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.

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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.


The Road To Obscurity: Conservative Conference Taps Palin, West, Bachmann, Trump

Posted by on June 9, 2013 at 11:58 am. 10 Comments :

Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition is hosting a conference in Washington, D.C. this week with the optimistic title “Road To Majority 2013.”

Road to Majority

Taking a glance at the list of guest speakers reveals the strategic direction of the right’s plans to assume a majority position in the coming months. They have embraced what they must believe are the leading lights of conservatism who are imbued with the values around which the American people will rally. Here are some of the beloved figures that contributed so much to last year’s election season and inspired so many voters to turn out for President Romney:

  • Sarah Palin: Half-term governor, failed VP candidate.
  • Donald Trump: Bankrupt billionaire, TV game show host.
  • Rand Paul: Confederate advocate, Civil Rights Act opponent.
  • Allen West: Disgraced soldier, one-term congressional nutcase.
  • Jeb Bush: W’s little brother, dynastic has-been.
  • Paul Ryan: Failed VP candidate, P90X pitchman.
  • Herman Cain: Pizza mogul, Ambassador to Uzbeckibeckistanstan.
  • Rick Santorum: Rich frothy…oh never mind.
  • Dick Morris: Most erroneous pundit, prostitute toe-sucker.
  • Michele Bachmann: Tea Party queen, Islamaphobe.
  • Pat Robertson: God’s personal spokesman.
  • John Bolton: UN hating UN ambassador.

With a cast like that, this conference is bound to be a big hit with the Teabagger contingent. It is the sort of forward-looking roster that will surely appeal to the voters the GOP has been so anxious to attract. Young people, Latinos, women, etc., will flock to the broad range of new ideas from these cutting edge thinkers who have demonstrated their ability to succeed.

If this is the best that the right can do, they are going to have an even more embarrassing election debacle in 2014 than they did in 2012. It’s as if the GOP has completely given up. Collections of losers like these are a gift to Democrats who are all too happy for Americans to make them the faces of the Republican Party. The best thing that can happen now is for Fox News to give the conference a big chunk of airtime. Stay tuned.


By Rush Limbaugh’s Logic George Bush Should Be Executed As A War Criminal

Posted by on June 8, 2013 at 5:15 pm. 10 Comments :

This is one of those rare moments when we are compelled to thank Rush Limbaugh for settling an argument that liberals have been making for years. Specifically, that Bush has escaped accountability for gross malfeasance in office. Of course, Limbaugh doesn’t know what his remarks portend and would deny it he were told, but we’ll take what we can get. If Obama is guilty of political mischief, Bush’s guilt is of a far more deadly variety.

Rush Limbaugh
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On yesterday’s radio broadcast, Limbaugh went full-on Godwin as he tried (for the umpteenth time) to compare the Obama administration to Hitler’s Nazi regime. This time he inserted a brief disclaimer stating that he wasn’t saying Obama was Hitler, then went on to finish his lecture about how Obama is so much like Hitler. The inspiration for this rant came from a former Reagan national security adviser, Herbert Meyer, whom Limbaugh cited as his source for this extended bit of nonsense:

“[W]hether you believe it or not, there is not one document linking Adolf Hitler to the holocaust. Adolf Hitler never put it on paper what he intended to do. There is no smoking gun. And yet what happened? We know that the Nazis engaged in the Holocaust. Herb Meyer’s point was that the people Hitler hired didn’t have to be told. They didn’t have to be given instructions. All they had to do was listen to what Hitler was saying. All they had to do was listen to what his objectives were. And he said the same thing’s happening here with this administration.”

See? Exactly the same thing is happening now as happened with Hitler (minus the millions of corpses). Obama is deploying coded messages to his minions who will carry out the secret assignments that all two million federal employees know via telepathic transmission and, of course, the ObamaPhone.

The problem with this conspiracy blathering is that the central premise is utterly false. There were numerous documented links between Hitler and the tactics used by his regime to exterminate millions of people. The Wannsee Protocols and the doctrine of the “Final Solution” were explicit instructions to engage in mass murder. The Nuremberg Trials also made public documentary evidence of Hitler’s direct participation in the Holocaust. So right off the bat Limbaugh is revealing nothing other than his own ignorance of history, as well as his gross insensitivity to the victims of the Nazi horrors.

More to the point, the notion that Obama is somehow responsible for what has occurred at the IRS because his agenda was being carried out by underlings who just absorbed his intentions through intuition, is ludicrous. Furthermore, Rush’s twisted logic has repercussions that he may not have considered. During the Bush administration there was an abundance of initiatives that were carried out by people under his authority that were unambiguously illegal. U.S. attorneys were fired for their political affiliations. Covert CIA agents were outed in the press. Lies were used to justify military invasions of countries with whom we were not at war. Prisoners of war were tortured in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

At the time, there were no documentary links definitively tying Bush to these activities. There were also no investigations conducted to ascertain the facts. But by Limbaugh’s reasoning, none of that is necessary. Bush is obviously guilty because the perpetrators worked for him and thus were aware of his unspoken approval for what they did. And since some of those actions are war crimes, then according to Limbaugh, Bush should go on trial ala Nuremberg.

Where once there was a requirement that a “smoking gun” be found to seal the guilt of a criminal defendant, Limbaugh has literally said that such evidence is no longer needed. But the lunacy of his legal ramblings went even further:

“You don’t need to link Obama to it. He hired these people. Lois Lerner and everybody at the IRS who’s doing this is doing everything they can to please Obama.”

Limbaugh might have a point except for the fact that Lois Lerner and IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman are both Republicans who were hired by George Bush. There has not been a single person affiliated with this so-called scandal who has been identified as a Democrat or was hired by a Democratic political appointee. The IRS line workers are either career employees or were hired by the GOP managers at the tax-exempt organizations division (i.e. Lerner).

So if Limbaugh wants to blame everything that happens at the IRS (or the DoJ, or the State Department, or Benghazi, or Sandy Hook, or the JFK assassination) on Obama, then I say we send Bush to the Hague. What do you say, Rush?


Breitbart Execs Furiously Fluffing Fox News And Roger Ailes

Posted by on June 8, 2013 at 10:18 am. 4 Comments :

Breitbart News has suffered a dramatic decline in the “quality” (if you can call it that) of their yellow journalism since the sudden demise of their guiding blight, Andrew Breitbart. They embarrassed themselves by falling for a hoax from the same satirical site they previously blasted the Washington Post for believing. They published a “scoop” claiming that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel took donations from a group that, as it turns out, didn’t exist. Their practice of “vetting” President Obama yielded dud after dud. And their attempt to cinematically canonize their namesake bellyflopped at the box office. The magnitude of their collapse is almost too painful to watch.

Consequently, they seem to have grabbed a life line from Fox News to prevent any further shrinkage. Their web site now features a section where they post headlines from their “partners,” but the only partner listed is Fox News. They have posted adoring homages to Fox personalities like Kirsten Powers who pretend to be liberals while bashing everything to the left of Attila the Hun. And for their sycophancy, they now get regular promotions of their articles on Fox News.

Breitbart - Fox News
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But this week revealed the most blatant Fox fluffing yet between the two conservative lie factories. On June 5, Breitbart published an article defending Fox News CEO Roger Ailes from disclosures contained in a new book by reporter Jonathan Alter: The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies. For some reason it took the the three biggest cheeses at Breitbart News to compose this syrupy ode to Ailes: Stephen Bannon, Executive Chairman; Larry Solov, President; and Alexander Marlow, Managing Editor. And just last week the same three stooges penned a fawning tribute to Ailes titled “The Ailes Manifesto: America Rallies Around Roger Ailes and Fox News.” Of course, America did no such thing, but the Breitbart executive sweets sure exposed their deep infatuation.

This week, Breitbart’s sensationalistic headline called Alter an “MSM Tool in the War Against Roger Ailes and Fox News,” and dismissed him for being employed by a news enterprise owned by a partisan billionaire (Michael Bloomberg). Amazingly, the BreitBrats displayed no sense of irony considering they themselves are busy licking the boots of their own partisan billionaire (Rupert Murdoch).

After several paragraphs of self-righteous and predictable carping over their delusional perception of the media as hopelessly liberal, the BreitBrats think they have nailed Alter with this assertion: “Breitbart News did some checking, and according to authoritative Fox and News Corporation sources, Ailes never talked to Alter for this book.” Well, they didn’t have to check with Fox for that because Alter never claimed to have talked to Ailes for the book. Then, after that criticism that failed to cite any Fox Newser by name, the BreitBrats complained that Alter failed to cite “any inside Fox or News Corp. sources” by name.” Then they followed that up with another quote from “one Fox source.” In fact, the rebuttal to nearly every criticism the BreitBrats made of Alter’s book was based on either an unnamed source, or had no attribution at all. There were thirteen itemized passages from Alter’s book with which Breitbart took exception. They were all summarily dismissed with ambiguous notations like…

  • “…declared a high-placed figure…”
  • “…security sources at Fox…”
  • “…according to a longtime hand at News Corp…”
  • “…According to our reporting…”
  • “…Says a News Corp. building source…”
  • “…according to Fox sources…”
  • “…Sources tell Fox that…”

So after castigating Alter for deigning to employ unnamed sources, the BreitBrats rely almost entirely on unnamed sources for their rebuttal. But even worse, they tally up the results of their own missive and report that six of Alter’s thirteen allegations were false. That means, of course, that 7 were true or partly true.

Someone may need to inform the BreitBrats that if you’re trying to refute a list of assertions in a critical book, you are not making much headway if a majority of them, by your own reckoning, are true. And that doesn’t even take into account the likelihood that the ones Breitbart tagged as false may still be true, despite their objections. After all, as Alter said in response to an article in Politico where Ailes rebuffed his book, “The question is, do you believe me or Roger Ailes?”

Setting aside for the moment that Ailes is a professional liar, for the BreitBrats the answer to alter’s question is obvious. They believe their corrupt and corpulent sweetheart, Roger Ailes. And they would follow him anywhere, as long as he continues to plug their pitiful blog. Romantic, aint it?

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The Tea Party’s Campaign For Mass Stupidity Promoted By Fox News

Posted by on June 7, 2013 at 2:17 pm. 12 Comments :

The Tea Party movement has never been confused with Mensa, the high IQ society. In fact, there have been numerous studies that rank Tea Partiers at the bottom of the intellectual scale, particularly those recently elected to congress. As a group they dismiss the findings of science on matters as diverse as climate change and evolution. And they are skeptical of academics and Ivy Leaguers whom they regard as out-of-touch elitists.

So it is in keeping with their aversion to education that they are now leading the fight against a set of teaching principles developed to insure that K-12 students are prepared to enter college. And predictably, Fox News is only too happy to advance their crusade for national ignorance.

Fox News - ObamaCore
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The target of the Teabaggers’ ire is a program called “Common Core State Standards,” a bipartisan project endorsed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Notice that both organizations are state-based reflecting the focus on local development and implementation.

Nevertheless, right-wingers are enraged by baseless allegations that this is just another federal boot on the throats of sovereign statehood. Not only is there no evidence to support such charges, the facts explicitly reject them. This is easily discovered with a little research, something these Teabaggers would be able to do if they were better educated. The web site for Common Core clearly rebuts their imaginary fears on a page debunking the myths:

Myth: These Standards amount to a national curriculum for our schools.
Fact: The Standards are not a curriculum. They are a clear set of shared goals and expectations for what knowledge and skills will help our students succeed. Local teachers, principals, superintendents and others will decide how the standards are to be met. Teachers will continue to devise lesson plans and tailor instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms.

On another page of questions and answers about the program, concerns about its management and paranoia related to records are put to rest:

Q: Does the federal government play a role in standards implementation?
A: The federal government had no role in the development of the Common Core State Standards and will not have a role in their implementation. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort that is not part of No Child Left Behind and adoption of the standards is in no way mandatory.

Q: Are there data collection requirements associated with the Common Core State Standards?
A: There are no data collection requirements of states adopting the CCSS. Standards define expectations for what students should know and be able to do by the end of each grade. Implementing the CCSS does not require data collection. The means of assessing students and the data that results from those assessments are up to the discretion of each state and are separate and unique from the CCSS.

Well then, that should settle the matter. And if you think it does, then you don’t know how severely delusional these conservative conspiracy freaks are. Glenn Beck has called this the most important story in history. He has resolved to keep his children from attending college in order to avoid being “marked” by the system that he says is “scary.” He sermonized at length about it on his video blog, warning his disciples that…

“We have, I think, about twelve months to get Common Core out of our system. Our goal should be by the time school starts in the fall of 2014, it’s completely dead. That’s my goal.”

But it isn’t just conspiracy theory peddlers like Beck (and Alex Jones, and Michelle Malkin) who are panicking over the terrifying prospect of our children getting smarter. Nine U.S. senators, including Chuck Grassley, James Inhofe, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz, composed a strongly worded letter in opposition to Common Core. And the Republican National Committee has taken an official stance (pdf) against it.

Hoping to ignite another fake controversy, Fox News is joining ranks of the anti-education brigades. They dubbed Common Core “ObamaCore” in an attempt to generate the instant animus that their audience has for the President. Ironically, the practice of attaching the Obama prefix to various legislation has actually resulted in Obama getting extra credit for programs that have considerable popularity. Confirmation of the bipartisan support for Common Core is the enthusiastic backing of GOP governors including Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee. The plan has already been adopted in 45 states, with only the wingnut utopias of Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia, lagging behind.

In a peculiar bit of hypocrisy, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal published an editorial in support of Common Core that was co-authored by Joel Klein, a former New York City schools chancellor who now runs Murdoch’s education subsidiary, Amplify. Suffice to say that their motives may not be purely altruistic. Amplify is an education technology provider that stands to profit from government academic programs.

The coordinated effort to suppress education has received the help of the Koch brothers-funded FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, the ultra-rightist Eagle Forum, the pseudo-libertarian Heritage Foundation, the repugnant John Birch Society, the racists at Stormfront, and now Fox News is tying together all the loose ends. And why wouldn’t they. Their own legacy for advancing ignorance is well documented.


Fox News Contributor Allen West On Eric Holder: Worse Than Al Qaeda

Posted by on June 6, 2013 at 10:37 am. 3 Comments :

If you happened to be looking for another reason to be grateful that Allen West was booted from congress, you just got your wish.

West sent an email to his Batshit Brigade seeking money to fund his struggling Super PAC, The Allen West Guardian Fund. Apparently desperate to make an impression on the radical dimwits that make up his fan base, West chose to send a message that is one of the most disgusting expressions of anti-American hogwash since Osama Bin Laden’s “Death to America” video collection.

Allen West

The email featured photos of current Al Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawahiri and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder with the question “Which of these men scares you the most?” West supplies his own answer saying: “I’ll tell you flat out — Eric Holder is a bigger threat to our Republic.”

The implications of that repulsive statement are unambiguous and far-reaching. Zawahiri is an international terrorist fugitive who is responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, and many thousands more before and after that infamous date. If found he would instantly be captured or killed, and if taken into custody would very likely be tried and executed for crimes against humanity.

So obviously West regards Holder, an American patriot who has spent nearly his whole professional life in the service of his country, as somehow comparable to an Al Qaeda mass murderer. And if Zawahiri is fit for a death sentence, then what is West proposing for Holder whom he thinks is even worse.

West, you may recall, has a somewhat less respectable biography. He was kicked out of the Army just prior to being court-martialed for torturing an innocent Iraqi held in his custody. He went on in his single term in congress to falsely accuse the entire Progressive caucus of the House of Representatives of being card-carrying communists. He also likened the Democratic Party to Nazis and plantation masters who want to enslave American citizens. He baselessly asserted that there is a “stealth jihad” of our defense, financial, cultural, religious, and political systems.

The acute delusional paranoia exhibited by West should be considered a cry for help. West’s mental health is sinking like a rock tied to piano. And now he accelerates his downward spiral by disparaging a loyal American serving his country as being worse than the Al Qaeda monsters who are committed to our country’s destruction.

This is typically psychotic behavior from West, and it is unacceptable in the course of rational political debate in a democracy. However, it is apparently acceptable to employ someone like West as a commentator on a national news network. West articulates precisely the sort of hair-brained hostility and crackpot rage that Fox News was created to disseminate.

[Update] Not surprisingly, Fox News piles on:

Fox News


Fox News Breaks Out Nazi Smear To Attack Obama’s UN Pick

Posted by on June 5, 2013 at 9:11 pm. 7 Comments :

This didn’t take long. Just a few hours after President Obama announced his selection of Samantha Power to succeed Susan Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Fox News has already hauled out the Nazi references that they just can’t seem to hold in.

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As comedian Lewis Black once said of Glenn Beck, another Nazi talk junkie, they have Nazi Tourettes Syndrome – a malady that manifests itself with the uncontrollable compulsion to shout “Nazi” at everyone associated with Obama or any other Democrat or liberal. And shortly after the President’s morning announcement Fox had another seizure:

“The former White House adviser and longtime Obama friend nominated Wednesday as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has a history of controversial comments that could haunt her in confirmation — including likening U.S. foreign policies to those of the Nazis.”

That was the very first paragraph of the Fox News article about Power’s appointment. There was no introductory information, no biography, nothing setting up the circumstances of her nomination. Fox went straight to the Nazi talk so as not to waste any time disparaging Power or confusing people with her exemplary resume.

Of course, Fox’s allegation is entirely false. It is pure fiction that they never even bother to support with any facts. At no time does Fox cite a U.S. foreign policy that Power allegedly likened to those of the Nazis. Fox doesn’t even offer some vague reference that they attribute to Power that might be misconstrued as likening U.S. policies in general to Nazi policies. This is a smear invented wholly in the diseased mind of Fox News.

The sole, and very tenuous, link that Fox cites is from a magazine article Power wrote in 2003, where she mentioned the famous incident in 1970 when then-German Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt at the monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising who were slaughtered by Nazi troops. In her article Power described the moment as expressing the remorse of contemporary Germans who “do not endorse the sins of their predecessors.” She further wrote that “his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany.” Power was merely relating a very positive historical precedent when the Germany of 1970 affirmed its sorrow for the atrocities committed a quarter of a century prior.

That is the source for Fox’s repulsive attack on Power. And you can be certain that having introduced this insult, Fox and a bevy of right-wing slanderers will attempt to spread it throughout the conservative mediasphere. It matters not to them that there is no truth to it. The only thing that matters is that they have a rhetorical club with which to beat their enemies.

It also doesn’t matter that Power is an eminently qualified and capable nominee to represent the U.S. at the U.N. She is a Harvard law graduate, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a fierce defender of human rights. She also has the honor of being called the “most dangerous woman in America” by Glenn Beck. That charge was one Beck repeated frequently when he was still on Fox News. Like much of his conspiracy-related dementia, it is difficult to unravel. But it had something to do with her being married to a long-time Beck foe, Cass Sunstein, as well as her support for a U.N. policy against genocide known as “Responsibility to Protect.” I wrote about this back in 2011:

The thrust of Beck’s squabbling is his contention that Power is the source of the administration’s policy in Libya. In his pseudo-professorial style Beck mis-educates his gullible viewers as to the roots of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) initiative endorsed by the United Nations. R2P sprung from the post-WWII determination that the community of nations are morally obligated to act in opposition to genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes.

In short, Beck falsely asserts that the UN got the idea from George Soros who got it from Power’s book, “A Problem from Hell.” The only flaw in that theory is that Power’s book (which, by the way, won the Pulitzer Prize) came out the year following the publication of a UN commissioned report on the subject, so it could not possibly have been the inspiration for it. And the UN’s report was based on the 1948 “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” when Soros was a poor, eighteen year old Holocaust refugee and student in London, and well before Power was even born. Also notable is the fact that R2P was adopted when John Bolton was the ambassador to the UN and both Israel and the Bush administration supported it.

The fact that Fox was able to manufacture a phony Nazi smear so rapidly is evidence of how seriously disturbed they are. Only a sick mind(s) could find so many paranoid examples of shadowy enemies lurking virtually everywhere. And as I have noted before, the Nazi talk on Fox News starts at the top with Roger Ailes. It is clearly a critical part of their business model. And despite having received numerous condemnations from Jewish organizations and other groups that fight anti-Semitism, Fox persists with their disgraceful behavior.


Glenn Beck: “I’ve Never Been Called A Conspiracy Theorist In My Life”

Posted by on June 5, 2013 at 3:06 pm. 6 Comments :

I had intended to write an article this morning congratulating President Obama on his selection of Susan Rice for National Security Adviser and Samantha Power to succeed Rice as U.N. Ambassador. Not only are these two public servants brilliant and capable, the GOP will regard their appointments as a poke in the eye, which they thoroughly deserve. I intended to further note that Power was singled out by Glenn Beck as the “most dangerous woman in America,” at least partly because she is married to Cass Sunstein who Beck has called the “most dangerous man in America.” And then all my plans were upended when this happened:

Rachel Maddow recently did a segment on how the right-wing media has been mainstreaming conspiracy theories once thought to be beyond the fringe. She went into great detail with examples of batty theories and the people who propound them. Included amongst the theorists were folks you might expect like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck.

Apparently Glenn Beck took offense. He devoted a considerable portion of his program to swinging back at Maddow and questioning her “intellectual integrity.” [I’ll wait for you to stop laughing and get get back into your chair — OK then] Beck took particular aim at the suggestion that he is a conspiracy theorist. He even went so far as to make this explicit declaration in his defense:

“I’ve never been called a conspiracy theorist in my life.”

Glenn Beck

Oh my. This may be the best example of severe detachment from reality that’s ever played out in public. It was just one week ago that Beck bitterly complained that there is “a concentrated effort now to label me a conspiracy theorist?” How he can go from a concentrated effort to label him, to never having been called a conspiracy theorist, in only one week is mind-boggling. But it isn’t just a matter of acute short-term memory loss, Beck has been addressing allegations of his conspiracy theorism for years:

  • Oct 6, 2009: I don’t have a stealthy agenda, but I’m still called “conspiracy theorist.”
  • Jan 11, 2010: It’s funny to be called a conspiracy theorist because I’ve always made fun of conspiracy people.
  • Aug 17, 2012: You talk about a conspiracy theorist, you know, me being a conspiracy theorist, I didn’t get the decoder ring in the box of cereal.
  • Jan 8, 2013: When they try to make me look like like a conspiracy theorist, they always use [Alex Jones’] arguments and assign them to me.
  • May 10, 2013: And the media smeared anyone who said these things. I know because I was one of them. I pointed out the truth. I showed you the truth. Early. I was a conspiracy theorist. I was a crazy man.

Beck has got to know that he is frequently called a conspiracy theorist (and with good reason). It’s simply impossible for him not to be aware of it after all these years and after all of his own references to it. So what could come over him that would cause him to deny that he was ever called one? Can he really be that delusional? Or is he just so confidant of the mental squishiness of his audience that he doesn’t care at all about trying to be the least bit coherent?

No matter how many times Beck demonstrates his shaky grasp of reality, it continues to amaze me that someone with such cognitive impairment is capable of attending to the routine chores of daily life, much less turn his dementia into a financial bonanza.