Sell! Sell! Sell! It’s all over. The stock market is collapsing. Wall Street is bankrupt. The economy is toast. Head for your bunker with your gold bullion, guns, and bibles. The End Times are here.
Fox Nation is feverishly reporting that “Stocks Tank, Nasdaq’s Worst Week Of 2012.” If this isn’t evidence of Armageddon, I don’t know what is.
After this horrific market crash the NASDAQ will only be up 13.5% year-to-date – a mere nine times more than what the average bank savings account is earning for the whole year. If you listened to Fox you would have missed out on one of the most precipitous stock rallies in decades.
And when was the last time that Fox reported that the market was significantly higher in any week this year? Good luck finding that report. Fox is on a mission to make President Obama and his administration look bad. That requires trumpeting bad news about the economy and ignoring the good news.
The problem is that by doing that, Fox also exacerbates negativity that can have the effect of producing a self-fulfilling prophecy and frighten people out of the market. But Fox doesn’t care about that. Hurting Obama is more important to Fox than accurately reporting on the economy.
After a week of Fox News fabulists going bonkers over President Obama’s use of the word “Forward” and declaring that he was a socialist because of it (never mind that Fox also used it their promos), we now have Fox Nation publishing a piece that aligns Obama with Fidel Castro:
Not surprisingly, there is very little in that headline that is true. Obama did not “rip” the United States, he did not “compliment” Cuba, and there is no evidence that he ever said anything remotely similar to that “quote” to any visitor. The one thing that the Fox Nationalists got right is that Castro said something.
What happened is that Fox Nation’s editors found an article by Kyle Olson of the Education Action Group. EAG is a far-right, Koch-funded cell of anti-unionists in Michigan. Olson pulled a quote from a column by Castro that was published on Counterpunch.org. In that article Castro bragged about Cuba’s beneficial relationship with allies like Venezuela, and added…
“President Obama knows this only too well and has talked about it with some of his visitors. He candidly told one of them: ‘The problem is that the United States sends soldiers while Cuba, however, sends doctors.’“
Castro doesn’t say when, where, or to whom, Obama allegedly said this. There is no record of any visitor that was ever told any such thing, or how Castro would have heard about it. Did some mysterious visitor rush back to his hotel, get Cuba on the line and beam “Hey Fidel, guess what Barack just told me?” However, it is certainly a useful and self-serving tale for Castro to weave.
But let’s set aside all of those points, that suggest that this whole thing is a hoax, and just examine the substance of the quote. There have been plenty of discussions about foreign policy strategies that weigh the benefits of military aid and humanitarian aid. The question of whether the U.S. should seek to strengthen it’s relations with other countries by sending doctors or soldiers is one that is reasonable and proper. It is neither a rip nor a compliment. It is simply good diplomacy to analyze and arrive at an effective balance.
Clearly the editors at Fox Nation have bought into the story as they posted Castro’s quote as if it were fact. It’s ironic, and more than a little unpatriotic, that they put more faith in what Castro says than their own president. If one didn’t know better it would appear that the Fox Nationalists are cozying up to the communist dictator who they obviously regard as a truthful source. Perhaps Rep. Allen West, who is so anxious about the possibility of communists in congress, should look into whether Fox is secretly harboring traitors in their newsroom.
It is also interesting to note the graphic that the Fox Nationalists chose to accompany their article. I’m sure they innocently selected a photo of Obama applauding in front of a banner that says “CUBA.” Certainly they would have had no intention of conveying any message that the President supported the communist state. And it’s surely not relevant that another angle of the same event reveals that Obama was speaking at a conference of the Cuban American National Foundation, an anti-Castro group based in Miami:
Obama Derangement Syndrome has spread to infect every cell of the conservative brain. The depth of their sickness has finally become so severe that it negates any hope of recovery.
The “Moonie” Washington Times published an article with the headline: “New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism.” There is nothing new about the rabid right’s delusional assertions that President Obama is a Marxist, socialist, Kenyan, Muslim, Anti-Christ, who is conspiring with communists, Al Qaeda, the New Black Panthers (all four of them), and Sesame Street to subvert democracy, indoctrinate our children, and deflower our women. But this particular incident is rooted so firmly in dementia that it deserves closer attention and merciless ridicule.
The problem cited by the Washington Times, and picked up by Fox Nation and Breitbart among others, is that the word “Forward,” used prominently in a new Obama campaign video (posted below), is inherently wicked and representative of dastardly evildoers seeking to establish a tyrannical, Islamic, atheist, caliphate throughout the world – or something. The article states that…
“The Obama campaign apparently didn’t look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, ‘Forward’ — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism. Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name ‘Forward!'”
So there you have it. By using a word in the English dictionary that means “ahead, onward,” the Obama camp has revealed their commitment to worldwide socialist rebellion. Never mind that the associations cited in the conservative press are a hundred years old, or that the word has been used in innumerable other contexts before and after those associations. For instance, the pinko Ronald Reagan Society at his alma mater, Eureka College, uses the phrase “Reagan Forward.” Even Fox News used it in their on-air promos:
Initially, when the Obama video was released, the cry from the right was that the campaign had lifted the slogan from MSNBC which uses the phrase “Lean Forward.” That allegation was carried by conservatives from Fox News contributor Michele Malkin to the New York Post to Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, and others. Apparently that didn’t stir up enough bile among the right-wing faithful, so they had to escalate the attack to suggest this affiliation with ancient enemies.
Ironically, it was Fox News who took great offense to an allegation by John Aravosis of AmericaBlog late last year, that Mitt Romney’s campaign had adopted a slogan previously used by the Ku Klux Klan:
On several occasions Romney included a phrase in his stump speech that closely resembled one that the KKK used frequently in the 1920s: “Keep America American.” Subsequently there was some debate as to whether Romney actually said “Keep America America,” a small difference of the single letter “n” at the end. The outrage from the right was immediate and fierce. How could those awful liberals insinuate that Romney was a Klan member? Fox News was all over the story with even their top program, The O’Reilly Factor, devoting segments to it.
Of course, nobody ever implied that Romney was a Klan member. They merely noted that his campaign had not sufficiently researched the language that they were making such a prominent part of their strategy. And they made the additional point that, if it were a Democrat whose slogan could be tied to some past perceived ignominy, Republicans would have feasted on the gaffe. Aravosis seems prescient in retrospect for having facetiously said…
“In an era in which it’s apparently okay for Republicans to accuse President Obama of being a socialist, I guess we now need to ask if Mitt Romney is a Ku Klux Klansman. Not whether Romney inadvertently is using the KKK’s number one slogan from the 1920s on the stump, no, the Republicans would say, if this were a Democrat, that clearly the candidate was a closet member of the KKK.”
Now that speculation has been made real by a conservative effort to advance their smear campaign against Obama. And their is nothing facetious about the right’s belief that the President is a socialist. When an anchor on MSNBC reported the story about Romney’s slogan, the right swung back hard in retaliation. MSNBC then issued a quick and thorough apology on the air. And that’s where the comparison ends. The right proudly and obstinately clings to their abhorrent missteps – probably because they aren’t missteps, but deliberate slander.
Conservatives have been making unfounded claims that the President is a socialist since before his inauguration. These were not merely observations about similarities in rhetoric, but outright accusations that they assert as fact. And now they are engaging in the exact same tactic that just last December they condemned as character assassination.
This is about as good an example of the ethical vacancy of the modern right as there will ever be. Their fixation on inventing new methods of tarnishing the President has devolved to condemning him for using the English language. So today the word “forward” is off-limits. Tomorrow will it be “progress” or “justice” or “the” or [fill in the blank].
Seriously…these people have totally lost their friggin minds.
[Update] Fox Business Network joins the club castigating forwardness. Tonight Lou Dobbs jumped in with the added attraction of one of Glenn Beck’s surplus blackboards.
In their ongoing effort to insure that the Fox News audience is the most ill-informed collection of dimwits on God’s flat Earth, Fox Nation published a story that makes the incredulous claim that “New Research Shows Wind Farms Cause Global Warming.”
Of course the research referenced shows nothing of the sort. Even the first line of the Reuters article, to which the Fox Nationalists linked, specifically says that the effect the wind farms “might” have is limited to the “local” climate. There is no finding in the research that suggests any global impact.
“[it is very likely that] wind turbines do not create a net warming of the air and instead only re-distribute the air’s heat near the surface, which is fundamentally different from the large-scale warming effect caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.”
This is part of a continuing pattern of conservative media misrepresenting scientific research in order to deceive their audience and promote policies that benefit their wealthy, corporate backers. These right-wing “journalists” never bother to correct the record even when the scientists they misquote insist that their work has been mangled. That’s because reporting the truth is not part of Fox’s mission. Advancing their partisan disinformation is the only reason they are in business.
As an indication of just how disingenuous the right can be in the expression of their patriopathic zeal, the Fox Nation web site posted a video of President Obama delivering a speech before soldiers at Fort Stewart in Georgia and characterized his support for the troops as “collectivist.”
Fox National is very disturbed by a particular portion of the President’s speech where he praised traditional American values that represent the best of what our nation stands for. But what the Fox Nationalists heard was…
Towards the end of the President’s speech, the tune shifted towards a hyper partisan tirade hailing big government spending.
What Obama actually said was that we have…
“…a country that was willing to invest in things like community colleges and universities and scientific research and medicine and caring for our veterans. Each of us is only here because somebody somewhere had our backs. Because generations of Americans worked together. ‘Out of many we are one.’ Those are values we’ve got to return to.”
I guess that anything we do as a nation the right will dismiss as collectivist. I guess the rightist faction no longer values education, medical advancement, or honoring veterans. I guess they have also abandoned the concept of “E Pluribus Unum” that was a founding principle of our country and still adorns our currency. I guess this is just the state of modern politics that requires the right to disparage anything this President does or says, even if it is unmistakably patriotic.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time the President recites the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, the right goes into hysterics because he pledged his allegiance to a piece of cloth rather than the Constitution. That’s how demented they have become. The twisted treatment the President receives by the numbskulls at Fox Nation is pathetic and ought to embarrass clear thinking conservatives.
In October of 2009, then White House Communications Director, Anita Dunn, made an observation that was well known to most media watchers, but was unique and courageous for a political operative in the White House:
“The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. And it is not ideological…what I think is fair to say about Fox, and the way we view it, is that it is more of a wing of the Republican Party.”
Since then Fox has labored diligently to confirm Dunn’s analysis. And lately Fox is performing their PR duties without even attempting to disguise their intentions. On the Fox Nation web site they have taken to posting Republican campaign ads with open praise and support for the message. These are just from this week:
Celebrity Obama Crushed By Rove Ad
Karl Rove’s super PAC group American Crossroads has released a devastating new ad targeting the celebrity of Obama.
DEVASTATING AD UNLEASHED ON OBAMA
A non-profit Republican organization is poised to run $2 million worth of ads in battleground states attacking President Barack Obama for controversies involving tax payer dollars, according to the group [American Future Fund].
Devastating Ad Shreds Celebrity Obama: You’re Not Funny, Mr. President
The Republican National Committee looked to draw a contrast between Mitt Romney’s victory speech on Tuesday night, and President Obama’s appearance on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”
Notice the Fox Nationalist’s fetish for the word “devastating.” It seems that the GOP PR machine is incapable of producing anything that isn’t devastating. Either that or Fox is such a desperate practitioner of mind control that they have to take their dimwitted readers by the leash and instruct them on how they should react to these doggy treats. [Note: Fox Nation is no stranger to over-the-top hyperbole]
It was only a couple of weeks ago that Fox Nation attempted to get away with posting the same GOP-friendly spot twice in order to double its exposure. The second posting was labeled as “new” despite it being a repeat, demonstrating how brazenly Fox will lie to their audience in pursuit of their mission to brainwash the gullible waifs.
None of this accidental. The campaign ads posted by the Fox Nationalists are not there for any news value. They never post ads from the Obama campaign for fairness and/or balance, which a legitimate news operation would do. The sole purpose of this editorial prejudice is to advance the electoral prospects of Republican candidates, and to smear President Obama. The funny thing is, they aren’t even very good at that. Take a look at the latest ad from the Republican National Committee:
Of course, the goal of the RNC is to propel the GOP brand and, with the help of their Fox associates, take advantage of the free publicity from Fox News. But from my perspective, they have just produced an ad that reminds viewers how much cooler Obama is than their flaccid candidate. It is comforting to know that there is a GOP strategist(s) somewhere in the corridors of the RNC with a pocket-protector and taped-up spectacles who actually thinks that he is doing his side a favor with this video showing a stiff and insincere Romney, juxtaposed with a smooth Obama demonstrating his sense of humor.
So keep up the good work. And if Fox wants to continue disseminating this counterproductive flopaganda, they have my hearty consent.
C’mon guys, you’re making this way too easy for me.
This morning Fox Nation posted an item with the headline, “Poll: Americans Not Buying Buffett Rule.” That seems straightforward enough. The poll ought to simply show that a majority of respondents do not believe that raising taxes on millionaires will do any good. And since they are relying on the results of a poll conducted by Fox News, they should be able to support whatever preconceived myth they want to invent. But notice the very first paragraph of the story:
That’s right – the poll by Fox News itself says that “more voters think raising taxes on wealthy Americans will help rather than hurt the economy.” And the margin (16%) isn’t even close. Yet the Fox Nationalists paste a headline atop the article that is outright, diametrically opposed to the truth.
What’s next? A story about ObamaCare saving thousands of lives with a headline that says “ObamaCare Killing Patients In Droves.” Or maybe an article about the end of the Afghan war titled “Army Escalates Actions In Afghanistan.” And I can see the headline on election night if Obama is reelected: “Romney Wins!”
Are these people even trying anymore? Has it really come down to Fox just posting the headline they’d like to see above any random story, even if it says the complete opposite? They must really think their readers are idiots. And since they must know their audience better than anyone else, I will defer to their assessment.
Despite the seemingly constant stream of racist propaganda and rhetoric emanating from Fox News, they still manage to exceed their own repulsive standards with ever more dishonest and hateful distortions of the news. After publishing stories that blame Trayvon Martin’s demise on his clothing, and pictures that deliberately seek to put Trayvon in a negative light, Fox has rocketed to new heights of blatant prejudice and painfully perverse journalism.
In Mobile, Alabama, a white man was hospitalized from a beating by a group of African-Americans after a dispute over the use of the street for a game of basketball. The assault was inexcusably brutal and the police are searching for suspects who deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law. But that would not be a sufficiently sensational reaction for the twisted editors at Fox News. They published their stories on Fox News and Fox Nation this way:
The facts of this crime are fairly clear. It was an extreme overreaction to a neighborhood argument that concerned only the parties involved. It had absolutely nothing to do with the incident in Florida last month where an unarmed teenager was shot to death while walking home from the market. The only connecting factor was the claim by the victim’s sister that she heard one person say “Now that’s justice for Trayvon.” There have been no other witnesses who have corroborated her account, but even if there were the only significance of it would be that one of the perpetrators was a jerk in addition to being a thug.
That’s not how Fox News sees it. Their headline at Fox Nation veritably declares that the hoodlums who committed the assault were a “Justice for Trayvon Mob,” as if it were a political statement emanating from the Florida incident. Nothing in the facts of this crime point to that in even the most remote sense. The headline on Fox News itself states matter-of-factly that the “mob invoked Trayvon.” However there is only one unconfirmed report that a single witness alleged that a single person brought Trayvon’s name into this. That hardly justifies associating the whole mob’s actions with Trayvon. Fox’s headline also implies that this should be designated a hate crime despite any evidence of that being the case.
The entire purpose of these overt distortions is to fuel racial animus directed at Trayvon Martin specifically, and to African-Americans generally. There is a stench of incitement in Fox’s words that suggest their desire to stir up other racially motivated crimes or even full-on race riots. It is horribly irresponsible for a so-called news enterprise to sink to these depths of cynicism and antagonism.
From the very beginning of the Trayvon Martin incident, Fox News has tried to advance the impression that African-Americans are animals on the verge of erupting into violence. Fox has suggested that riots would occur if George Zimmerman were not arrested, or if he were not convicted. The view at Fox is that African-Americans are incapable of respecting the progress of justice. And even when no riots ensue, Fox can sit back smugly and celebrate having created the impression that civil unrest was narrowly averted.
It’s a good thing that African-Americans (and most Americans in general) are far more civilized than the bigoted neanderthals at Fox. These brazen tactics are designed to manufacture potentially dangerous hostilities and are more at home in the quarters of Klans and racist militias. How Fox News gets away with this is unfathomable. Their audience should find it revolting and their peers in the press should speak out against this sort of noxious activism. Although it is unlikely to succeed, it certainly can’t help. This isn’t news, it’s hate speech.
Republicans have lately been busy pushing a manufactured fallacy that there is rampant, in-person voter fraud destroying fair elections across America. Of course, they haven’t put forth any evidence of it, but they are pushing nonetheless. They held a hearing in the House last week that was brimming with emptiness and misinformation. And they have retained their personal PR machine – aka Fox News – in the effort.
Now, just when you thought that the GOP/Fox News racket was already so far gone that reality for them was a distant memory, they dispatch their inbred cousins at Fox Nation to dispense a story that is rooted in nothing but a frantic illusion.
Let’s set aside the irony that Fox is now fronting for allegations emanating from Wikileaks, an enterprise they have previously discounted as disreputable and even traitorous. More troubling is that they have utterly misunderstood the data Wikileaks has released. The data at issue is emails that were acquired through the hacking of the secretive, private intelligence firm Stratfor. In particular there was an email from one Stratfor executive to another that Fox is alleging reveals vote tampering on the part of Democrats in the 2008 election. However, that is not what the email says:
“The black Dems were caught stuffing the ballot boxes in Philly and Ohio as reported the night of the election and Sen. McCain chose not to fight. The matter is not dead inside the party. It now becomes a matter of sequence now as to how and when to ‘out.'”
Clearly the email states the alleged tampering was “reported the night of the election.” So that is not the revelation. If anything is considered newsworthy here it is whether the McCain camp chose to make an issue of news that was already known. But even that is dubious in that there are no reports I can find of any vote tampering in Ohio or Philadelphia post-2008 at all. So this may just be some wild speculation between a couple of private, right-wing spooks upset that their guy lost. It is certainly not evidence of anything by any stretch of the imagination. Where are the “black dems” who were supposedly caught? None of that, however, stopped the Fox Nationalists from publishing the questioning headline above at the top of their web site.
To compound the fabricated propaganda, Fox also posted a story alleging “Massive Voter Fraud Uncovered in Virginia.” And once again, the story was a phony piece of hyper-sensationalized nonsense. Fox was attempting to portray the news as proof of voter fraud that would justify enacting discriminatory voter ID laws. Had any of Fox Nation’s glassy-eyed readers bothered to click through the deceitful headline to the source article, they would have read this:
“The majority of cases reviewed by The Times-Dispatch that resulted in arrests in central Virginia involved felons who either illegally registered to vote or who illegally voted in the general election, or both. Felons cannot vote in Virginia unless their rights are restored by the governor.
“None of the cases appeared to involve someone who misrepresented his or her identity at the polls to vote.“
That’s right, none of the cases would have been prevented had there been strict requirements for photo IDs that disenfranchise thousands of legitimate voters. The article explains that prospective voters were told by registration collectors that their felony status would not impair their voting privileges. So this appears not to be a case of voter fraud at all, but a case of registration errors wherein the voter was doing what they believed to be proper. The person registering the voter may be guilty of something if they made knowing misrepresentations to the registrant. But in either case, the proposed voter ID laws would not have prevented any ineligible votes because the voter would have presented their own ID and would have been permitted to cast a ballot.
Laws already exist that address the legal conduct of voting registration agents and, as this case demonstrates, they are being enforced. There are also procedures in place to purge ineligible voters from voting rolls (i.e. felons), and they can be enhanced by new technologies to become more accurate and efficient.
This is another example of an allegation of massive voter fraud that failed to verify any such claim. This embarrassing dishonesty follows a special report on Fox News this weekend titled ‘Fox News Reporting: Stealing Your Vote.” As an analysis by Media Matters shows, there were no certified incidents in the entire hour long program of any votes being stolen that could have been prevented by new voter ID laws.
For a problem that Fox and Republicans are trying so hard to build into a nationwide crisis, they are having an awfully difficult time of coming up with even a sliver of evidence. And of course the reason is that there is none. Their only aim is to hype the phony controversy so that they can get laws passed that will prevent thousands of mostly Democratic voters from being able to exercise their right to vote. This is a despicable campaign by a political party and their media accomplice to subvert democracy and dishonestly gain control of government that they otherwise cannot win fairly.
Sometimes the brazen disrespect Fox News has for honest analysis is breathtaking. They seem to have such a fierce determination to deceive their audience that no limits are drawn for their blatant biases. Take, for example, the article posted this morning reporting on the results of an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll:
The Fox Nationalists analyzed this poll (which was co-produced by a fellow Murdoch entity, the WSJ) and concluded that the headline news that it contained was that “Romney Opens Up Lead Over Obama.” Just to give you an idea of how far they had to stretch in order to make this an anti-Obama article, here are some of the actual results from the poll:
Obama leads Romney among all registered voters 49% to 43%.
Obama leads Romney among African Americans 90% to 4%.
Obama leads Romney among Latinos 69% to 22%
Obama leads Romney among young voters (18-34) 60% to 34%.
Obama leads Romney among women 53% to 41%.
Obama leads Romney among Independents 44% to 34%.
Obama leads Romney as most likable 54% to 18%.
Obama leads Romney as caring about average people 52% to 22%.
Obama leads Romney on looking out for the middle class 48% to 22%.
Obama leads Romney on being knowledgeable and experienced 45% to 30%.
Obama leads Romney on being a good commander-in-chief 43% to 33%.
Obama leads Romney on standing up for his beliefs 41% to 30%.
Obama leads Romney on being honest and straightforward 37% to 30%.
The poll also found that respondents favored Obama’s approach to the economy by fighting for fairness and strengthening the middle class; that 45% approve of his handling of the economy (a five point gain over last fall’s poll); and that a plurality (36%) believes the president’s policies have helped U.S. economic conditions. In fact, the only economic question in the poll where Romney beat Obama was on who would have better ideas for improving the economy, where Romney led 40% to 34%. And on the basis of that single statistic Fox trumpeted a headline that played up Romney lead in the poll.
To be fair, Romney did lead on some other questions (i.e. white and suburban voters), but that hardly compensates for the devastating beating he took on almost everything else. Sometimes, when you witness such gross misrepresentation, you have to stop and say “Wow.” Just “Wow.” These people have no scruples whatsoever.
