33% each month. Will they get a refund? Or did the Quitta From Wassila just quit again while her fans continue to get charges automatically applied to their credit cards?

Perhaps Palin was just too busy to post because of her other responsibilities making an ass of herself at campaign stops in Iowa, where even conservative allies were shocked by her embarrassing performance. Or maybe the obligation to record more lame video selfies for an audience that had already shelled over their moola was less of a priority than her paid pandering to Big Oil at a conference in Houston, Texas. Palin promoted her appearance at the North American Prospect Expo on her Facebook page saying that…

“There’s reason for great hope that American-made oil and gas supplies can energize our nation, making reliance on foreign energy sold to us by unfriendliness a thing of the past. Bottom line: drill, baby, drill works.”

“Sold to us by unfriendliness?” That’s the sort of brilliance for which organizations fork over thousands of dollars a pop for Palin’s word-salad soliloquies. Her speech focused on bragging that her bumper-sticker theory of economics, “drill baby drill,” was responsible for lowering the price of gas. Of course she ignored all of the real reasons that include declining demand, increased adoption of fuel-efficient vehicles and alternative energy, and the world oil markets that are dominated by OPEC.

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What this proves is that Palin is still the grifter that she has always been. Her primary motivation is to promote and enrich herself at the expense of all the little people (or giant corporations) who are too dumb to recognize a scam when it is bleeding them dry. While Glenn Beck is a notoriously paranoid conspiracy theorist and wannabe evangelist, at least he gives his suckers new material to chew on every day via his radio program and Internet sites. Palin simply takes their cash and jets off to a highly paid speaking engagement with contact riders that demand first-class travel and lodgings. But I’m sure her fans and benefactors are getting their money’s worth, so long as their expectations are as low as her ability to deliver.

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Wingnuts Pan Obama’s Funny Video As Undignified, Praise Netanyahu’s As Delightful

Posted by on February 13, 2015 at 7:38 pm. 3 Comments :

There is something about the modern conservative establishment that fosters a deep infatuation with foreign leaders. Whether it be Vladimir Putin or King Abdullah or, most recently, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Konservative Komedy

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This fascination with tyrants and other non-American heads of state is decidedly unpatriotic. And coming from these Tea party, Republican, nationalist zealots, it is also extraordinarily hypocritical.

This week President Obama and Buzzfeed produced and released a short video to alert citizens that the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) would end on February 15, and that anyone interested in acquiring health insurance would need to to do so before then. The video was a humorous affair that sought to inform without banging people over the head with a rhetorical sledgehammer.

The reaction from the rightist killjoys was not dissimilar to that of radical Islamists who would stone people for the sin of dancing. How dare the President lower himself to expressing humor in order to give out useful information. Obviously he’s the Anti-Christ. This is identical to the response by tight-assed GOP’ers to the President’s appearance on Zach Galifianakis’ “Between Two Ferns,” and his interviews with three YouTube celebs. Some of the criticisms include…

  • Brain Kilmeade, Fox News: Bad message to friends in peril & heartening to our enemies.
  • Jim Geraghty, National Review: We’re not living in silly times, but we have a silly president.
  • Marc Thiessen, Washington Post: What president says YOLO [You only live once]? It’s just not funny.
  • Michelle Malkin: America’s commander-in-chief is goofing off w/Buzzfeed while the world burns.
  • Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Fox News: On the very day Kayla Mueller is confirmed to be dead at the hands of terrorism, how does our president respond? “YOLO.”

And you wonder why there aren’t any conservative comedians? Maybe because they don’t have the slightest hint of a sense of humor. Maybe because they can watch that video and conclude that it is “heartening to our enemies.” And maybe because what they actually do regard as funny is Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu pretending to be a “Bibisitter,” in a campaign ad. The reaction to Netanyahu’s fairly lame ad by right-wing aficionados of funny included:

  • KT McFarland, Fox News: Whoever said Bibi netanyahu doesn’t have sense of humor? Watch the Bibisitter campaign add – it’s hilarious!!
  • Laura Ingraham, Fox News: Hilarious Benjamin Netanyahu Election Campaign Advertisement.
  • National Review: Bibi Sitter: Benjamin Netanyahu’s new campaign commercial. Very funny.

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No one can argue that the world around Israel is less embroiled in hostilities than the United States. The Middle Eastern nation is surrounded by enemies devoted to their destruction. Yet somehow it’s OK, even hilarious, for Netanyahu to make “funny” videos to promote himself during a reelection campaign despite the turmoil his nation faces. But if Obama makes a funny video to help, not himself, but others who will benefit from having health insurance, he is an ogre who spits on the graves of murdered hostages.

There is an Olympian heap of irony in the fact that conservatives spent years pushing the insane conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in this country, but at the same time they openly yearn for foreigners, some of them unabashed dictators, to take control of America. And yet they still regard themselves as patriots as they feverishly insult our democracy, our President, and the majority of Americans who voted for him twice.


Fox News Fail: Comparing The Threat Of Climate Change To Terrorism

Posted by on February 12, 2015 at 1:54 pm. 6 Comments :

During the State of the Union address last month, President Obama made note of a particularly perilous situation that requires an immediate response in order to prevent certain catastrophe. Warning that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than Climate Change,” Obama said that…

“The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we don’t act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration and conflict and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that Climate Change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.”

Those remarks stirred up a bit of the usual knee-jerk opposition from wingnut science-deniers at the time, but they failed to endure through subsequent news cycles that shifted gears to more critical matters like the American Sniper movie, the end of Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations, and measles. But the anti-science crowd was not to be ignored. So they are now ratcheting up the hoax-talk in order to reclaim the nation’s attention.

Not surprisingly, it is Fox News pushing the issue back into the slimelight by posting an article on their community website, Fox Nation, about the administration making Climate Change a national security priority. While there is nothing in the article itself (from the Huffington Post) that is especially newsworthy, the Fox Nationalists purpose is to trumpet a headline that they know will stimulate their dimwitted readers. After all, what could be more horrifying than Obama giving Climate Change the attention it actually deserves?

Fox Nation

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Shortly after this national security policy was released, Obama was interviewed by Matthew Yglesias of Vox Media. He told Vox that the media is responsible for over-hyping terrorism to the detriment of other threats that impact more people. That comment was later seized upon by Jonathan Karl of ABC News (and the rest of the Right-wing Media Circus) who asked Obama’s press secretary, Josh Earnest, if the President actually meant to say that “the threat of climate change is greater than the threat of terrorism?”

Why is this such a difficult concept for conservative pundits and politicians? Climate Change is a global phenomenon that has the capacity to cause devastating environmental trauma impacting the entire population of the planet. In the United States alone there are already regions that are suffering more severe natural disasters like hurricanes and drought. And around the globe these problems, along with multiplying refugee populations and temperature extremes, are both costly and deadly. It could not be more obvious that the billions of potential victims of Climate Change make it a greater threat than terrorism. Note: To date ISIL has killed four Americans.

More to the point, the current debate revolves around the threat that Climate Change poses to national security. On that level the military has been crystal clear for years about the very real consequences of a world where water and arable land become scarce, and nations erupt into chaos and war.

The Rolling Stone just published an extensive examination of The Pentagon & Climate Change: How Deniers Put National Security at Risk. Among its many documented examples of a very real threat certified by numerous military experts is one that ought to be persuasive to the conservative Republican deniers:

“In 2003, under Donald Rumsfeld, former President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, the Pentagon published a report titled ‘An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.’ Commissioned by Andrew Marshall, who is sometimes jokingly referred to within the Pentagon as Yoda — and who was a favorite of Rumsfeld’s — the report warned that threats to global stability posed by rapid warming vastly eclipse that of terrorism.”

OK? So now the climate-hoaxers cannot simply blame Obama and his socialist cabal of Sharia lawyers for inventing the crisis. Sources as deeply ingrained in the rightist dregs of warhawk free-marketism as Rumsfeld and Bush warned of the very same threat. In fact, four of the past Secretaries of Defense (Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, and Rumsfeld) all subscribed to the policy that Climate Change is one of America’s top strategic risks. And three of the four are Republicans.

Nevertheless, Fox News is still trying to raise a ruckus about Obama properly prioritizing Climate Change as a serious concern for national security, just as the Pentagon has done for years. What’s plain is that Fox could not care less about the welfare of the nation. They are solely devoted to disparaging this president and any policy with which he comes into contact. And they will pursue that mission despite the absence of reason or ideological consistency.

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Jon Stewart Is Leaving The Daily Show – Brian Williams Is Leaving NBC News – COINCIDENCE?

Posted by on February 10, 2015 at 10:30 pm. 3 Comments :

Breaking News in the Mediasphere: The controversy surrounding Brian Williams has led to an announcement by NBC management that, effective immediately, Williams will be put on a six month suspension without pay. They describe the punishment as “severe and appropriate” and leave the door open for a return, although without making any overt assurances of that outcome.

Within a couple of hours of that announcement, it was reported that Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, will also be stepping down sometime this year. While there is no scandal associated with Stewart’s separation (that we know of), it is nevertheless a profound blow to the world of media. Stewart has been a sharp, insightful, and hilarious observer of news programming for the past seventeen years.

So what to make of these near simultaneous bulletins? After digesting all of the possible repercussions and consequences, intended and otherwise, there is only one reasonable conclusion that can be reached:

Jon Stewart NBC News

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That’s right. Jon Stewart will be taking over the NBC Nightly News and assuming the duties of managing editor for the network’s news division. It’s an obvious choice considering his long history of media criticism and deep understanding of the workings of contemporary journalism. Stewart knows precisely where the pitfalls are for reporting stories that have real impact on the lives of ordinary Americans. He, more than anyone else, will be able to avoid the sort of embarrassing gaffes that he so deftly mocked on The Daily Show.

As for Brian Williams… What better assignment for someone with an abundance of experience on late night talk shows like David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon (where Williams so brilliantly slow-jammed the news) than to take over the now empty seat on The Daily Show? Williams has proven that he has a quick wit and his spellbinding tales of wartime peril show that he can handle fake news as well as any satirist.

On a serious note, Jon Stewart would be sorely missed under any circumstances. But coming so soon after the loss of Stephen Colbert, the state of political satire is taking a real punch to the gut. Stewart has won nineteen Emmys as writer and producer during his tenure at The Daily Show. And despite the fact that right-wingers suffer a knee-jerk animosity for him, Stewart has been more than fair and balanced. This has even been documented by Fox News who have done more than forty stories (listed here and here) celebrating Stewart’s willingness to go after President Obama and other liberal people or ideas. And his reputation for honesty and accuracy far outshines that of Fox News (see Fox News vs Jon Stewart vs Politifact).

Of Course, whatever grief comedy lovers feel today may be temporary. Colbert will shortly reemerge as the host of CBS’ Late Night. And a new host for The Daily Show will be christened and could be just as talented and stinging as Stewart. Think Lewis Black, W. Kamau Bell, Jessica Williams, Jeff Jeffries, or maybe the husband wife team of Jason Jones and Samantha Bee. Could John Oliver be coaxed back? Dare we hope for Tina Fey? And then we still don’t know what Stewart plans for his next act.

Clearly the landscape is shifting. But hopefully there will be some settling before we get too far into the 2016 election cycle. Till then, thanks for all the good times, Jon, and best wishes for the future. And now…your moment of Zen:


WTF? Now Conservatives Love The Lamestream Media Because – Obama

Posted by on February 10, 2015 at 1:52 pm. 3 Comments :

The only thing that tingles the naughty parts of right-wingers more than bashing President Obama over some trumped up scandal or context-deprived sentence fragment, is railing against the greatest threat to America since gay, Ebola-infected, terrorist children sneaking across the border – The “Lamestream” Media (which, ironically, was responsible for most of the panic about gay, Ebola-infected, terrorist children sneaking across the border).

Ever since Sarah Palin’s speech writers pretended to coin the term, conservatives have vociferously criticized the conventional media outlets that they regarded as hopelessly corrupted by liberal bias and deference to the powers that be. They blasted the broadcast networks and cable news channels (except for Fox News, the biggest, most mainstream of them all) with condemnations of their allegedly slanted reporting and anti-American partisanship. Never mind that all of the major news enterprises are divisions of giant, multinational corporations that benefit directly from the hyper-capitalist, free-market mutations that Randian conservatives worship.

Invariably it is Fox News leading that attack pack to blister those associated with the big media organizations. And everyone on the far right gets in line to wield blows. But now they have an ally seeking to join the parade of criticism. An unwanted ally, apparently.

Fox News

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In what must be a deliberate attempt to upend the rightist ideologues’ mission, Obama made some remarks in an interview with Vox.com, an alternative Internet media company, that has shaken the press sparling’s brains into a state of utter confusion. decrying what he called “the balkanization of the media,” Obama said that…

“You’ve got the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh folks and then you’ve got the MSNBC folks… [it] allows us to narrow our point of view. […and that…] My advice to a future president is increasingly try to bypass the traditional venues that create divisions and try to find new venues within this new media that are quirkier, less predictable.”

That, of course, is precisely what the right has been saying ever since the black guy occupied the White House. Rightist thought bleeders like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck have relocated to cyberspace outposts where they enjoy the freedom to pontificate as incoherently as they please. And everyone from Wingnut Land has advocated the very same advice that Obama offered about finding new venues.

Despite that apparent agreement, conservative hypocrites, upon learning of Obama’s support for new and alternative media, have now flipped their stance and are furious that Obama would say anything derogatory about the conventional press. They have adjusted their blinders so that all they can see are Obama’s comments regarding Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. The single-note chorus erupting from the right-wing choir is that Obama is specifically blaming just those two sources for all of his problems, despite his having mentioned MSNBC in the very same breath. And the fact that he would consent to being interviewed by an Internet media publisher like Vox is an insult to the good people who toil so valiantly in the now wonderful mainstream media.

This is not new complaint from the right. They howl when Obama appears with popular comedians like Stephen Colbert and Zach Galifianakis. They grumble when he hosts Google Hangouts. More recently, they went totally bonkers when he allowed YouTube stars, with audiences bigger than Fox News, to interview him. On that subject, Fox contributor Jonah Goldberg of the ultra-rightist National Review whined that Obama “only likes to talk to people who think he’s awesome.” That will come as some surprise to Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and Bret Baier, who have both interviewed Obama.

The lesson here for the President is that he must hunker down in the White House basement and speak to no one. Because if he conducts an interview with ABC News he is a pandering to the lamestream elitists who are in the tank for him. And if he bypasses them he is insulting the indisputable dignity of the American press and proving that he’s afraid of tough questions. As always, Fox News and the right have constructed a bullet-proof, lose-lose scenario from which Obama cannot hope to escape. Unless, of course, he uses simple logic and reason, concepts that escape the ability of the right to comprehend.

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Obama Vox Interview


Whose Top Corporate Donors Are Among The Most Hated Companies In America?

Posted by on February 8, 2015 at 3:50 pm. NO Comments :

The headline of a current Fox Nation article just begs to be mocked. Accompanying a photo of a cackling Hillary Clinton, the headline blares “Hillary Clinton’s Top Corporate Donors Are Among The Most Hated Companies In America.”

Fox Nation

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Oh really? So which companies is the article, sourced to the ultra-rightist Washington Free Beacon, referring? They are indeed a collection of mostly financial institutions that have deservedly earned the enmity of the American people. Companies like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers. All of these enterprises played a role in plunging the nation into the Great Bush Recession of 2008.

Also on the list is 21st Century Fox. It’s kinda fun to see Fox pointing out that their own corporate parent is so hated by the American people.

However, when the substance of this story is examined, there are some serious flaws to the premise. First of all, the survey (pdf) that was cited in the article was conducted by Harris Interactive. It was never intended to identify “the most hated companies in America.” What Harris was studying were 100 of the most visible companies and ranking them by what Harris called their “Reputation Quotient (RQ).” Of course there are thousands of other companies in the country that may be hated much more but were not a part of the survey. The RQ is an amalgamation of several factors including the firm’s emotional appeal, social responsibility, workplace environment, and financial performance. Not all of the criteria reflect on merely the public like or dislike of the company.

What’s more, every company in the survey scored above 50, which suggests that none of them are hated with much passion. In prior years there were some, like Halliburton, BP, AIG, and Bank of America, that did fall below the 50 threshold. Nevertheless, no company wants to be on the low end of this list even if it isn’t that low.

The big problem with the story is that it singles out Hillary Clinton as the recipient of donations from these allegedly despised outfits. But in truth, just about every candidate for political office receives donations from these corporate ogres. And for the most part, Republicans are generally the beneficiaries in much higher amounts.

So what is the point of the article. Is it to criticize Clinton for taking money from the same dirty corporate entities that Republicans take money from? If so, there is a group of Americans who would wholeheartedly agree and share in the criticism. They are called Democrats. The passion that is driving the campaign to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren as a challenger to Clinton is fueled by this very criticism.

Furthermore, while many in the Democratic Party have been working for years to remove this sort of tainted funding from the political process, Republicans have fought tooth and nail to continue and even expand it. A bright, flaming red, festering example of this is the pledge made recently by the Koch brothers to raise and spend nearly a billion dollars in the 2016 election cycle to buy power for their political puppets. Meanwhile, there are two Super PACS founded by well known liberals aimed at eliminating Super PACS: MIT’s Lawrence Lessig’s Mayday.US and George Soros’ son Jonathan’s Friends of Democracy.

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So if Fox News and the Free Beacon and the GOP want to get on board with the bashing of greedy, power-hungry corporations (who are not people, no matter what Mitt Romney and the Supreme Court say), and prohibiting them from corrupting American elections, they are most welcome. Unfortunately, it is more likely that the these right-wingers are just taking wild swings at Clinton and only hope to slander her, rather than to make a principled statement about the influence of corporate money.

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When Will Fox News Fire Bill O’Reilly For Lying About Combat Duty?

Posted by on February 7, 2015 at 1:34 pm. 19 Comments :

Conservatives have tenaciously sunk their fangs into the juicy scandal that is engulfing NBC News anchor Brian Williams. The fact that he has admitted (and apologized for) some false statements he made several years ago regarding his experiences covering the war in Iraq is troubling and particularly so for people who make their living on their reputation for honesty.

However, the degree to which the right has gone overboard with their overt hostility is a spectacle that is worth watching for the sheer entertainment value. Although it’s not as if they wouldn’t be showering their hatred on Williams and the rest of the so-called “lamestream” media even if their weren’t some budding scandal. For its part, Fox News has been exhibiting a Benghazi-like obsession with their relentless coverage of the story.

What’s missing from all of this is any sense of perspective or context. Has Fox given equal time to the false assertions by their own Geraldo Rivera who excused his lies as being the fault of the “fog of war?” Of course not. Neither do they make a distinction between the lies advanced by mis-remembering a distant event in the past in order to enhance one’s own personal image, and the lies perpetrated deliberately by national leaders (i.e. George Bush, Dick Cheney, etc.) that resulted in the violent deaths of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent, non-combatant Iraqis.

Brian Williams, George Bush

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Nearly every discussion about Williams in the Conservative Media Circus includes outright demands for his termination. Never mind that the false statements made over a decade ago were not made during a newscast or presented as part of his duties as a journalist. The wingnut brigade wants Williams fired for having said some things on David Letterman’s late-night comedy program.

Well, if that’s the standard they are embracing, then let them apply it to Bill O’Reilly as well. Back in 2006, O’Reilly took an extended book promotion tour to Kuwait where he visited with soldiers and signed copies of his book. Reports at the time described how “servicemembers asked O’Reilly about his own tour of duty in Kuwait during Desert Storm.” That might have been an interesting story except for the fact that O’Reilly never did a tour of duty in Kuwait during Desert Storm, or anywhere else since he never served in the military at all.

More recently, O’Reilly told his radio listeners about how he would have coaxed information out of an enemy soldier based on his personal experiences in combat (video below):

“I tell you what, I’ve been in combat. I’ve seen it. I’ve been close to it. And if my unit is in danger and I got a captured guy and the guy knows where the enemy is and I’m looking him in the eye, the guy better tell me. That’s all I’m gonna tell you. If it’s life or death, he’s going first.”

As noted above, and contrary to his statement, O’Reilly has never been in combat. Consequently, he has never commanded a unit or had to contemplate how he would deal with an enemy prisoner. His pretend bluster and machismo is all just a bunch of fantasizing of himself as a hero. So how is that any different than the offenses for which Williams is being pilloried?

There are, however, some very real differences between Williams and O’Reilly. Williams has been found to be less than truthful on this one occasion. O’Reilly has lied repeatedly over his career at Fox News with plenty of documentation to prove it. What’s more O’Reilly has demonstrated himself to be an arrogant, rude, bully who shoves his usually inane opinion down the throats of his guests and his viewers. That’s something that cannot be attributed to Williams.

So if anyone should lose their job over any of this, it would be most advantageous to the television viewing audience, and to society in general, if it is O’Reilly. But don’t count of Fox News to do the right thing. It would be against everything they hold dear.

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h/t Meteor Blades at Daily Kos for the video.


RepubliCare: The GOP Alternative To ObamaCare Is A Corporatist Sham

Posted by on February 6, 2015 at 12:48 pm. 16 Comments :

Republicans in Congress just held their 56th vote to repeal or cripple the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare). It is a pointless waste of time and taxpayer dollars that will never become law, but the wingnut obsession with this boondoggle never seems to let up.

Throughout the debate over ObamaCare, conservatives have tried to pretend that they are concerned about the welfare of the American people and that they intend to replace ObamaCare with their own version of reform. But more than four years have elapsed since ObamaCare was rolled out and there has not been a single bill introduced as an alternative.

ObamaCare Ruling

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Now the Republicans with a newly fortified majority in Congress are promoting a plan that they say can replace ObamaCare. There are, however, two major problems with their initiative. 1) It isn’t actually a draft of legislation at all and will not be voted on. And 2) it illustrates their bias toward corporations and their animosity to the American people they profess to support. Here is a summary of their “plan:”

The GOP’s Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment – or CARE – Act

  • Calls for the outright repeal of President Obama’s signature health care law, and with that, the individual mandate to buy insurance or pay a fine.
  • Provides for targeted tax credits to individuals and families up to 300 percent above the poverty line to encourage people to buy plans in the market place.
  • Allows insurers to sell plans across state lines.
  • Caps the amount of monetary damages that can be awarded in medical malpractice litigation.
  • Calls for a specific ‘continuous coverage’ protection where individuals moving from one plan to another cannot be denied.

What this amounts to is just another ObamaCare repeal bill decorated with gifts to the insurance industry. There is no realistic way to make insurance coverage affordable without broadening the customer base via mandates. The GOP plan would shrink the base and result in premiums that would be out of reach for most people due to the dominance of high-risk patients in the system. The provision to cap damages in lawsuits has been on the corporate wish list for decades and does nothing to help patients. To the contrary, it would result in people who suffered actual harm not being compensated fairly.

Most disturbing is the hoax that the GOP is proposing as their version of a coverage guarantee to people with preexisting conditions. In the RepubliCare model you would already have to have insurance and then you could not be denied a continuance. Of course they never explain how you got the insurance to begin with. And if you were attempting to get insured for the first time, the companies could reject you without consequence. In other words, it is no protection at all.

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The GOP likes to complain that ObamaCare is a government-run healthcare program, despite the fact that the government has no role whatsoever in providing healthcare. It merely sets standards for insurance companies to make certain that everyone has access to coverage that is effective and affordable. Meanwhile Republicans claim to favor a more “patient-centered” approach, but then offer this fraud that was very likely written by insurance company lobbyists.

If these Republicans are successful, millions of Americans will lose their current insurance and suffer both medically and financially as a result. In its place will be a windfall for corporations that expands their profits at the expense of the American people, particularly those who are already sick. Nice work, RepubliCare.


Obama Condemns All Acts Of Barbarism Due To Perversion Of Faith – Fox News Freaks Out

Posted by on February 6, 2015 at 8:30 am. 14 Comments :

In a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama acknowledged the “sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith,” and broadly condemned the use of religion to justify barbaric acts of terrorism. So leave it to Fox News to surgically extract a fragment of the speech in order to disparage the President.

Fox News

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The portion of the address that ruffled Fox’s fur was a snippet wherein Obama referenced the Crusades to remind the audience that “people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.” Fox News latched unto that phrase and, for much of the day, used it to distort the President’s meaning in order to denigrate him as anti-Christian. But the President’s remarks were much more inclusive of the evil done by all perpetrators of violence in the name of religion. Here are some more extended excerpts of what he actually had to say:

“From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it. We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism. […] We see sectarian war in Syria, the murder of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, religious war in the Central African Republic, a rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate crimes in Europe, so often perpetrated in the name of religion. […]

“And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Any reasonable person would have to agree with what was expressed in the whole of the speech. But, as usual, reasonableness was not in attendance at Fox News. As a representative example of the departure from reason and fair discourse, Fox’s Neil Cavuto brought in Catholic League extremist Bill Donohue to rant feverishly about Obama’s alleged insult to the world’s Christians (video below):

Donohue: Had he said just said that, that people have killed in the name of their God and it’s not unique to one religion, who could argue with that? But he didn’t do that, did he? He spoke with specificity. he singled out the Crusades and the Inquisition.

Actually, Obama did not single out anyone. Quite the opposite. He specifically identified numerous religions that have all had issues with violent extremism. But the only thing that Donohue heard was the bit about the Crusades. The same is true for Cavuto who later demonstrated the essence of a loaded question by asking “Do you think [Obama] is dismissive of religion in the aggregate?” Huh? Did Cavuto even bother to listen to the speech which was dripping with piety and deference to God? The ludicrous question gave Donohue the opportunity to further slander Obama’s commitment to faith by excitedly responding that Obama is “a thoroughgoing secularist. I don’t think he believe’s in anything.”

This is typical of the Fox News editorial mission to cherry-pick Obama’s remarks and present them in the most negative way possible. It furthers their criticism of the President for his reluctance to associate the terrorists of ISIL with Islam. In that regard, he got some support today from Jordan’s Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who said that “If there was any doubt that this is an organization that has anything to do with any religion on the face of this planet, that doubt is gone.”

Judeh’s comments are additional proof that the world’s Muslims are united in rejecting the violence of terrorism and the false accusation that it is inherently connected to the Muslim faith. In fact, the only people who are determined to make that link are the terrorists themselves and Fox News, which has the disturbing effect of putting Fox squarely on the side of the terrorists.

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To top it off, the following morning Fox’s Gregg Jarrett made the wholly delusional statement that “It struck some people in an odd way that the President was justifying ISIS.” Really? Which people? Jarrett doesn’t say. And how could these imaginary people reach that insane conclusion? Jarrett doesn’t say. But just to keep things fair and balanced, Joe Scarborough on MSNBC also took up the criticism of Obama for telling the truth about religion’s bad actors.


Fox News Airs Fake Story While Slobbering Over Another Foreign Dictator

Posted by on February 5, 2015 at 2:20 pm. 8 Comments :

It doesn’t take much to bring out the veneration for tyrants among the wingnut characters on Fox News. The conservative DNA is predisposed to favor authoritarianism. Last year it was Vladimir Putin who got them all hot and bothered, even to the point of wishing that the Russian dictator was the leader of the United States.

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Now it is King Abdullah of Jordan who warms their cockles. During a segment of Fox & Friends (video below), the Kurvy Kouch Potatoes let their emotions spew forth about the Jordanian he-man who they were fooled into believing had personally stormed into battle against ISIL. The news that King Abdullah piloted air strikes in Syria was never authenticated, but that didn’t stop Fox from trumpeting the bravery and conviction of the monarch. Steve Doocy led off with the undeserved praise, followed quickly by an overheated Elisabeth Hasselbeck:

Doocy: Now this morning there is news that the King, who is also a trained pilot, the Jordanian media is reporting that there is a possibility that the King could have taken part in some of the air strikes.
Hasselbeck: He is stepping up with strong leadership and clarity. So what is our president doing?

First of all, a Jordanian spokesman made it clear that the King did not participate in the air strikes. What’s more, they said that it was incorrect to suggest that he is or ever was a fighter pilot. So virtually everything that Doocy said was wrong. That’s a state of affairs with which he should be quite familiar by now.

Secondly, the slap that Hasselbeck took at the American president was evidence of both her ignorance and her utter disrespect for America and its leadership, as well as her adulation of foreign dictators. The argument that Jordan has done more to fight ISIL is rooted in open disdain for President Obama.

The truth is that Jordan executed a couple of prisoners who were already sentenced to death, and then flew some missions to bomb terrorist fighters in the field. Obama has been doing that for months. His campaign against ISIL has already resulted in over 6,000 terrorist casualties, including more than half of their top commanders.

And yet, the Fox News crew thinks that Obama should be more like King Abdullah. For Obama to do that he would need to scale back his current efforts considerably and only step forward when some tragedy occurs. For the record, the U.S. score vs. ISIL is about 6,000 to 3.

Let’s face it – Nobody at Fox is going to give this President credit for anything, even when the facts show that he is by far outperforming the international community’s response to global terror. Their only goal is to belittle the President, and by extension, America, in order to advance their bitterly partisan and purely political agenda. How exactly do they think that it helps our nation when they insult our Commander-in-Chief and accuse him of being weak? It’s a veritable invitation to the enemy to escalate their attacks. And that is how patriotism is practiced by the right-wing zealots who run and watch Fox News.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.