Michele Bachmann Abandoning Ship As Perfect Storm Approaches

Posted by on May 29, 2013 at 10:34 am. 1 Comments :

It’s hard to say who will be hurt most by Michele Bachmann’s announcement that she will not seek reelection – The congressional Tea Party Caucus or America’s comedy writers.

Michele Bachmann

There is no doubt that Bachmann has been the source of endless material for mockery. Her surreal extremism, coupled with a passion for self-promotion, combined to pack a walloping punch of political psychopathy. But according to Bachmann, her exit from the congressional stage must not be viewed as any sort of weakness on her part as a candidate (despite nearly losing last November), nor any commentary on the fact that investigations into her finances have blossomed from the congressional ethics committee to the FBI.

ThinkProgress has complied an entertaining review of Bachmann’s career in congress. And here are a couple of choice morsels they left out:

Bachmann proclaimed her intention to be subservient to her husband were she to be elected president: “…the Lord said, ‘Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.’”

Bachmann signed a pledge circulated by a radical evangelical asserting that life for African-Americans was better during the era of slavery.

Bachmann gushed her admiration for a serial killer: “Just like John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa, that’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.” Actually, it was murderer and clown painter John Wayne Gacy who was from Waterloo.

Bachmann/Gacy

Bachmann will now be free to pursue an even greater ambition than gumming up the work of congress. Look for her to make more frequent appearances on Fox News and perhaps even score her own program (watch out Greta Van Susteren). She has plenty of evidence of the profitability of being a right-wing, Teabagging, fruitcake, in the works of her comrade, Sarah Palin. It’s a safe bet that she will journey down the same path and participate in the fleecing of the flock and the lining of her pockets. Because that’s what grifters do.

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Enough Already! Eric Holder Did Not Lie Under Oath About Leak Investigations

Posted by on May 28, 2013 at 4:13 pm. 5 Comments :

The media is once again demonstrating their bottomless capacity for ignorance and their utter inability to grasp simple concepts.

Fox News

Fox News and other lazy pseudo-reporters are all aflutter over an answer given by Attorney General Eric Holder at a House committee hearing. Holder was asked a question about press freedom raised by a Justice Department investigation into the leaking of classified data. Holder responded saying…

“With regard to the potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that is not something that I’ve ever been involved in, heard of or would think would be a wise policy. In fact, my view is quite the opposite.”

That’s a pretty straight forward answer with little ambiguity. Nevertheless, the media can’t seem to grasp the meaning. They are journeying far afield to surmise that Holder may have committed perjury because it was later found the he had approved the search warrant for phone records and emails pertaining to alleged State Department leaker, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. Megyn Kelly on Fox devoted two segments of her program to this overtly slanderous charge, complete with her hallmark smugness and affected outrage. And of course, the prize-winning prevaricators at Fox Nation featured multiple renditions of this non-story.

The search warrant in question included records for Fox reporter James Rosen who, evidence suggests, was Kim’s accomplice. And now the witch hunters in the GOP-mismanaged House of Representatives are setting fires under Holder in an attempt to further smear the administration.

Let’s make this simple. Holder said that he was uninvolved and unaware of any effort to prosecute any member of the press for “disclosure” of classified materials. That is unarguably true according to all of the available facts. No one was being prosecuted, or even investigated, for disclosing information in the press (i.e. publishing or broadcasting). Rosen was not being investigated for any type of disclosure. He was being investigated for soliciting Kim to transmit secret documents to him.

Holder’s involvement was limited to Kim’s conspiring to give Rosen access to classified data that he did not have security clearance to receive. The search warrant specifically addressed that activity and nothing relating to the publication of such material or any other press function.

If Holder had sought to prosecute Rosen for distributing the material to others, or for the story he later published on Fox News containing the classified data, that might be a different matter. But that never occurred and there is no evidence that it was even considered. The crime here is that Kim and Rosen conspired to exchange government secrets, not that any of those secrets were part of Rosen’s reporting.

Consequently, there is nothing in Holder’s actions and testimony that are inconsistent. It would nice if the media were smart enough to figure this out. Perhaps that is expecting too much.


Study Confirms That Republicans Lie More Than Democrats

Posted by on May 28, 2013 at 12:04 pm. 12 Comments :

Pray for Fox News
“Let their lying lips be silenced.”

According to a new study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, Republicans were found to be significantly more dishonest in their public statements than Democrats. The CMPA examined 100 statements by members of both parties that were fact-checked by PolitiFact.com between January 20, to May 22, of 2013. Here is a summary of their findings:

  • PolitiFact rated 32% of Republican claims as “false” or “pants on fire,” compared to 11% of Democratic claims – a 3 to 1 margin.
  • Conversely, Politifact rated 22% of Democratic claims as “entirely true” compared to 11% of Republican claims – a 2 to 1 margin.
  • A majority of Democratic statements (54%) were rated as mostly or entirely true, compared to only 18% of Republican statements.
  • Conversely, a majority of Republican statements (52%) were rated as mostly or entirely false, compared to only 24% of Democratic statements.
  • Despite controversies over Obama administration statements regarding Benghazi, the IRS and the Associated Press, Republicans have continued to fare worse than Democrats, with 60% of their claims rated as false so far this month (May 1 – May 22), compared to 29% of Democratic statements – a 2 to 1 margin.

The results of this research may appear to be common sense that any informed person would have known prior to the study, but having a bona fide analysis conducted by a neutral, academic source affirm what is observably true is useful in the ongoing debate over the veracity of our leaders.

This study corroborates my own reporting during the presidential election last year that showed Mitt Romney spewing falsehoods at a far greater rate than the Obama campaign. He won PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” award and set a record for assaults on the truth by earning 84 citations of falsehoods (41% in all), 19 of which were “Pants-on-Fire.” But then what should we expect from a party that proudly proclaimed that “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”


The Mind-Blowing Detachment From Reality Of Fox News Over Media Bias

Posted by on May 27, 2013 at 4:57 pm. 1 Comments :

During a segment of Happening Now on Fox News, anchor Jon Scott hosted conservative Jim Pinkerton and liberal Alan Colmes to debate the latest pet scandal at Fox. Having abandoned Benghazi after it failed to tarnish President Obama’s standing with the American people, Fox is now harping on the events at the Internal Revenue Service.

One thing that can be said for this pseudo-scandal is that it has united the ire of both sides of the controversy. Democrats and Republicans alike have repudiated those at the IRS who employed politically partisan criteria to determine which organizations applying for tax-exempt status would be subject to stricter scrutiny. But like all of the past scandals, no one has been able to tie this affair to the White House either. And that fact is driving the right batty (or battier than usual).

Right out of the gate, Scott primed the discussion by quoting ultra-right Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto saying…

“Never has the prevailing bias of the media been so closely aligned with the ideological aims and the political interests of the party in power.”

Fox News

Is that so? Apparently Taranto was in a vegetative state during the Bush administration when the media, and particularly Fox News, was sucking Bush’s Dick Cheney-led propaganda straight from the bottle. Fox was an unabashed cheerleader for the war in Iraq. And they were not alone. Even MSNBC fired Phil Donahue when he was their top rated host due to his skepticism about the rush to war mongering. And does anyone remember the press criticizing Bush for cutting the taxes of millionaires and transitioning the Clinton budget surplus into a deficit?

The truth is that Fox is the first and only major media enterprise that was built from scratch to proselytize on behalf of a political Party. Fox’s devotion to the people and policies of the right extend far beyond merely parroting their agenda (which they do non-stop), but Fox actually employs Republican operatives and candidates in an effort to advance their prospects. And of course, Fox’s CEO, Roger Ailes, was himself a Republican operative before he took the reins of international corporatist Rupert Murdoch’s cable news network.

Adding to the epic irony of this cognition failure is that the anchor, Jon Scott, is hardly one to raise the issue of media alignment with party politics. Scott was caught red-handed reading GOP talking points on the air as if they were his own news reporting. He even included a graphic that contained the same typos that were in the original Republican memo. And now he has the gall to cast aspersions of bias on what he describes as the liberal media, but without offering a single example.

The remainder of the debate was a mashup of inane accusations that liberals were not condemning the IRS misbehavior. Colmes had to repeatedly prove that they were, eventually offering to write it in blood after Scott and Pinkerton seemed oblivious to the facts Colmes presented numerous times. And when all else failed they raised the specter of George Soros who had nothing to do with any of this. Wingnuts just go through withdrawal if they don’t say his name every two minutes.

Here’s the video for your amusement:

And for a little added fun, check out these screen grabs from the segment where Fox featured Tea Party protesters with signs saying “America is a Christian nation,” and “911 was an inside job.” Way to push the doctrine, Fox.

Fox News Tea Party


Thanks To Fox News: Human Intelligence Is On The Decline

Posted by on May 27, 2013 at 9:02 am. 6 Comments :

Imagine my surprise to find a story on Fox Nation, the lie-riddled community web site of Fox News, about the decline of human intelligence. Was this an attempt to convey the results of an academic study, or are they just bragging?

Fox Nation

The article refers to a study done at the University of Amsterdam that concludes that westerners have lost 14 IQ points on average since the Victorian Era. The study’s author surmised that a number of complex factors led to the conclusion that was based on tests of visual reaction times. The tests reflect a person’s mental processing speed which correlates to IQ. Among the explanations offered for the brain drain were the migration of populations to densely packed cities and a tendency for more intelligent women to choose to have fewer children.

Not surprisingly, the Fox Nationalists utterly misconstrued the study’s findings. Their linked source for the story was an article on the conservative blog, Townhall, where the web editor dismissed the science behind the research and offered his own opinion that the decline in IQ was caused by MTV and video games. Somewhere along the way he missed the fact that the reported decline occurred over a period of more than a hundred years, which makes his hypothesis focusing on modern television and technology a pretty good example of a dumbed-down contemporary human.

The rejection of science is not unusual for conservatives who persistently refuse to accept the scientific community’s nearly universal consensus on things like evolution and climate change. That may explain why scientists themselves veer away from conservative associations. A study by the Pew Center for the People and the Press revealed that “most scientists identify as Democrats (55%), while 32% identify as independents and just 6% say they are Republicans.”

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Furthermore, if there is a decline in intelligence, it is most starkly evident in the Tea-publican Party. A report published by (of all places) Fox Business, surveyed the nation’s academic profile and found that the ten states with the best educated citizens were all “blue” states, while nine of the ten worst educated were “red” states (and eight of those were in the south).

Fox Business

The decline of western intelligence, according to the Amsterdam data, has been in the works for many decades. It would be interesting to conduct another version of this research that measures IQ in the United States since 1996, the year that Fox News debuted. Numerous studies have already documented the fact that Fox News viewers are more ill-informed than consumers of other media. In fact, one study demonstrates that the more one watches Fox, the more misinformed one becomes. Of course, being ignorant or misinformed is not the same as lacking intelligence. But it has the same effect on electoral outcomes and, consequently, public policy.

So whether Fox viewers are stupid or ignorant is immaterial. The important thing is to continue to provide a counterbalance to the propaganda Fox spews and rescue citizens from their deceitful disinformation that only benefits the wealthy, right-wing elites who Fox was created to serve.


Fox News Throws Out Benghazi With Yesterday’s Scandal Trash

Posted by on May 26, 2013 at 10:00 am. 8 Comments :

Remember way back to those forgone days when spring was nascent and Benghazi was blooming like kudzu on crack? All the way back to the first week of May 2013, a time of carefree apoplexy over impetuous and exploitable tragedies. The old-timers will recall just how vibrant and fulfilling it was for the demagogues and scavengers who feast on scandal, but whose appetite has now moved on to fresher carcasses.

Used Scandals
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Those days are now faint memories. All those week or two ago, when outraged conservatives in the press could think of nothing other than the horror that took place some eight months earlier in a remote Libyan outpost, are like whispers on the lips of ghosts.

It seems incomprehensible that there were once such emphatic calls for Barack Obama’s impeachment due to the Libyan attacks; that pundits envisioned him being driven from office; that Watergate analogies spread like a plague. Because in recent days there has been hardly a mention of any of it. Fox News, who was blanketing their airwaves with Benghazi Fever a week ago, have all but ignored the story this week. Having failed to ignite a fire under Obama’s presidency, the Benghazi affair has been consigned to the garbage heap of history. Along with such other notable pseudo-scandals as Solyndra, Fast & Furious, gun confiscations, the climate change hoax, Sharia Law, death panels, pallin’ around with terrorists, and the Kenyan nativity, Benghazi has been picked clean by the vultures of the Tea-publican prairie, and having concluded that there is no meat left on the bones, they see no reason to stick around.

That is not to say that the rightist mobs have abandoned their mission to destroy Obama. They have just refocused their attention on a younger, prettier scandal peeking out from behind the skirts of the sultry Internal Revenue Service. This is now the new gate-suffixed controversy that demands immediate impeachment hearings and affiliated witch trials.

The ease with which the Wingnut Inquisitionists shift from one hysteria to another reveals something foundational about their character. It is obvious that they couldn’t care less about the patriots who died in Benghazi or their grieving families. They don’t care about the policies that impact the security of Americans in foreign territories. They only care about how tragedies such as these can be exploited politically, and when it becomes apparent that their political punch has petered out, they can’t abandon them quickly enough.

So it’s off with Benghazi and on to the IRS – for now. Rest assured that this too shall pass as soon as the Obama-bashers realize that they can’t hang this one around his neck either. So even the legitimate concerns raised with regard to the abuse of power and politicization of the taxing agency will go unanswered. Without an Obama angle, Fox and their GOP benefactors see no reason to pursue it. They would rather not waste their time cleaning up the IRS – or securing diplomatic embassies, or mandating universal background checks for assault weapons, or stimulating the economy and creating jobs, or performing any of the other functions of governing – unless it could lead to toppling Obama.

One thing you can say for them is that they have a single-minded devotion to purpose. And their purpose has nothing whatsoever to do with serving America or its people. Their purpose is, and has always been, to deep-six a president they never considered legitimate; who was never patriotic enough, Christian enough, smart enough, or white enough.

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FLASHBACK: Before Fox News Attacked The IRS, They Embraced It To Attack Media Matters

Posted by on May 24, 2013 at 4:42 pm. 7 Comments :

In researching the recent controversies over the IRS and its alleged targeting of conservative non-profits, I stumbled across an article I wrote two years ago that unveils yet another blatant hypocrisy from Fox News (as if more were necessary to make the point). The current programming on Fox is dedicated almost non-stop to hammering the Obama administration for the misbehavior of low-level IRS staff. The story has even supplanted their previous pet scandal, Benghazi. And despite making broad accusations of complicity by the President, they have failed to provide even a smidgen of evidence that he had any role in the way that non-profits were selected for review.

That simple fact, however, has not stopped Fox from launching a sustained campaign of outrage aimed at the IRS, which they now regard as a totalitarian agency bent on destroying America and freedom. But it was not always thus. Not too long ago, Fox News was happy to use the IRS as a cudgel against their own perceived enemies. They embarked on mission to wipe the watchdog group Media Matters off the face of the earth. It was a weeks-long effort that included dozens of broadcast segments explicitly recruiting their viewers to file falsified complaints challenging the tax-exempt status of Media Matters. In the process they brought in pundits, and lawyers, and even their in-house “Psycho Analyst” to paint a disparaging portrait of the organization and its founder.

Fox News - Media Matters

The irony of Fox using the IRS to harass a non-profit organization just because they disagree agree with it will surely be lost on everyone at Fox and everyone who watches it. Below is the article re-posted in full because it is still as relevant today as it was then. Actually more so, with the addition of Fox’s newly minted contempt for the IRS.

Media Matters Has Fox News Scared And Desperate

[July 11, 2011] In the untamed jungle that is cable news, there is a ferocious and predatory beast stalking the terrain. Anyone who has encountered Fox News in the wild can attest to the spine-chilling threat imposed by the pseudo-news network. And now Fox News has the scent of new game.

The Fox News pack is on the prowl for the media watchdog group, Media Matters, against whom they have recently initiated a sustained assault. In the past two weeks they have featured over 30 stories with the express purpose of challenging the group’s right to exist. Fox has assigned network stalwarts like Bill O’Reilly, Bret Baier, Charles Krauthammer, James Rosen, Ann Coulter, Dick Morris, and Bernie Goldberg, to the mission. This is an unprecedented, broadly distributed attack by a major media enterprise against a non-profit group they regard as an adversary.

This latest batch of complaints stem from comments made last March by Media Matters founder, David Brock. He was quoted in Politico as saying that the organization was shifting its focus toward Fox News to one of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage.” Giving Fox the benefit of doubt, one might conclude that it’s only fair that Fox defend itself from such an overt declaration of war. The only thing that might refute that perspective is – reality.

If this is war, it is one wherein Fox is the aggressor. Fox News initiated their attacks long ago with aggressive and false assertions that cast Media Matters as hacks, anti-American, violent, and communist. They alleged that George Soros was pulling their strings long before Soros ever made any contributions the group. Fox stalwarts like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck engaged in rhetoric so hostile that it inspired actual physical attacks against Media Matters and their progressive allies. This video (courtesy of Media Matters) was posted two years ago and illustrates the hostility harbored across the Fox platform long before Brock’s recent comments:

The new and highly coordinated offensive by Fox asserts that Media Matters has violated the terms of their tax-exempt status by setting their sights on Fox. They quote from the IRS rules governing non-profits that state that…

“…501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

On the basis of that criteria, Fox News argues that Media Matters is in violation and should have their tax-exempt status revoked. However, in order for that to be valid, Fox would have to admit that they are a political operation so that attacks on Fox News would qualify as opposition to political campaigns and/or candidates. Without that stipulation there is no violation on the part of Media Matters. So Fox is, in effect, conceding their role as a Republican mouthpiece. Shocking, I know.

Contine reading →


Andrea Tantaros Of Fox News Wants You To Punch Her In The Face

Posted by on May 24, 2013 at 3:56 am. 12 Comments :

Fox News pundit and co-host of “The Five,” Andrea Tantaros, stepped forward on Thursday to make a brave announcement outlining her position on the free exercise of democracy.

Fox News - Andrea Tantaro

In a discussion about … Oh what the hell, it doesn’t matter what it was about. It always ends the same way with whichever interchangeable right-wing yakker belching out something similar to what Tantaros said: “This is Obama’s America! It’s like the Soviet Union.”

That’s right. America is exactly like the Soviet Union. You almost can’t tell them apart. Remember when Soviet voters elected a Black Russian to the presidency? And if the USSR was known for anything it was the freedom that people like Tantaros have to criticize the government and its leaders. But Tantaros went further to declare that Obama…

“…said he would change the country. He said it. He said it. He said it. And a lot of people voted for him. And if you see any of those people today, do me a favor. Punch them in the face.”

Now that is Tantaros’ America. And it’s nothing at all like the Soviet Union. After all, Obama said he would change the country, which just about every candidate for president says. When was the last time you heard a candidate promise to keep everything exactly as it is right now? Then Tantaros notes that a lot of people voted for Obama. Well, actually a decisive majority. It’s called democracy. So that right there earns them a blow across the chops. How dare they express their popular choice for leadership?

But lest we caught up in rhetorical trivia, let’s examine Tantaros’ remarks from a philosophical perspective. What she is saying is that it is appropriate to physically assault those with whom you have political disagreements. If someone votes for a presidential candidate who you don’t like, punch them in the face. If they dispute your contention that global warming is hoax, kneecap them with a baseball bat. And just to make sure they can’t continue advocating for Marxist welfare like Social Security or Medicare, pour some acid down their throat.

Since Tantaros co-hosts a daily program on Fox News, we can rest assured that she holds these views in the fairest, most balanced way possible. She certainly would not assert that these remedies to political debates be reserved for only one side. Therefore, it’s safe to assume that she would be totally OK with her ideological adversaries employing these same debate tactics on her.

To be perfectly clear, I am not advocating that anyone assault Tantaros or anybody else. But that’s only because I’m not a sanctimonious, rage-aholic a-hole. I’m just pointing out the logical conclusion to her own argument. Thereafter, people can make their own decisions. After all, this is Tantaros’ America.


CONFIRMED: Fox News Hack James Rosen Is A Political Operative, Not A Journalist

Posted by on May 23, 2013 at 11:33 am. 56 Comments :

The First Amendment holds a place of unique reverence in the hearts of Americans. Rather than focusing on a single issue, its authors packed it with critical constraints on the federal government that encompass rights pertaining to speech, association, religion, and the press. It is a mouthful of freedom that justifiably deserves special attention. However, like everything in the Constitution, it is not absolute and it requires interpretation to be understood and implemented.

With regard to recent events concerning Fox News, and its alleged reporter James Rosen, the question as to whether there was a violation of the First Amendment’s freedom of the press has roiled the media and spurred condemnation from across the political spectrum. However, no matter what one thinks about the propriety of a government agency examining the phone records of a purported journalist, James Rosen does not deserve to be regarded as one.

In the government’s affidavit supporting their request for a search warrant, a passage in the document reveals that Rosen had stepped far outside the boundaries of journalism. His activities were those of a political operative with a specific agenda that was openly hostile to the official foreign policy of the United States. And Rosen pursued that agenda with an intent to obtain classified materials that he knew was impermissible for him to possess.

Fox News - Rosen Affidavit
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Breaking down the pertinent parts of this document, Rosen begins by admitting in an email to his accomplice, State Department analyst Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, that he is not seeking to uncover government corruption or malfeasance. [Note: in these communications Rosen used the alias “Alex,” and gave Kim the name “Leo.”] Rosen stated plainly that his interest “is breaking news ahead of my competitors.” That is a self-serving, market-driven motivation that removes any of this from comparisons to Watergate or any other whistleblowing type of activity.

The next relevant passage is Rosen’s statement saying “I’d love to see some internal State Department analyses.” That is an overt solicitation for classified information for which Rosen has no security clearance to observe, and that would (and did) subject Kim to criminal liability for disclosing state secrets. It is one thing for a government insider to voluntarily drop internal documents over the transom, but quite another for a “reporter” to deliberately coax such information from a vulnerable associate. That is more like the behavior of an agent of espionage. Elsewhere in the affidavit, Kim told FBI investigators that Rosen had used flattery and appeals to his vanity in order to elicit the secret data that Rosen later published.

But the most damning affirmation of Rosen’s complicity in unethical, if not unlawful, behavior is this passage wherein he makes a startling confession:

“Let’s break some news, and expose muddle-headed policy when we see it, or force the administration’s hand to go in the right direction, if possible. The only way to this is to EXPOSE the policy…and the only way to that is with authoritative EVIDENCE.”

Rosen’s admission that he was seeking to “force the administration’s hand” in a direction that he believes is not “muddle-headded” is undeniable proof that he was acting as an operative, and not as a journalist. If Rosen thought that the government’s policy was wrong, he could certainly say so without retribution. If he thought that the government was engaged in wrongdoing, he could certainly pursue and disclose evidence of that. But to seduce a government employee to illegally transfer classified documents in order to alter government policy merely because he disagrees with it, and absent any corruption or controversy, is a purely political act.

The facts enumerated in the affidavit clearly reveal improper behavior and intent on Rosen’s part. And it is not difficult to see why the judge, a Reagan appointee, concluded that there was probable cause to grant the request to examine Rosen’s phone records.

As I said at the beginning of this article “No matter what one thinks about the propriety of a government agency examining the phone records of a purported journalist, James Rosen does not deserve to be regarded as one.” And it is not coincidental that Rosen works for Fox News where political advocacy, not journalism, is their core mission.

Fox has been working non-stop since their inception to “force the hand” of government, and not in a good direction. Don’t forget that the CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes, was a political operative for Richard Nixon and other ultra-rightists before he took the reins of a cable news network. And his boss, Rupert Murdoch, has spent decades exerting undue influence over governments around the world. Are the pieces beginning to fit together now? Fox News is not, and never has been, news.

[Update] Through much of this contrived controversy, Fox has maintained that they were shocked to discover that one of their “reporters” had been the subject of an FBI investigation. Now CNN reports that Fox was informed of the subpoena for Rosen’s records three years ago. So pretending to be surprised is just another gimmick to sensationalize their fake reporting.


Have “Scandals” Sparked A New Tea Party Revival?

Posted by on May 22, 2013 at 3:18 pm. 8 Comments :

It’s as predictable as Glenn Beck’s tears. As soon as a president appears to be weakened by attack, the media pounces in a feeding frenzy hoping to score a kill. Some do it out of partisan animus. Some do it for personal glory. But either way it’s a bloodcurdling spectacle that contains scant morsels of actual substance.

In the present festival of feasting, many in the press are asking the same question: Have the scandals plaguing the White House created an opportunity for the moribund Tea Party to mount a revival? Take a look at a selection of the headlines:

  • Scandals revive Tea Party, threaten Obamacare – Boston Herald
  • Tea Party revival – World Magazine
  • Will the IRS scandal revive the Tea Party? – The Week Magazine
  • IRS scandal revives tea party – CNN
  • IRS scandal: Reinvigorated tea party eager to seize moment – Christian Science Monitor
  • Tea Party Looks To Gain Momentum In IRS Scandal Aftermath – Huffington Post
  • Back from the dead – WorldNetDaily

That last one from WorldNetDaily is particularly notable because it presumes that the Tea Party has been dead, which is not something that WorldNetDaily ordinarily admits.

To answer the burning question of the day, let’s examine how the Tea Party responded to the scandal outbreak. With lightening-fast reflexes, the Tea Party Patriots organized protests across the country to “Rein in the IRS.” And their legions of followers stepped up to speak truth to power. There were 30 of them in Topeka, 70 in Phoenix, 100 in Tampa, 30 in Kansas City, 11 in Tallahassee, 100 in Chicago, 50 in Denver, 6 in Helena, and 50 in San Bernardino where they also spoke Hitlerian rhetoric to power. In the nation’s second biggest city, Los Angeles, the Teabaggers showed up 13 strong.

Tea Party

WOW! If this isn’t a demonstration of just how engaged and relevant the Tea Party is, I don’t know what would be. Clearly they have the political punch of a drunken gerbil. Nevertheless, the media will continue to prop them up as if they were actually influential. The press will ignore factual data like that presented here and fluff the baggers excitedly in the hopes of producing a climax of contrived controversy.

The truly depressing part of this is that the failure to recognize the impotence of the Tea Party will only embolden the minority fringe caucus of the Republicans in congress and encourage them to persist in their obstructionist strategy that has been so hurtful, divisive, and regressive socially and economically.

In a few weeks this will all have been forgotten and, if recent polling is any indicator, the President will be more popular than ever, and the GOP congress will hit new lows. In the meantime, it’s going to be a summer of frustration as little progress is made on the real problems that plague our nation. Too bad.