Fox Nation vs. Reality: On Palin Bus Tour

Posted by Mark NC on August 3, 2011 at 12:44 pm. 10 Comments :

This is a prime example of why political parody has become so difficult. The subjects of satire are too good at making themselves look stupid without any help. What does that leave for those of us who satirize them? Check out Fox Nation’s article on a planned mid-August bus tour by President Obama:

Really? Please note the “Obama 08” poster on Fox Nation’s photo proving that Obama obviously used buses before Sarah Palin did. Seriously, it’s their own photo. Yet Fox implies that Palin invented the political bus tour? Are they daft? (Don’t answer that). Palin didn’t even come up with an original name for her road trip. She copied the name, “One Nation,” from the progressive and union movement that held a rally in Washington, D.C., last October.

I think that the Fox Nationalists are actually pretty close to the truth this time. They just left out a small detail. Palin didn’t invent the political bus tour, she invented the “aborted” political bus tour. As we know, the cross-country trip that Palin planned (and is still promoting on her SarahPac web site) lasted all of six days and never made it past New Hampshire. Then she blatantly lied when asked about why the tour came to a screeching halt:

Palin: “Imagine our surprise when reading media reports today that the ‘One Nation Tour’ has been cancelled…The coming weeks are tight because civic duty calls (like most everyone else, even former governors get called up for jury duty) and I look forward to doing my part just like every other Alaskan.”

The only problem is that, unlike every other Alaskan, she never showed up for jury duty. In fact, she wasn’t even in Alaska. A few days after making her jury excuse for quitting the bus tour, she turned up at the debut of her crockumentary, “The Undefeated,” in Pella, Iowa. Incidentally, the film was a rip-roaring failure at the boxoffice and is already heading to video and the discount bins at WalMart.

Sarah Palin is a pitiful joke. The only thing she’s running for is the bank to deposit the cash she cons out of glassy-eyed fans who somehow find something coherent in her word jumbles. And the only way Obama could be charged with copying Palin on this is if he rolls into a handful of towns and then jets back to Camp David for some R&R.

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While The GOP/Tea Party Was Blackmailing The Nation…

Posted by Mark NC on August 3, 2011 at 10:16 am. 2 Comments :

For the past month our country has been embroiled in a contentious debate over whether to raise the debt ceiling, a routine congressional function that has been done without controversy dozens of times. The farthest right faction of the Republican Party was determined to hold the nation hostage in their yearning to dismantle the social safety net and protect the wealth of billionaires. While that carnival was in progress, Washington and the press missed something else that holds some importance to the American people and the economy:

(Source for job loss data: private sector / public sector)

Despite the GOP’s promise to focus on jobs when they assumed the majority in the House of Representatives, they have not produced a single jobs bill. In fact, they have endeavored to kill legislation that would create new jobs. Just before they left for recess after passing the debt ceiling bill, they left unresolved a bill to fund the operations of the Federal Aviation Administration. As a result, over 90,000 workers will be sidelined until congress returns in September. Not to mention, the Treasury will lose $1.2 billion in fees that will go uncollected.

That’s the GOP’s commitment to working families and reducing the deficit. In other words, it’s a hoax. And the media is their accomplice. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that 52% of news stories last week were related to the debt ceiling debate. Notwithstanding the fact that polls show that the American people are more concerned about jobs than debt, the media virtually ignored the issue of job creation and unemployment.

Now that the debt ceiling debate is at least temporarily resolved, it will be interesting to see what issue dominates news coverage next week. Jobs or the Obama’s dining at a fast food restaurant?

Glenn Beck’s Tea Party Youth Camp

Posted by Mark NC on August 2, 2011 at 8:17 pm. 5 Comments :

Last week Glenn Beck hit a new low when he compared scores of murdered teenagers at a summer camp in Norway to the Hitler Youth:

Beck: “As the thing started to unfold, and then there was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler Youth, or whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics?”

As it turns out, Beck does a camp for kids that’s all about politics. It’s part of his 912 Project. Sadly, this isn’t even the first time Beck has sunk to calling kids Nazis, and his bile was not reserved for foreigners either. On February 5, 2009, Beck said this about young Americans learning about the environment:

“Some may believe we’re on the road to the Hitler youth.”

When Beck isn’t calling kids Nazis, he’s calling them terrorists:

“There are a lot of universities that are as dangerous with the indoctrination of the children as terrorists are in Iran or North Korea.”

Higher education is one of Beck’s most frequent targets. That’s consistent with his mission to promote ignorance. He strongly advises his disciples to avoid accredited schooling, and on September 1, 2010, he took another swipe saying “We have been setting up reeducation camps. We call them universities.”

Despite his open hostility to young people, Beck has expressed an interest in exerting his influence on them. In fact, it is a priority that extends far beyond a trip to summer camp. In the waning days of his Fox News program, Beck told viewers that the reason he was leaving was because he wanted to “get to the youth.” He later told a live audience in Albany, New York that he intended to build a way to “deliver news directly to the youth of America.” This targeted focus on youth contrasts sharply with his typical viewer. Beck’s audience (along with the rest of Fox News and the Tea Party crowd) skews to an older demographic (the curmudgeon community) than the average of the nation at large.

What might have triggered this sudden interest in the juvenile set? It’s not as if kids were amongst his favorite people. He has a history of demeaning and insulting them. Earlier this year he ridiculed Girl Scouts who had launched a campaign to protect endangered orangutans. Beck’s response was to mock them saying “Keep killing the orangutans, the cookies are yummy.” He also belittled high school students in Tucson, Arizona for protesting the cancellation of Mexican-American studies classes. He portrayed young environmentalists promoting a rally as thugs. And he vilifies kids in general as “useful idiots” who are being “turned into…slaves.”

As an indication of the disrespect that Beck harbors for young folks, he repeatedly lambastes Al Gore for saying that “There are some things about our world that you know that older people don’t know.” Notwithstanding the manifest truth of that statement, Beck ridiculed the notion as an assault on parental authority, something Beck interprets more like parental tyranny.

Beck simply has no regard for the intelligence or insight of youth. He believes that kids are stupid, susceptible to manipulation, and best suited for staying mum and obeying orders. With such a derogatory attitude, Beck is unlikely to have much success appealing to the young demographic. And that’s a good thing considering that he thinks most of them are Nazis anyway.

Glenn Beck does not belong on the public airwaves. His appalling insult to the memory of the slaughtered kids in Norway should be sufficient to drive him off the air for good. Here is list of his radio stations across the country. Find the one nearest you and let them know that you will not listen to the station or patronize the advertisers until Beck is gone.

Shuckin And Jivin: The Kind Of Obama Fox News Racists Like

Posted by Mark NC on August 1, 2011 at 12:26 pm. 6 Comments :

Fox Nation - Obama Rage In a featured article today on the Fox Nation, an editorial presents a picture of President Obama that harkens back to an era when African Americans were relegated to tap-dancing, watermelon-eating, entertainers and servants. The article from a Marietta, Georgia, opinion columnist, Melvyn L. Fein, was titled: “Obama’s Rage Starting To Show.”

It’s surprising to read something so overtly racist from a modern, mainstream news source, but leave it to Fox to find it and promote it to a national audience.

The article began with feint praise of Obama as a conciliatory black man, as opposed what Fein called angry “street thugs” like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. But it just got worse from there. Fein initially described Obama in terms that portrayed him as acceptable and unthreatening to whites:

“He was not angry. Far from it, he was affable. With a smile on his face, and a lilt to his voice.”

In other words he was grinning negro, shuckin and Jivin for the folks, and never stirring up trouble like those rabble-rousers who keep clamoring for their “civil” rights.

Fein goes on to assert that all of that was a mask that Obama wore and that “the anger underneath his facade of cordiality has started to show.” As evidence of this hidden anger, Fein cited Obama’s “arrogance” for “summoning” congressional leaders to the White House to discuss the debt ceiling and for the “stipulation” that they bring viable solutions with them. That language would be admired as an expression of leadership in white politicians, but to Fein, with regard to Obama, it was “imperiousness” and “authoritarian.” In Fein’s world it’s unseemly for black men to be seen as issuing orders to white men, even if the black man is the President of the United States.

In an effort to explain what Fein theorized was Obama’s innate rage, he resorted to amateur psychology based on a fictional account of Obama’s past:

“We must remember that Obama was abandoned by his birth father, semi-abandoned by his mother, raised by contentious grandparents, exposed to virulent Indonesian racism before the age of 10 and then subjected to the ignominy of being racially marginalized in Hawaii.

How could anyone escape being irate at such an upbringing? Rage would be the normal human reaction to this sort of abuse.”

In the real world, Obama recalls his upbringing with a mother who loved him dearly and cared for him throughout most of his childhood, interrupted briefly by a period where his loving grandparents stood in for her. He never expressed any experience of racism outside of that that any minority child would encounter in a prejudiced society. Fein’s rantings closely mirror those of Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee, who believe that Obama harbors some sort of Kenyan, Mau Mau, anti-colonialism, inspired by a father he barely knew. Beck even did his own psychoanalysis of Obama that virtually drips with dementia. Here is an excerpt of my take on Beck’s psycho-escapade:

“Beck’s conclusion is that Obama was so traumatized by abandonment issues related to his parents’ absorption in Marxism that Obama, in retaliation, did what any child would under those circumstances — He became a Marxist. It makes perfect sense. What other choice did he have other than to adopt the philosophy of the thing that allegedly tore his family apart? It is a sad, tragic story, isn’t it?

“Perhaps on tomorrow’s show Beck will tell his own sad, tragic story? The one where his mother abandoned him by killing herself. Obama’s mother went away for a while, but she came back and witnessed her son on an historic path to the presidency of the United States of America. For Beck’s mother only death was sufficient to separate her from her demon seed. What kind of scar does that leave on a boy? Well, in Beck’s case it left a scar that led to dropping out of school, to alcoholism, drug abuse, a failed marriage, a career as an AM radio shock jock, and fame as a hate-mongering conspiracy nut who contributes nothing to society but fear and division.

“Contrast that with Obama who, while scarred, worked his way through school, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law, dedicated himself to helping the disenfranchised, taught law at the University of Chicago, entered public service and politics, and went all the way to the White House. So sad – so tragic.”

Fein’s puerile psychoanalysis surmises that Obama’s allegedly troubled past created a false persona wherein, “rather than fight back openly, [Obama] smiled and allowed the insults to roll off his back.” And remember, it’s that Obama that Fein considered to be “gracious” and “intelligent.” As soon as Obama demonstrated any determination to assert the principles in which he believes, and for which he was elected, Obama was transformed into a raving dictator with an inability to love. Fein’s closing paragraph sums up his disturbingly maniacal view:

“[A]s his policies have revealed, our president is more concerned with his own welfare than anyone else’s. This is not a man who loves others. It is a man who is angry at others, including his nation. As alarmingly, it is a man who acts on these impulses.

The rest of us had, therefore, best beware!”

That’s right. Beware, brothers and sisters. Beware the angry black man rampaging across the land with no love in his heart and no knowledge of his “place.” Didn’t y’all like him better before he talked back, when he was carrying your bags and shining your shoes with a big, toothy grin?

Sarah Palin Utterly And Pitifully DEFEATED!

Posted by Mark NC on July 31, 2011 at 3:53 pm. 2 Comments :

Sarah Palin - Undefeated The third week of release for Sarah Palin’s crockumentary, “The Undefeated,” saw its worst boxoffice performance yet. Dropping from 14 theaters last week to four this week, the film took in only $5,200 this weekend – a decline of 79%. Since its release, the million dollar production has earned a paltry $112,000 total.

Forget the press release extolling the success that sent the film to video after only two weeks in release. Never mind the ecstatic bragging by producers that the film was enjoying “overwhelming demand.” The UnDefeated flopped in a formidable fashion, despite the massive free publicity that Fox News gave the movie prior to, and during, its theatrical run. Here is a selection of the headlines from Fox that now seem pathetically quaint:

Hannity Exclusive: Sneak Peek of New Palin Documentary ‘The Undefeated’ (5/26/11)
Interview: Steve Bannon, the Man Who Brought Sarah Palin’s Story to the Screen (5/28/11)
A Sneak Peek of the New Palin Documentary (6/6/11)
New Palin Film, ‘The Undefeated,’ Getting Rave Reviews (6/6/11)
Preview of New Documentary on Sarah Palin: ‘The Undefeated’ (6/11/11)
RightOnline See Overwhelming Demand From Grassroots for Sneak Peek of Sarah Palin Movie Undefeated (6/15/11)
Palin Film Debuting in Iowa Next Week (6/24/11)
Palin Going to Iowa for “Undefeated” Premier (6/25/11)
Palin Film Selling Out in Theaters (7/15/11)
Palin Film Opens Strong, Theaters Packed (7/17/11)
Palin Film to Get Wider Release (7/19/11)
Click Here: Theaters Playing Palin’s ‘Undefeated’ (7/22/11)
Palin’s ‘Undefeated’ Scores Success in Liberal Chicago (7/26/11)

So the losing 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate, who quit halfway through her single term as governor, and is currently garnering single digits near the bottom of most polls for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, has now officially been defeated at the boxoffice. Apparently her loyal fans cannot be bothered to do more than reTweet her lame musings and skim through her incoherent Facebook posts. All the more reason I really hope for this:

Why Is Anyone Listening To The #@$%*#& Tea Party?

Posted by Mark NC on July 31, 2011 at 8:39 am. 14 Comments :

What is so hard about this? Congress is struggling to fashion a compromise agreement on a bill to raise the debt ceiling. The Republicans are insisting on attaching unrelated provisions to the bill to satisfy the tantrums of Tea Party-affiliated members who are demanding deficit reduction that imposes severe spending cuts but permits no revenue raising through tax reform and the elimination of loopholes.

But who is being represented by the advocates of spending cuts, which include cuts to critical programs like Medicaid? Who is being represented by the opponents of increased revenues achieved by asking corporations and the rich to share in the sacrifice required to bring our nation back to economic health?

The truth is that no one but a few extremist right-wingers are represented by the positions to which the GOP has lashed itself. Here’s the proof:

It is almost unheard of to get 72% of Americans to agree on any politically contentious issue. Yet here we have 72% of the country agreeing that the rich are not presently paying their fair share, and that Medicaid should not be cut. And isn’t just a bunch of socialist lefties. This includes majorities of both Independents and Republicans. Let the significance of that sink in. It is not just a fair number of Republicans, it is a MAJORITY of Republicans.

So for whom is House Speaker Boehner fighting? For whom is Senate Minority Leader McConnell fighting? It obviously is not their GOP constituents. In fact, they are betraying their constituents and putting the whole nation at risk in order to pacify a cabal of small-minded, short-sighted, ill-informed, intransigent malcontents known as the Tea Party.

Of course, there is really no such thing as the Tea Party. There are no Tea Party candidates; no Tea Party policies; no registered Tea Party voters. It is nothing more than a radical faction of the GOP that has canonized the Founding Fathers and debased the Constitution with simplistic misinterpretations and ritual recital.

With poll results like those above, it is unfathomable that Republicans in congress give such a wide berth to their tea-besotted cousins. And the same goes for the media. When news networks placate TeaPublicans by employing them to provide commentary and analysis for that point of view, they are, in effect, giving ultra-conservative Republicans an additional voice that they do not provide to progressive Democrats.

It is clear that the Tea Baggers are wildly out of touch with the mainstream of America and they should not be afforded the special treatment they receive. They are merely an annoyingly squeaky wheel with no popular support. They degrade the debate with their stubborn attachment to dubious dogma. Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page declared that “Republicans are not looking like adults to whom voters can entrust the government.” Actually, they aren’t even looking like children:

Regardless of how the debt ceiling debate shakes out, the media, as well as our congressional representatives, need to recognize that the Tea Party is unworthy of the outsized consideration they receive. They haven’t earned it and they don’t deserve. And catering to their hysterics is counterproductive and worse, destructive. With the abundance of evidence that they are a poorly attended party that is located far beyond the boundaries of common sense, the question remains…..

Why Is Anyone Listening To The #@$%*#& Tea Party?

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EXCLUSIVE: Photo Of Private Debt Ceiling Talks In John Boehner’s Office

Posted by Mark NC on July 30, 2011 at 7:59 am. 2 Comments :

The political pugilism over the debt ceiling debate is raging on in Congress and the media as John Boehner’s rightwardly-revised legislation passed in the House on a party-line vote but failed in a more bipartisan fashion in the Senate. This leaves the nation right where it was before these votes took place – on the precipice of a fiscal calamity.

Many observers were perplexed that Boehner, upon failing to hold the GOP caucus in line, added a provision to the bill calling for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. That provision may have swayed a few intransigent House members, but it doomed the bill in the Senate.

In pursuit of some insight as to why the Speaker would deliberately make the bill less likely to ever become law, an intrepid reporter infiltrated the secret negotiations that took place in the Speaker’s chambers prior to the vote. Here is what was discovered:

Amongst other things, this revealing photo is evidence that Speaker Boehner is not really in charge of House legislative activities. His leadership is subservient to the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party, or the TeaPublicans. This explains why, after admonishing his caucus to “Get your ass in line,” he was still unable to schedule a vote for fear that it would fail. It further explains why he was forced to make revisions that pushed the bill farther to the right and weakened it’s prospects for passage.

Now that we know who’s in charge of the GOP, perhaps Democrats will fashion a strategy to resolve these issues that takes this reality into account. The extreme right of the Republican Party is fixated on an agenda based on ignorance, faith, and Randian fiction. The only path to resolution is to ignore the TeaPublicans, shame any GOP members who still retain some measure of reason, and alert the public to the dilemma created by the delusional wing of the GOP and Fox’s phony version of “news.”

[Editor’s Note:] In view of recent incidents involving journalists acquiring scandalous information improperly, rest assured that no cell phones were hacked in the development of this story.

Glenn Beck: The Most Frustrated Man On The Planet

Posted by Mark NC on July 29, 2011 at 3:06 pm. 1 Comments :

Poor Glenn Beck. He simply can’t avoid being victimized by all the forces of evil that surround him. What a burden it must be for him to bear. After all, all he did was liken a few dozen teenagers, who were murdered by an extremist Christian bigot, to the Hitler Youth. And now he is the subject of wrath by a world bent on destroying him.

Today Beck took his pity party another step down the path of victimhood:

“I gotta tell ya, I could be the most frustrated man on the planet this week because I have people smearing me in the press likes nobody’s business. The New York Times has a story out today that is such a smear job. Claiming I said things I never said. Never said.”

That’s right. Beck’s frustration runneth over. He’s certainly more frustrated than the parents of those massacred Marxist children. He must be more frustrated than the people of Norway and their law enforcement agencies. Elsewhere on the planet, his frustration probably exceeds that of the Japanese people who live near the Fukushima nuclear power plant, or the Sudanese embroiled in a bloody civil war, or even his fellow Americans who are facing a calamitous default that threatens to throw the world into a financial tailspin and force a credit rating downgrade that is a virtual tax on every American.

The smear job that Beck references is nothing more than people reporting his own words. Notice that he never states specifically what constitutes the smear. He can’t because it would reveal that no smear occurred. Then he wouldn’t be able to whine about what a martyr he is. He wouldn’t be able to whip up his disciples into a feverish mob. He wouldn’t be able to maintain his Messianic charade.

It’s time to take action and really give Beck something to whine about. This page has a list of the radio stations carrying Beck’s program. Please call or write the one nearest you and tell them what Beck said and that you will not listen to the station or patronize their advertisers until Beck is gone. Also, sign this petition from Media Matters.

Beck is also holding an event in Israel next month with the unseemly name of “Restoring Courage.” How can his Israeli hosts permit this to go on as scheduled after he insults the memory of Holocaust victims by throwing around aspersions regarding Hitler’s atrocities aimed at innocent kids? After this, whatever authorization Beck has to produce this event should be rescinded. Feel free to contact the Israeli Embassy and advise them of the sort of person that is heading their way:
Email: info@washington.mfa.gov.il / Phone: 202.364.5500

Fox Nation vs. Reality: On Labor Day

Posted by Mark NC on July 28, 2011 at 12:54 pm. 1 Comments :

The fact checkers at Fox Nation are a notoriously incompetent crew. Today they are featuring an item that references an article at RealClearPolitics about Sarah Palin scheduling an appearance in Iowa on Labor Day. However, the Fox Nationalists don’t seem to know what holiday is celebrated on September 5:

This error is particularly conspicuous given that there was nothing in the RealClearPolitics article about Memorial Day. In fact, they cited Labor Day very near the top of the column. There could not have been any mix-up as a result of a transposition. Fox Nation’s editors are wholly responsible for a mistake born of ignorance.

Or was it a mistake? Fox has been castigating America’s workers for years. They characterize them as thugs, leeches, and loafers looking for handouts. Is it really so surprising that Fox would seek to suppress recognition for a holiday that celebrates working people?

Furthermore, Fox may not want to have associated their star political analyst with a day honoring Labor. Palin will be keynoting a Tea Party affair in Iowa and Fox surely wouldn’t want to confuse readers by insinuating that the event had anything to do with those socialists who work for a living. Palin’s reputation is damaged enough as it is by having been the subject of one of the biggest film flops this year.

Try as they might, Fox News cannot do away with Labor Day. They can only insult workers by pretending that it doesn’t exist.

The Narcissistic Paranoia Of Glenn Beck

Posted by Mark NC on July 28, 2011 at 10:46 am. 3 Comments :

A few days ago, Glenn Beck told his radio audience that the murdered kids at a Norwegian summer camp were “like the Hitler Youth.” That repulsive comment, coming before the grieving families could even bury their loved ones, was received with horror by most of the world, but Beck refused to apologize. In fact, he defended it by insisting that if he wasn’t able to draw comparisons between teenaged massacre victims and Nazis that “We are going to be a society of gas chambers.”

For Beck it isn’t bad enough to defend his disgusting Nazi comparisons with more Nazi comparisons, he has now gone further to attempt to turn himself into the victim in all of this. I guess the scores of victims in Norway weren’t sufficiently sympathetic.

Here is an annotated account of Beck’s neurotic paranoia as expressed yesterday on his radio program:

“They’ve been taking something that I said completely out of context and they’re trying to just…they’re trying again to destroy me.”
You can hear for yourself whether anything was taken out of context. And if there’s one thing about which Beck is consistent, is that it is always about him and the forces out to destroy him.

“Give it your best shot gang. You tried to get me out of the mainstream media.”
Um…Remind me again, what show do you have on television now? Oh, that’s right, we got you canceled after getting more than 300 advertisers to rebuke you. Hopefully, that’s just the start.

“Be careful what you wish for. Because now I’ve got a 24 hour, 7 day a week network.”
What you’ve got is a friggin web site, Poindexter. So do I and about a billion other people. But don’t let me interrupt your delusions of grandeur.

“Oh wait, in a year from now you’ll pray for me to be a part of the mainstream media. You’ll pray.”
The only praying most people will be doing for you is for a cure for the brain disease that has turned you into a conspiracy monger with a Messiah complex.

“Bring it on. I am not afraid. If I go down, don’t worry. I’m doing my damnedest to make sure there are 30 million others like me who will never sit down.”
Cool. That means there will be plenty of seating for the rest of us. And trust me, if you go down no one will remember your name in a year.

This page has a list of the radio stations carrying Beck’s program. Please call or write the one nearest you and tell them what Beck said and that you will not listen to the station or patronize their advertisers until Beck is gone. Also, sign this petition from Media Matters.

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