What Does MSNBC Have In Common With Glenn Beck?

Last week Dylan Ratigan announced that he would be leaving his program on MSNBC. That leaves a vacancy in the afternoon for the network that could be used as an opportunity to jumpstart their stagnant ratings. Unfortunately, the programming geniuses at MSNBC seem to be more interested in committing ratings suicide.

According to Politico, MSNBC is planning to introduce a temporary program that will feature rotating hosts. Among those being considered are Steve Kornacki, Toure, Krystal Ball, Ezra Klein, and S.E. Cupp.

S.E. Cupp? Seriously? For those unfamiliar with her, Cupp is currently the host of a webcast for Glenn Beck’s GBTV. Why MSNBC thinks that adding Cupp to their schedule will benefit the network is incomprehensible. Do think that the trouble with MSNBC’s ratings is that they haven’t featured enough of Glenn Beck’s conspiratorial Tea Party dementia? Are they concerned that giving three hours every morning to Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman, is too little to satisfy MSNBC’s audience demand for right-wing dogma?

More likely MSNBC is adopting the Fox-Lite strategy wherein lazy programmers aspire to emulate Fox’s success with the idiotic assumption that it has something to do with their ideology. It doesn’t. CNN made that mistake and they are now floundering in third place. And falling for this fallacy is even worse for MSNBC because it risks alienating their core audience. Liberal viewers will quickly abandon the network if they perceive it as lurching rightward. And if MSNBC thinks that they will replace those viewers with converts from Fox, they are insane. Fox viewers are fiercely loyal and rarely leave the comfort of their conservative electronic hearth. Even Fox Business Network VP, Kevin Magee, recognized this when he warned his staff in a memo against employing Fox News methods:

“…the more we make FBN look like FNC the more of a disservice we do to ourselves. I understand the temptation to imitate our sibling network in hopes of imitating its success, but we cannot. If we give the audience a choice between FNC and the almost-FNC, they will choose FNC every time.”

It isn’t as if there aren’t plenty of other options. Journalist Joy-Ann Reid is currently an MSNBC contributor. As is Maria Teresa Kumar, who could fill a noticeable absence of Latino hosts in the cable news business. If they are determined to hire a Republican, how about Meghan McCain, the well-connected daughter of a senator/GOP presidential candidate? At least she isn’t kneejerk conservative, Tea Partier with ties to Glenn Beck.

Unless MSNBC is looking to trail Fox News by even greater margins, they should cease to consider S.E. Cupp as a host. Her brand of extremist conservatism is a poor fit for the network and a disservice to its audience. Just the fact that they would entertain the notion is evidence of how pathetically weak the media is and how utterly false the contention that it is unduly liberal.

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Fox Nation Asks: Did Obama Violate His Oath Of Office?

As bad as the Fox News Channel is, it does not even come close to the irresponsible, juvenile, wildly biased, stinking heap of dishonesty that is the Fox Nation web site. A casual glance on any day of the week will reveal an endless stream of puerile and partisan propaganda that seems to have been written by fourteen year old meth fiends after experimental electroshock therapy gone awry.

Today the Fox Nationalists posted as their featured headline story one of their standard cut-and-paste jobs whose only purpose was to disparage President Obama. This particular story raised the question as to whether or not Obama had violated his oath of office by instituting a policy to suspend deportations of undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children. The article quoted a source familiar to everyone who has studied corrupt cabinet officials.

Fox Nation - Alberto Gonzales

That’s right. George W. Bush’s crooked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spoke to the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference and speculated as to whether Obama had violated his oath of office.

“To halt through executive order the deportation of some undocumented immigrants looks like a political calculation to win Hispanic votes and subjects him to criticism that he is violating his oath of office by selectively failing to enforce the law.”

This is the same man who, when being investigated for unlawful politicization of the Department of Justice, responded to inquiries from the Senate by answering “I don’t know” or “I don’t recall” at least 72 times.

Setting aside for the moment the inappropriateness of a shyster like Gonzales passing judgment on the legality of anyone else’s activities, he is displaying a profound ignorance of the facts relating to Obama’s recent decision.

First of all, it was not an Executive Order. It was merely an administrative determination by the Department of Homeland Security to employ prosecutorial discretion with regard to the specified immigrants. That’s something that is done regularly by the DOJ and every state attorney general. And even if it were an Executive Order, it would still be fully within the jurisdiction of the President to issue it.

Secondly, Obama cannot be accused of selective enforcement for a policy that applies so broadly to such a large community. And when you take into consideration that those affected are not even technically in violation of any law, then why should they be considered for prosecution in the fist place?

Gonzales was simply making a transparent attempt to pander to the audience of Teavangelicals at the conference. This is especially apparent in light of the fact that he has previously gone on record supporting the very same sort of policies that Obama enacted.

Of course, the Fox Nationalists ate this up and posted their article asking essentially if Obama was subject to impeachment. The gross partisanship and smear tactics that are evident every day on Fox Nation should disqualify Fox from being regarded as a news enterprise. Fox Nation is not some separate entity. It resides on the Fox News domain and it uses the resources of Fox News to ceaselessly bash the President and promote his opponents. If any unlawful activity is going on here, it is Fox News serving as an adjunct to the Republican Party and donating millions of dollars worth of promotion in violation of campaign finance laws.


Mitt Romney Spends Father’s Day Lying About His Past

His children must be so proud. This Father’s Day Mitt Romney is traipsing around the Mid-West in a bus, doing his best to avoid the press while connecting with the American people – well, at least the Bovine-Americans who came out to support his candidacy and chew their cud.

Mitt Romney - Got Mitt?

While on his “Every Cow Counts” bus tour, Romney consoled the rain-soaked voters in Ohio by saying of his hope to replace Obama that the country is about to get “a little whiter.” Actually, he may said “brighter,” but his Tea Party constituents know to translate it.

However, the real news that Romney made today was that, in addition to being a flip-flopping Etch-a-Sketcher, he is pathological liar. And I’m not even referring to his dishonest claims about President Obama, his misrepresentations about the economy, or his failure to be truthful about his proposed plans for a Romney administration. What’s really alarming is that he can’t even tell the truth about himself.

Today he told CSPAN that, “I didn’t go to law school, I didn’t practice law, but I like the idea of arguing points back and forth…” Somebody better tell Harvard Law School to demand their diploma back because Romney’s web site says that “After graduating from Brigham Young University in 1971, he earned dual degrees from Harvard Law and Harvard Business School.”

Then on Face the Nation, Romney told Bob Schieffer, “Bob, I don’t have a political career. I served as governor for four years. I spent my life in the private sector.” However, Romney began his non-existent political career in 1994, running for (and losing) the U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy. Then he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. After one term, he ran for (and lost) the GOP nomination for president in 2008. Finally, he is currently in the midst of his second campaign for president. Somebody should tell Romney that eighteen years of mostly losing doesn’t mean that you haven’t had a political career, it means you had a “bad” political career. (h/t @LOLGOP).

Didn’t go to law school? No political career? These are flat out lies. Twelve years ago, all Al Gore had to do was have one misreported comment about “creating the Internet” get traction in the press and his name became synonymous with “stretching” the truth. Now Romney is telling outright falsehoods about his own past. Will the media hold him accountable? Will he at least become the butt of a few jokes? When someone lies about things they don’t have to lie about, it suggests that it’s just a part of their character. How can anyone take him seriously when he is so brazenly dishonest about himself?

[Update] The quote of Romney about law school was originally reported by ABC News, and that report has since been edited. I located video of Romney on CSPAN and it sounds like he first said that he “didn’t go to law school” and later corrected himself.


John McCain Throws Mitt Romney Under The Corporate People’s Bus

Remember when Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, NJ, disagreed with President Obama’s attacks on Wall Street? Remember when Bill Clinton defended Mitt Romney’s record as a businessman at Bain Capital? Have you noticed that anytime an Obama surrogate says anything remotely contrary to a position taken by the President the media harps on it for days and characterizes it as a fracturing of support for the President?

Yesterday John McCain was interviewed on the PBS Newshour and made some remarks that utterly obliterated Mitt Romney’s position on campaign finance as well as the whole of his election operation. And, so far, it has been ignored by the mainstream press. Here is what McCain said (video below):

JUDY WOODRUFF: But in the wake of the Supreme Court decision Citizens United, we are seeing enormous sums of money going into this campaign, to the campaigns themselves, to outside supporters.

Is this — is it just inevitable that we’re now in a period where money is going to be playing this dominant role in American politics?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: I’m afraid, at least for the time being, that’s going to be the case, because of the most misguided, naive, uninformed, egregious decision of the United States Supreme Court I think in the 21st century.

To somehow view money as not having an effect on election, a corrupting effect on election, flies in the face of reality. I just wish one of them had run for county sheriff. So what we are. . .

JUDY WOODRUFF: You mean one of the justices?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: One of the five Supreme Court justices that voted to invalidate what we know of as McCain-Feingold.

Look, I guarantee you, Judy, there will be scandals. There is too much money washing around political campaigns today. And it will take scandals, and then maybe we can have the Supreme Court go back and revisit this issue.

Remember, the Supreme Court rules on constitutionality. So just passing another law doesn’t get it. So I’m afraid we’re in for a very bleak period in American politics. You know, we all talk about — and you just did — about how much money is in the presidential campaign.

Suppose there’s a Senate campaign in a small state, and 10 people get together and decided to contribute $10 million each. You think that wouldn’t affect that Senate campaign?

JUDY WOODRUFF: This question of campaign money highlighted today by this — the announcement that there’s a huge amount of money coming in from one donor in the state of Nevada.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Mr. Adelson, who gave large amounts of money to the Gingrich campaign. And much of Mr. Adelson’s casino profits that go to him come from this casino in Macau.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Which says what?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Which says that, obviously, maybe in a roundabout way, foreign money is coming into an American campaign — political campaigns.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Because of the profits at the casinos in Macau?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Yes. That is a great deal of money. And, again, we need a level playing field and we need to go back to the realization that Teddy Roosevelt had that we have to have a limit on the flow of money, and that corporations are not people.

That’s why we have different laws that govern corporations than govern individual citizens. And so to say that corporations are people, again, flies in the face of all the traditional Supreme Court decisions that we have made — that have been made in the past.

That’s about as strong a denunciation of Romney’s campaign as can be made without adding profanities. How can Romney balance his assertion that “Corporations are people, my friend,” with McCain’s total repudiation of that nonsense?
Jon Stewart Citizens UnitedAnd McCain goes further to blast Romney’s newest billionaire supporter, Sheldon Adelson, as injecting foreign money into American politics. McCain’s opposition to the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court shatters any argument that Romney could make to justify his reliance on billionaire donors and SuperPACs.

These are not the comments of some obscure, second-tier Romney supporter. John McCain is a top Romney surrogate, as well as the just past nominee for president from the Republican Party. And the sharpness of his criticism contrasts with the vague remarks from Clinton and Booker who, it could be argued, were merely acknowledging that Romney had been successful in business, but that those skills do not transfer to success in governing (as was the case in Massachusetts).

There are few examples of political contradiction more severe than that offered up here by John McCain. So where is the feverish reporting of a fracturing Republican coalition, or even an acknowledgement of the flagrant difference of opinion? This is not a tangential issue. It goes to the core of what is making Romney competitive as a candidate – his fundraising. Yet his top surrogate demolishes his position and, after trumpeting the alleged gaffes of Democrats, the so-called “liberal” media remains silent.


Fox News Reports: Rupert Murdoch Endorses Unconstitutional Lawlessness

In the wake of President Obama’s announcement that his administration would suspend deportation of certain younger immigrants who came to this country as children, Fox News and a phalanx of Republican lawmakers rushed to characterize the plan as a violation of the law and a breach of the constitutional separation of powers. Never mind the fact that the immigrants affected by this initiative never broke any law, and that their immigration status would be technically unchanged, the panicked martinets of virtue on the right are aghast at what they perceive as an immoral grant of amnesty.

One notable exception to this is the CEO of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch. Along with fellow captains of commerce, Klaus Kleinfeld of Alcoa and Philippe Dauman of Viacom, Murdoch released a statement applauding the President’s action:

“We hope this prompts Congress to reach agreement on common-sense immigration policies that reflect American labor market needs and American values. Young people who had no choice over coming to this country, have grown up here and now want to become productive members of our society should not be treated like criminals.”

Yep, Rupert Murdoch said that. What’s interesting is that Murdoch’s statement stands in stark contrast to what some of his own employees at Fox News are saying on the subject. This has set off a battle over deportation, but it’s more of battle between Fox News with it’s boss, than with President Obama.

Fox News Immigration Battle

Sarah Palin: Our president still doesn’t understand the three branches of government. He thinks he can usurp the Congressional branch of our government and dictate and mandate a policy like this.

Charles Krauthammer: Beyond the pandering, beyond the politics, beyond the process is simple constitutional decency. This is out-and-out lawlessness.

Monica Crowley: It’s such a naked politically pandering move […] a breathtaking power grab by the president.

And the Republican parade of circular kneejerkers predictably piled on with hyperbolic accusations of political opportunism and illegality, beginning with the President’s GOP opponent who falsely describes the policy as an executive order.

Mitt Romney: I think the action that the president took today makes it more difficult to reach [a] long term solution because an executive order is of course just a short term matter.

Steve King (R-IA): Americans should be outraged that President Obama is planning to usurp the Constitutional authority of the United States Congress and grant amnesty by edict to 1 million illegal aliens.

Allen West (R-FL): Is this one of those backdoor opportunities to allow people in the next five months to get the opportunity to vote? Will we see Janet Napolitano and the President come out with a new edict that says since we allow these people to be here legally, we’re now going to allow them to vote? How far down the rabbit hole will it go?

Marco Rubio (R-FL): By once again ignoring the Constitution and going around Congress, this short term policy will make it harder to find a balanced and responsible long term one.

Dan Coats (R-IN): The administration’s unilateral decision today to give amnesty to certain illegal immigrants is not the answer.

Chuck Grassley (R-IA): The President’s action is an affront to the process of representative government by circumventing Congress and with a directive he may not have the authority to execute.

Lamar Smith (R-TX): President Obama and his administration once again have put partisan politics and illegal immigrants ahead of the rule of law and the American people.

Lindsey Graham (R-SC): President Obama’s attempt to go around Congress and the American people is at best unwise and possibly illegal.

By condemning the President in this manner, all of these stalwart, conservative politicians and pundits are also condemning their primary media benefactor, Rupert Murdoch, who supports Obama’s decision. It would be fun to ask Murdoch for his response to the charge that he advocates the unconstitutional usurpation of tyrannical powers on behalf of foreign criminals invading the country to steal our jobs. Especially when some of those making the charge work for him.

What’s worse is that the charges flying wildly from conservative ranks are wholly erroneous and irresponsible. There can be no constitutional infraction of law when there is no change in law whatsoever. The President is merely exercising the same sort prosecutorial discretion that is practiced everyday by the Justice Department and attorney generals in every state. And the charge that this policy is a path to amnesty or citizenship ignores the fact that there is no change at all in the legal status of those affected. Leading the way in delusional diatribes, as usual, is Allen West, who manages to squeeze a voter fraud conspiracy out of this issue.

Some of the President’s critics are decrying the policy shift as “political.” The problem with that complaint is that anything the President does between now and election day could be characterized as political. If he were to commit military resources to the Syrian rebels, whose need is dire, Republicans would denounce it as politically timed. The same criticism would emerge were he to greenlight the KeystoneXL pipeline, an action favored by the GOP. It literally wouldn’t matter what the issue is, the right would attack it as politics.

The truth is that the charge of politicization is itself political. It is the last resort of a critic who is unable to make any substantive criticism. And, in the end, what’s really wrong with political decision making? Isn’t it just the execution of policy that pleases a constituency? And isn’t it the role of public servants to produce the results that the public wants?

Let’s face it, this is just another example of President Obama being unable to do anything that will satisfy his critics. By taking affirmative steps on an important matter, Obama is accused of being political. Were he not to take such steps he would be accused of neglecting the duties of his office. In effect, the right is insisting that no president do anything of significance during an election year. Of course, if that were to occur that president would be maligned for being more interested in campaigning than governing. Lose/lose.

For the past three and a half years the Republicans have demonstrated their preference for legislative stalemate rather than risk the President achieving something positive for the nation and getting credit for doing so. They are putting their own electoral welfare and lust for power above that of the country, and that, more than anything else, is political.


Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Celebrity Arbiters

It is becoming almost too predictable that whenever you see a headline on Fox Nation you can assume that it isn’t the truth. Case in point: Today the Fox Nationalists posted an item about President Obama’s remarks at a fundraiser yesterday. The headline on Fox Nation is “Obama Tells Celebrities They’re the ‘Ultimate Arbiter’ of America’s Direction.”

Fox Nation

The quote cited by Fox, as lifted from the Associated Press, read, “You’re the tie-breaker. You’re the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes.” Guess what. That is not what Obama told the guests at the fundraiser (who were not necessarily celebrities). The full quote, which is available on the White House web site, reads:

“[U]ltimately you guys and the American people, you’re the tie-breaker. You’re the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes in.”

So contrary to the false impression made by Fox (and the AP) that implied the President was elevating a room full of celebrities to some sort of Politburo, the truth is that Obama was speaking broadly and including all of the American people. It was an outright expression of populism and democracy that Fox is trying to turn into some kind of elitism. The same phony characterization also turned up on Fox News with Megyn Kelly drilling home the elitist message.

Fox News

The funny thing is that, even if what Fox is saying were true, I would much rather have people like Sarah Jessica Parker and George Clooney influencing public policy than Romney’s cohorts like Donald Trump and Sheldon Adelson. At least I’d know that their motives were based on their principles and aspirations for a better world, rather than on self-interest and aspirations for more power and wealth.

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Fox News: Simultaneously Pandering To And Insulting Latinos

Fox News has been at the forefront of advancing anti-Latino propaganda for years. Their coverage of issues affecting the Latino community has been as decidedly biased as … well, everything else on Fox News. And nothing is more representative of this bias than Fox’s approach to immigration. The network is relentlessly opposed to any comprehensive solution that treats immigrants like human beings.

Today Fox managed to outdo themselves in demonstrating their overt prejudice while at the same time ingratiating themselves to what they acknowledge is a large and growing audience. The following stories were posted in response to today’s announcement from the White House that certain young immigrants would be granted work permits rather than be deported.

Fox Nation Latino Immigration

On the Fox News Latino website the story was headlined, “Obama Administration Halts Deportations for Young Immigrants.” That’s a factually accurate description that treats the news in a neutral manner. The headline was accompanied by a sympathetic photo of a young Latina child draped with an American flag.

On Fox Nation the story was handled somewhat differently. The headline they went with was “Obama Administration Bypasses Congress, To Give Immunity, Stop Deporting Younger Illegals.” In that short sentence they managed to imply impropriety on the part of the administration, infer the controversial subject of amnesty, and insult Latinos by employing the dehumanizing label of “illegals” (even though the people affected by this initiative did not break any law). The photo accompanying this article was of adult Latinos sitting up against a wall in handcuffs.

The differences between these treatments of the same news story illustrates just how cynical and hypocritical Fox News is when dealing with issues that challenge their biases and their marketing agenda. For Fox to post an appealing, straight news article on their web site aimed at a Latino audience, but to post a blatantly derogatory piece on their web site aimed at Teabagging racists, reveals the dark side of Fox’s repulsive mission.

It is also notable that the Fox News Latino site posted the Associated Press article about the announcement in full. The Fox Nationalists posted only two paragraphs plus a video from Fox News of right-wing wacko Allen West expressing his outrage. This is further evidence that the Fox Nationalists want to avoid giving their dimwitted readers too much actual information, but prefer to throw up as much ultra-right-wing opinion as possible. Additionally, Fox Nation allows visitors to comment on the news item, while Fox News Latino does not. That decision helps to promote the sense of community amongst the wingnuts, but prevents the Latino visitors from establishing those community ties.

Not surprisingly, Fox News immediately cast the President’s proposal as an abuse of the legislative process and a backdoor to amnesty. For the record, the proposal does not offer amnesty or even immunity. It is a temporary measure to exercise prosecutorial discretion so that innocent persons are not unduly punished while a more comprehensive solution is negotiated with Congress. The plan only affects those who arrived in the U.S. before age 16, are younger than 30, have been in the country for at least five continuous years, have no criminal history, graduated from a U.S. high school or earned a GED, or served in the military.

The way the two Fox news divisions handled this event is typical of their dishonest presentation of the news. The framing on Fox Nation is pretty much how one would expect it to be – bursting with prejudice and hatred. However, the pandering ploy used at Fox News Latino is insulting and exacerbates the biases that Fox exhibits elsewhere in its reporting. Hopefully Latino audiences will look deeper than just the Fox site that is attempting to exploit them so that they see the enterprise for what it is.


Karl Rove’s Super Amazing Political Funtime Analysis Happy Hour

The man who used to be known as Bush’s Brain may have spent too much time with America’s foremost remedial president. Karl Rove seems to have leaked a significant amount of grey matter as evidenced by this stunningly inept observation about President Obama and the economy:

“It is fine for him to try and blame it on President Bush or a Japanese tsunami or on ATM, but it makes him look weak, and the American people are not that dumb! […] Let him keep doing that because the American people see that as a weak leader. That’s not somebody who’s in charge. That’s somebody who’s making excuses. And we do not like to elect people President of the United States who are excuse makers. We want a president to be big and bold.”

Romney - Not StupidGot that? America wants a big, bold, non-excuse maker. And blaming Bush for the wrecked economy won’t work because the American people aren’t stupid. That’s a mantra that Romney also likes to chant. In fact, he made it into a campaign slogan. This may be the first time a candidate has ever had to go to such lengths to remind his followers that they aren’t idiots. But that argument becomes more difficult to defend when polling shows what the American people really think. A new Gallup poll says that…

“Americans continue to place more blame for the nation’s economic problems on George W. Bush than on Barack Obama, even though Bush left office more than three years ago.”

The poll shows that two-thirds of respondents (68%) still blame Bush for the state of the economy. That includes about half of the polled Republicans who also continue to hold Rove’s former boss accountable. Consequently, Obama should not be shy about hanging this economic albatross around Romney’s neck. The Romney campaign has already affirmed that their policy agenda is “Bush on steroids.”

Ironically, I have to agree with Rove about a couple of things. First, he appears to be right that the American people are not dumb. They know exactly who is responsible for where we are today and they are not likely to to want to return to the policies that got us here. Secondly, Rove’s advice that Obama continue to blame Bush is pretty sound based on the mood of the electorate.

The problem for Rove is that he’s right for all the wrong reasons. He doesn’t understand where the American people are, and he wouldn’t agree with them if he did. He’s just trying to rehabilitate his own shattered reputation because, as the political architect of the Bush administration, he’s just as responsible for the financial hole we are in as Bush is.

It’s about time that the right quit yakking about Democrats looking backwards to blame Bush. Obama is not reaching backwards to assign responsibility for current conditions to the past president. He is forecasting the future consequences of repeating those mistakes. It is the Republicans who are bringing the Bush era back to the table by proposing nothing but what the Bush administration did. They are offering nothing new in the way of solutions. In fact, the only initiative they will articulate out loud is to preserve the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy. So the Obama administration has no choice but to rebut those proposals. That is not an attack on Bush. It is an attack on the current crop of Republicans who are parroting Bush.

And if it weren’t bad enough that Americans blame Rove and Bush for our current economic problems, they also blame Republicans in congress today for deliberately sabotaging the recovery in order to make Obama look bad. So not only are they dredging up the old Bush era policies that already failed so decisively, they are obstructing Obama’s new solutions from being enacted.

GOP Sabotaging Economy

Since the day that Obama was inaugurated, the GOP has explicitly stated that their top priority is to make Obama a one-term president. That’s not a governing agenda. That’s the purest and most cynical form of self-serving, political gamesmanship imaginable.


Breitbart Wins! The Most Epically Idiotic Article On The Internet – This Week

The World Wide Web is a cornucopia of Olympian ignoramusi. The field ranges from hollowed out heads in suits like Jonah Goldberg, to asylum escapees like Ted Nugent, to pitiful has-been bimbos like Victoria Jackson, to messianic delusionaries like Glenn Beck. With such an abundance of talentless charlatans like these posting staggeringly asinine missives online, the competition for Most Epically Idiotic Article On The Internet is stiffer than Mitt Romney at a gay bar four hours after overdosing on a bad batch of Viagra.

Leave it to Breitbart’s John Nolte to sink to the occasion and compose a work of astonishing stupidity. The title of Nolte’s opus, “Why the Media Hates and Fears Super PACs,” pretty much gives away the fundamental foolishness of his premise. The media is perhaps the biggest beneficiary of Super PACS (more on that later). But foolishness is the hallmark of Nolte’s career. Take for example this article wherein Nolte advocated murdering the mother of a young actress:

Breitbart's Penis Envy

Breitbrat Nolte begins his incoherent rant with a typical bashing of the press as liberal, despite all the evidence to the contrary. With no substantiation whatsoever, he called the media “a gaggle of left-wing operatives disguised as journalists.” Nolte goes on to assert that the media fears the Citizens United decision handed down by the Supreme Court because the media is in the business of the “furthering of leftist causes.” Notice how he refers to the media as a single-minded entity shuddering frightfully at the thought of Citizens United. He makes no effort to document that assertion. But finally, Nolte gets around to what he regards as the core of the problem:

“[T]he media is objecting to free and unlimited political speech – the very thing protected by the very first Amendment. The media’s outrage that there are now no longer restrictions on how much money a company or individual can spend to further a political cause, is the same as expressing outrage that that most sacred of American rights – unlimited political speech – is no longer limited by a tyrannical government.”

Of course. The media is “outraged” that individuals and corporations can now spend unlimited amounts of money on ….. MEDIA! Where does Nolte think that the hundreds of millions of dollars that he concedes will be raised and spent is going to go? By far, the biggest share of that bounty will be spent on advertising in the media. The very same media that Nolte refers to as an amorphous singularity that is united in opposition to Super PACs. So obviously the media is beside themselves with rage. Their secret plot to advance socialism is way more important to them than the windfall in unprecedented profits. Anyone can see that.

Well, anyone that suffers from the same moronic myopia of Breitbrat Nolte, whose grasp of the particulars of the Citizens United decision is utterly confused. Nolte does not seem to understand that the decision opened the funding floodgates to allow unprecedented levels of unaccountable contributions that are tantamount to giving wealthy individuals and corporations permission to buy election outcomes. He describes it as a “First Amendment victory,” but it is a victory for dollars, not for voters. It changes the dimensions of democracy from “one man, one vote,” to “one dollar, one vote,” because now free speech comes with a price tag that only the wealthy can afford. How can the average citizen’s voice be heard when it is competing with Exxon or Karl Rove’s American Crossroads?

Nolte’s whining that the media has been enforcing a liberal tyranny over the nation and is enraged by new competition from the Super PACs created by Citizens United ignores the fact that the media themselves are participants in the rush to exploit the Super PAC phenomenon. Every major media corporation (Time Warner, General Electric, Comcast, Viacom, Disney, News Corp) already has their own. And they are spending heavily to advance their interests over those of the people. But Nolte has trouble with the concept of facts to begin with, as is apparent in this example from his article:

“Fact : In 2008, you heard almost no media outcry against all of that ‘outside money affecting elections.’ Today, that’s all you hear, especially after a Republican victory like the one last week in Wisconsin.

First of all, Nolte needs a remedial course in identifying facts. He cannot assert as fact that “you” heard nothing in 2008 about outside money. How could he know what you heard? Secondly, his main point as to the “media outcry” on campaign finance completely ignores that actual fact that fundraising by independent groups has long been a huge topic of discussion. It resulted in the passage of the McCain–Feingold Act in 2002 that put restrictions on certain types of contributions and spending. That act was still in effect in 2008, but was largely overturned in 2010 by Citizens United. If Nolte didn’t hear people talking about outside money in 2008, it’s because his ears were stuffed with right-wing bias and the smears and tangential trivialities that he helped to promulgate (i.e. Rev. Wright, Anthony Weiner).

Nolte makes an extraordinary leap in logic to assert that media companies are de facto Super PACs and that they have always been “allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money to push a political agenda.” But Nolte is not talking about any actual PAC activity. He is asserting the premise that any money spent collecting or reporting news is identical to spending for political advocacy. That’s because Nolte believes that all news is the work of the left-wing gaggle mentioned above. He writes that everyone from the Today Show to Saturday Night Live are “shill[s] for leftist causes.” Therefore, he sees the advent of Citizens United as a leveling mechanism.

“Thanks to ‘Citizens United,’ though, what you now have are mainstream media corporations forced to compete on a level playing field with other individuals and corporations, who can now spend as much money as MSNBC and Politico and The Washington Post, etc. to affect the outcomes of our nation’s politics.

“And this is why the media so loathes ‘Citizens United’ and those beautiful super PACs that have blossomed as a result.”

And therein lies the heart of Nolte’s Epic Idiocy. He actually sees Super PACs as “beautiful,” a blossoming bouquet of wholesome, corporate goodness. In fact, he veritably tingles at the thought of corporations being able to affect the outcomes of elections. Who wouldn’t want corporations – soulless entities whose only purpose is to increase shareholder wealth – to decide everything from how are children are taught, to the state of our environment, to Wall Street regulatory policy, to when, and with whom, we go to war? Nolte’s lust for allowing unaccountable corporations to assume control over the most profoundly personal aspects of our lives is downright perverse. It is also a nearly textbook definition of fascism.


And it’s a perversion rooted in ignorance because the backbone of his thesis is utterly false. It should come as no surprise that a web site called “News Corpse” is not suffering from a naive affinity for the press. But the stated mission of this site recognizes that the problem with the media is that it has evolved into an incestuous family of a few giant corporations whose interests lean more toward their own welfare than the welfare of the public they serve or the nation that protects their independence. The problem with the media is that it IS composed of giant, multinational corporations that exploit their market power and their influence over government.

It is difficult to comprehend how Nolte can harbor such a schizophrenic viewpoint wherein he worships corporations, but despises the media which are, in fact, corporations. He makes no sense in castigating the whole of the media for bitterly opposing Super PACs (for which he provides no evidence), even while they have formed their own and are projected to earn billions of dollars from the advertising headed their way. His opinion can only be described as twisted by a paranoid neurosis that prevents him from observing reality as it is.

It is that blindness that has created a monumental obstacle to rationality and earns Breitbart’s John Nolte the award for the Most Epically Idiotic Article On The Internet. And due to his puerile dimwittedness and cognitive ineptitude, this will surely not be the last time he will be so (dis)honored.


THE VETTING: Mitt Romney’s Brush With A Tragic Back Alley Abortion

One of the best known components of Mitt Romney’s Etch-a-Sketch candidacy is his epic flip-flop on the issue of abortion. In his 1994 campaign for the senate in Massachusetts, Romney was an ardent pro-choice advocate. It was a position he vigorously defended in a debate with his opponent Ted Kennedy. His remarks could have come straight from a Planned Parenthood pamphlet:

“I have my own beliefs, and those beliefs are very dear to me. One of them is that I do not impose my beliefs on other people. Many, many years ago, I had a dear, close family relative that was very close to me who passed away from an illegal abortion. It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that.”

So much for wavering. Romney is now a staunchly pro-life conservative, but the catalyst for his original opinion is worthy of exploration. Romney has never publicly identified the “close family relative” to whom he referred in the debate, but Salon published an article last year that recounted her sad experience as an unwed, pregnant woman in the years prior to Roe v. Wade. She was the younger sister of Romney’s brother-in-law, and was engaged to be married. However, her pregnancy was likely a source of shame and the whole matter was hushed up presumably to preserve the reputation of the family, including Romney’s father who was governor of Michigan at the time.

After the debate, Romney affirmed the position he had taken by saying that it “obviously makes one see that regardless of one’s beliefs about choice, that you would hope it would be safe and legal.” Apparently that observation is not so obvious anymore.

The matter might not have made much of a stir but for the fact that it was raised again today by the National Enquirer, whose typically sensationalized headline screamed “Mitt Romney Backstreet Abortion Shocker.”

Mitt Romney Abortion Shocker

Regardless of the hyperbole of the source, the facts were all present in Salon’s earlier article. Now that the story is out there, it is fair to inquire as to how Romney feels today about the ordeal of his deceased relative. While the loss of a loved one should never become fodder for political gamesmanship, how such experiences shape the values of a candidate are highly relevant. If her loss had such a profound impact on him, even thirty years later when he was running for the senate, does he no longer feel that she, or any other women in her position, ought to have access to safe and legal medical attention?

Since Romney’s current position is to turn back the clock to a time when women had no alternative but the back alley procedures that were often fatal, can he say today that he is satisfied with the fate that his young relative suffered; that it was merely the consequence of her choice; that a young woman today, perhaps another relative, should be subject to the same fate were she to make the same choice?

Romney was once driven by his grief to make an unwavering commitment to never force his beliefs on others. Is he through with grieving? Is he comfortable with the grief that other families will suffer if his promise to repeal Roe v. Wade is fulfilled? Someone should ask Romney these questions.