Barack Obama

So F**cking What? Obama’s Clandestine Conspiracy To Go Golfing

Posted by on February 19, 2013 at 4:37 pm. NO Comments :

With everything going on in the world today, much of the right-wing media has decided to make a federal case of President Obama playing golf with Tiger Woods and not permitting the media to tag along.

Fox News

How dare the White House shut the media out of Obama’s private time with a golf pro. What are they plotting? Is Woods giving the President advice on how to nail porn stars? Is Obama recruiting Woods to run the FEMA golf courses where wealthy conservatives will be incarcerated?

So F**king What?

Fox News White House correspondent Ed Henry bitterly complained that “There is a very simple but important principle we will continue to fight for today and in the days ahead: transparency.” Henry’s devotion to hard-nosed journalism is admirable. He’s just the sort of uncompromising reporter who will expose the next Kardashian scandal.

And while we’re on that subject, Henry’s Fox News colleague, Charles Krauthammer, doesn’t concur with Henry’s assessment of the important principle here. When Krauthammer was asked about this breaking news he said “If the guy wants to play golf, the guy deserves a couple of days off. He wants privacy? Big deal… This is the biggest non-story the media have created since the Kardashian weddings.” The only thing Krauthammer missed was that the media responsible for creating this non-story was the one that pays his salary.

So F**king What? Obama Aint No Emperor

Posted by on February 16, 2013 at 3:05 am. 3 Comments :

The weasels at Fox News must be working overtime to find new ways to demonize President Obama as a tyrannical defiler of freedom. They seem to love nothing more than inventing paranoid conspiracies wherein the President is plotting to crown himself king and drag patriotic teabaggers off to reeducation camps. Of course the first flaw in that theory is that you would have to be educated in order to be reeducated.

Earlier this week Obama participated in a Google Hangout event and was asked about his immigration policy. Specifically, the questioner wanted to know what he would do to prevent deportations that resulted in the break up of families. Obama responded…

“This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency. The problem is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed. And congress right now has not changed what I consider to be a broken immigration system. And what that means is that we have certain obligations to enforce the laws that are in place even if we think that in many cases the results may be tragic.”

So the President’s thoughtful response was that his administration was required to act in accordance with existing law and would do so until such time as those laws were changed. But the wingnut brain instinctively edits Obama’s utterances to conform with their twisted preconceptions. Consequently, all they heard was “The problem is…I’m not the emperor of the United States.”

Fox Nation

So F**king What?

The obvious point the President was making was that the American system of government requires some measure of cooperation between equal branches of government. He wasn’t knocking it or proposing that he be elevated to Supreme Leader. He was merely explaining why he could not unilaterally revoke existing laws with which he has objections and impose his version.

Rather than accurately report the exchange, Fox Nation posted the most wildly distorted misrepresentation of what the President said and left it to their dimwitted audience to wallow in a fear-soaked nightmare of an impending dictatorship ruled by a freedom-hating, devil worshiper who wasn’t even born here. And, as usual, their outrage is reserved for Obama despite the fact that the previous Republican president made similar remarks with not so much as a whimper from the right:

The Fox Nationalists didn’t bother to publish the complete quote or to link to an article that reported the event in greater detail. And heaven forbid they would provide the sort of context that included Bush’s remarks. Their purpose was clearly to portray Obama as power-mad in order to induce a state of frothing hysteria amongst the FoxPods. And judging by the comments attached to the Fox Nation item, it worked spectacularly well. They are nothing if not predictably and pitifully gullible.

Bill O’Reilly STILL Needs To Fire His Research Staff: The Drone Edition

Posted by on February 7, 2013 at 10:29 am. 5 Comments :

Last night Bill O’Reilly mustered up his signature pomposity in a debate with Bob Beckel over whether or not NBC had ever criticized President Obama on the use of drones or even reported on the controversy. O’Reilly was almost shaking with contempt at what he considered an outrageous example of hypocrisy. Beckel didn’t seem to care much about NBC’s reporting or pretend that he knew anything about their coverage of this story. But O’Reilly was relentless about NBC’s reporting and refused to let it go.

O’Reilly: “Remember the outcry about waterboarding? You know, everybody jumping up and down? Uh, NBC News, I thought they were going to, like, melt down over there. You heard anything on NBC about the drones? […] Neither have I. Neither has my staff.”

O’Reilly went on to accuse NBC of deliberately avoiding the story “because they are protecting the President.” There’s only one small thing wrong with O’Reilly’s bombastic condemnation of NBC: It was NBC who broke the story that made the drone controversy the lead on every news network on television. A little exclusive published by NBC’s investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff revealed the memo that outlined the administration’s rational for drone strikes targeted at American citizens.

The intensity with which O’Reilly insisted that NBC was derelict in their reporting only made his egregious mangling of the facts all the more preposterous. And by explicitly affirming his mistaken assertions with his staff, he casts doubt on their competence as well. In that regard, this isn’t the first time that O’Reilly’s staff has let him down in spectacular fashion. Back in April of 2010, O’Reilly reproached GOP senator Tom Coburn for suggesting that Fox had aired allegations that failure to get health insurance under ObamaCare would subject you to a prison term. He vigorously denied that anyone at Fox had ever said such a thing saying…

O’Reilly: “It doesn’t happen here, and we’ve researched to find out if anybody on Fox News has ever said ‘You’re going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance.’ Nobody’s ever said it. So it seems to me what you did was, you used Fox News as a whipping boy when we didn’t qualify there.”

Unfortunately for O’Reilly and his crack research team, the video record was readily available (And this pretty hilarious stuff. The “jail” assertion was even made on O’Reilly’s program by Glenn Beck):

Fox News has been blathering for much of this week about what they delusionally call the “liberal” media for ignoring the drone story. One of the more prominent critics is the fake Fox version of a Democrat, Kirsten Powers. She has taken to the Fox airwaves to lambaste liberals and Democrats for not challenging the administration on their drone policy. However, no one has been more critical of the President on this than Isikoff, the reporter who broke the story, and Rachel Maddow, who devoted extensive portions of her show to it.

If anyone is guilty of hypocrisy it’s the Fox/GOP crowd who only seem to care about human rights when a Democratic president is accused of violating them. Both Fox and the Republican Party fiercely defended George Bush’s use of torture and wiretapping. Democrats opposed those breaches of human rights, and they are consistent today in opposing the use of drones and the targeting of Americans without due process. But these facts escape dullards like O’Reilly whose only purpose is to bash his adversaries and the facts be damned. However, if there is one thing that O’Reilly is consistent about, it’s his indifference to journalistic ethics or standards.

Bill O'Reilly

I couldn’t agree more, Bill-O.

[Update] O’Reilly addressed the response to his deliberately deceitful characterization of NBC’s reporting the following night. As might have been expected, he lied through his teeth absolving himself of any responsibility. His argument was simply that “I didn’t say NBC broke the memo story because we weren’t talking about that.” Not true. For the record, let’s review what he was talking about: “You heard anything on NBC about the drones? […] Neither have I. Neither has my staff.” Either he and his staff weren’t listening very closely or they don’t regard talking about drones to be talking about drones.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Amnesty For 9/11 Hijackers?

Posted by on February 5, 2013 at 2:36 pm. 2 Comments :

Conservative myth-makers have long held that the immigration reform measures advocated by Democrats were back-door paths to amnesty. That has never been true in the past, and it is not true for the most recent proposals put forth by the Obama administration and a bipartisan committee of senators. Nevertheless, the Fox Nationalists are engaging in their trademark brand of hysterical panic-mongering to incite fear among their gullible readers.

Fox Nation

The claim featured here that “Obama’s New Immigration Rules Would Have Spared 9/11 Hijackers” is re-posted from the “Moonie” Washington Times. The implications of this assertion would be troubling but for the fact that it is completely false. There is nothing in Obama’s proposal that would have had any affect on the immigration status of the 9/11 plotters for one simple reason: None of them had entered the United States illegally.

That’s right. Every single one of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists came to America on legal visas. The only point at which any of them might have been affected would be via an enhanced tracking procedure to identify visitors who overstay their visa, which only applied to perhaps three of them. So since the proposed immigration rules were never designed to address legal immigration, it is absurd to assert that they would have “spared” anybody. By the same logic you could say that laws against littering or jaywalking “spared” the terrorists, because nothing in those laws would have prevented the hijackings either.

The Fox Nationalists are making an argument that is as nonsensical as accusing Ronald Reagan of aiding Al Qaeda because he once fired a bunch of air traffic controllers. It appears that Fox is graduating from merely lying about everything to inventing surreal theories that seem to be hallucinogenically inspired.

Glenn Beck Calls Obama The Worst Thing He Can Think Of: ‘A Girl’

Posted by on February 5, 2013 at 12:04 pm. NO Comments :

Cover the children’s eyes and carefully consider whether you want to read further because what follows is not for sensitive readers. Glenn Beck, that macho icon manliness, has been driven to distraction by President Obama’s exhibition of icky feminine traits. Something Beck himself would never do.

Glenn Beck

During the Superbowl interview of the President, Scott Pelley asked him if he would allow his hypothetical sons to play football in light of recent news about the dangers from concussions which can lead to severe mental illness, dementia and death. Obama thoughtfully responded that he “would have to think about it.”

Apparently Beck would not need to think about it at all. He would gleefully encourage his sons to participate in an activity that has been known to cause serious injuries. Why would he need to give any thought to that? In fact, Beck was so offended by the President’s response that he played it on his little Internet blog and, the whole time Obama spoke, Beck kept repeating “He’s a girl…He’s a girl…”

One thing we can ascertain without doubt from observing his behavior is that Beck is a boy – an immature, ignorant, petulant, emotionally stunted, bitter, little boy, who thinks he can “revoke” Obama’s “man card.”

What’s worse is that Beck, in his haste to repudiate Obama’s thoughtfulness, has revealed his innate disrespect for women. In searching for the appropriate insult with which to bash the President, Beck can only come up with one that he repeats in a manic display of childishness: “You’re a girl. You’re a full-fledged woman.” Beck fervently believes that calling Obama a girl is the most damning epithet he can hurl. What could be worse, in his cartoon brain, than being compared to a young woman?

This isn’t the first time Beck has exposed his overt misogyny in this manner. When Jimmy Fallon’s TV house band, The Roots, played Fishbone’s “Lyin Ass Bitch” as Michelle Bachmann was introduced, Beck demanded that Fallon fire the band, but that he wouldn’t because he is – you guessed it – a girl.

You see, in Beck’s mind, only real men are capable of making difficult personnel decisions. Likewise, only real men understand that worrying about the welfare of your children is the mark of a sissy. And pretty much anything that stirs Beck’s ire is sufficient cause to castigate someone with aspersions to womanliness – the most horrible state of being that Beck can imagine. So horrible that I’m sure the very thought of it makes him cry.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Obama’s Imaginary Bulldozer Rolls Over Saint Reagan

Posted by on January 31, 2013 at 2:10 pm. 4 Comments :

The Fox Nationalists are working overtime to scare up horror stories about FrankenObama and his dastardly schemes. The latest episode features President Obama plotting to erase the memory of Ronald Reagan from the history of all mankind. As might be expected, they are lying.

Fox Nation

In order to facilitate this nonsense. Fox scoured the InterTubes to find a posting at the “Moonie” Washington Times by a reader. He was not a part of the newspaper’s editorial staff whose credibility is already in tatters. He was merely a member of the community who posted an entirely speculative comment.

The allegation that Obama was planning to bulldoze Reagan’s childhood home to make way for his presidential library is false on many levels. First of all, the apartment building in question was not a significant place in Reagan’s early life. He lived there for less than a year when he was four years old. The city’s Landmark Commission had ruled it not to be of any historical value. Secondly, the building is being razed by the University of Chicago’s medical school to expand their facilities, not anyone associated with Obama. Thirdly, Obama could not possibly have ordered the demolition on behalf of his library because he has not even decided where to build it. Certainly Chicago is on the short list, but so is Hawaii.

None of this matters, however, to Fox Nation because the phony perception of Obama trampling the memory of Reagan was just too good to pass up – or to fact check.

Fox News: The Whiniest ‘News’ Network Ever

Posted by on January 29, 2013 at 11:56 am. 2 Comments :

Earlier this week President Obama correctly noted that the penchant Fox News has for punishing Republicans who dare to work cooperatively with Democrats has the effect of discouraging Republicans from such cooperation. That rather modest observation has sent Fox News into a tizzy that all but validates the President’s point. They are simply incapable of processing anything this president says in a rational manner. In this case, all he said was this:

“One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates. If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.”

Fox News/Nation

That fired up the outrage machine at Fox. Fox Nation declared it to be a threat. Steve Doocy cast it as an attack on the First Amendment. Of course, any reasonable reading of it would find nothing approaching either of those wild overreactions. A threats implies consequences which were never articulated by the President. Nor was the First Amendment infringed upon because the free speech rights of Fox were never in any danger.

Doocy also lamented that Obama has some “scared Republicans in his camp.” By characterizing Republicans who have found some common ground with the President as “scared,” Doocy has also validated the President’s point that Fox punishes such agreement. In Fox’s world compromising with Democrats to move the country forward is evidence of cowardice. That sort of derision is exactly what Obama was referring to.

And it gets worse. Fox’s Peter Johnson, Jr. visited his kiddie pals at Fox & Friends to say that the First Amendment is now “seriously in doubt.” He interpreted Obama’s remarks to mean that the President regards anyone who disagrees with him as “an enemy of the state.” Where does he get this stuff? Johnson was so apoplectic about Obama expressing his opinion (which is also permitted by the First Amendment) that he wedded Fox News to the very concept of freedom saying “Without a free Fox, there is not a free America” Apparently, therefore, there was not a free America prior to 1996; there was not a free America during the entire Reagan Administration.

On the Fox News web site, fake Democrat Kirsten Powers wrote a scathing editorial bashing Obama as waging a war of terror on Fox News. She complained that “President Obama was back to his grousing about the one television news outlet in America that won’t fall in line and treat him as emperor.” Powers has gulped down massive quantities of the Fox Kool-Aid. But she is representative of the so-called Democrats that appear on Fox only to criticize other Democrats. The Fox version of fairness and balance is when Republicans and Democrats hate Democrats equally.

Ironically, the claim that the President makes about Republicans being vulnerable to Fox’s criticisms is one that Fox makes about itself. They consider themselves the last stand against the socialism they imagine is emanating from the White House. As Johnson said, they regard themselves as “the bulwark of our democracy.” Fox’s CEO Roger Ailes once assured Glenn Beck that he would have a free hand because “I see this as the Alamo. If I just had somebody who was willing to sit on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired, we’d be fine.”

Fox freely admits that their intent is have an impact on government. They actually boast about the influence they have over representatives in Washington. Then, when the President notes that that is occurring, they explode with indignation over his alleged assault on freedom. It’s a cognitive disconnect that could span the Grand Canyon.

Most of all, it is whining of the highest order. No network bitches more about how they are perceived than Fox News. They spend innumerable hours complaining about their treatment by politicians, other pundits, and the whole of what they call the “mainstream media.” Sean Hannity has devoted whole programs to it. Fox & Friends denounces every media analyst as corrupt or even crazy. Bill O’Reilly has made the destruction of these scoundrels his life’s ambition, saying…

“[T]here is a huge problem in this country and I’m going to attack that problem. I’m going to attack it. These people aren’t getting away with this. I’m going to go right where they live. Every corrupt media person in this country is on notice, right now. I’m coming after you…I’m going to hunt you down […] if I could strangle these people and not go to hell and get executed…I would.”

Setting aside O’Reilly’s insane vigilantism, the thing that Fox fails to understand is that the First Amendment applies to everyone, including the President. Fox seems to think that free speech is a one-way street and that if they express their brazenly biased views, anyone who who disagrees with them is trampling on their Constitutional rights. It’s a perspective that reeks of the censorship they pretend to be disturbed by.

Obama Calls Out Fox News For Punishing Republicans When They Work With Democrats

Posted by on January 27, 2013 at 10:42 am. 15 Comments :

President Obama just sat down for a wide-ranging interview with The New Republic. In the course of the discussion he articulated what is a long-standing problem for Republican politicians that prevents them from engaging in reasonable legislative compromises. The President said…

Fox News

“One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates. If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.”

That is an astute observation. Many Republicans live in fear of being criticized in the conservative media. They regard people like Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh as Godfathers whose rings must be kissed. And divergence from the doctrine prescribed by the most extreme elements of the far-right can land them in primary trouble with Tea Partiers. The President also recognized that dilemma:

“The House Republican majority is made up mostly of members who are in sharply gerrymandered districts that are very safely Republican and may not feel compelled to pay attention to broad-based public opinion, because what they’re really concerned about is the opinions of their specific Republican constituencies.”

The result of having to cater to perpetually outraged absolutists on the right is that GOP attention whores will do or say anything that gets them more airtime. And the media is all too happy to accommodate them. Obama addressed that journalistic failing as well.

“Nobody gets on TV saying, ‘I agree with my colleague from the other party.’ People get on TV for calling each other names and saying the most outlandish things.”

That’s a theory that has been proven many times over by folks like Glenn Beck, Allen West, Donald Trump, and a menagerie of other bombastic loudmouths.

The interview is well worth reading in its entirety, however, the observations about the press and anxiety-driven Republicans are a refreshing blast of realistic insight. It is important for these truths to be articulated by the President. Now it remains to be seen if Obama will apply that insight to his actions when dealing with those in the media and the Republican Party who engage in kneejerk opposition to anything proposed by the White House or Democrats in congress. Because, as the President noted in the interview…

“Until Republicans feel that there’s a real price to pay for them just saying no and being obstructionist, you’ll probably see at least a number of them arguing that we should keep on doing it.”

Exactly! Make them pay the price. And the price is the respect and support of the American people who are sick and tired of the games played by Washington’s opportunists.

Questions Martin Luther King Might Have Asked Obama On Inauguration Day

Posted by on January 21, 2013 at 9:30 am. 3 Comments :

Martin Luther King, 1967:

Martin Luther King

“The movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society.

We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, Who owns the oil? You begin to ask the question, Who owns the iron ore? You begin to ask the question, Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water? These are questions that must be asked.”

President Barack Obama, 2013:

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it […] Our journey is not complete…”

Has Obama Shunned Fox News At His Press Conferences?

Posted by on January 19, 2013 at 9:32 pm. 8 Comments :

Fox NewsA study out of the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs ranked the number of times various news outlets were called on by President Obama in a press conference. The results have stirred some controversy with regard to whether certain outlets were favored, or disfavored, by the President.

The University’s Smart Politics blog revealed their own prejudicial assessment in a headline that declared “FOX Still Shunned at Obama Press Conferences.” There is much to ponder in that headline. For instance, the characterization of Fox being shunned “still” made no sense because they never bothered to establish that Fox had been shunned previously. But even worse, the overall assertion that Fox was shunned is not borne out by the study’s results.

Fox earned a ninth place showing by having been called on for questions fourteen times. That is only two fewer nods than CNN and the New York Times received. And if Fox can be described as having been shunned, then the Washington Post, USA Today, and NPR were victims of blatant and deliberate neglect since they came in even lower than Fox at tenth, eleventh, and thirteenth.

Nevertheless, Fox seems to be the only news outlet that is complaining about their treatment by the President. They devoted a segment of their Fox News Watch program to whining that they aren’t getting enough attention, poor things. Host Jon Scott started the bitch session by crying “Why does the president not like to call on us?” Jumping in without being recognized was Fox’s fake Democrat Kirsten Powers who shot back “Because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed. When Ed Henry asks questions to Jay Carney, inevitably Jay Carney ends up looking stupid because he doesn’t know how to answer the question. He’s used to pushing people around.” And she’s supposed to be the voice of the left on Fox’s fair and balanced roster.

With friends like Kirsten Powers who needs enemas? And that is a perfect illustration of why Obama ought to start shunning Fox News. It has never been a credible journalistic operation. It is an unabashed agent of the Republican Party whose only purpose is to bash the President and support the right-wing agenda.

While the study’s results show that Fox was treated no worse than several other prominent news outlets, the record of overt bias exhibited by Fox should excuse the administration if it decides to banish Fox altogether from the White House press room. They are no more deserving of press credentials than the Sasquatch Gazette or the Journal of the American Astrological Society.