[Reprise] The REAL Job Creators: Share This Infographic To Undo GOP Fallacy

Posted by Mark NC on November 17, 2012 at 11:18 am. 2 Comments :

With the presidential election behind us, the public discourse turns once again to more substantive matters, first of which is the fearful prospect of the so-called “fiscal cliff.” Setting aside the fact that the cliff itself is a figment of media imagination, it is nevertheless necessary for congress to address tax policy.

As the debate heats up in advance of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, conservatives are trotting out their tired rhetoric about the risk of allowing tax cuts for the rich to expire and the allegedly detrimental impact it would have on what they call job creators. However, they are deliberately distorting facts in order to benefit their wealthy patrons. Last year I published an analysis of the right-wing effort to confuse the issue along with an infographic that laid out the case for who the real job creators are. This seems like a good time to re-publish it and direct credit for creating jobs to those who actually deserve it.

Occupy Messaging: Who Are The Real Job Creators?

December 13, 2011

For too long now, right-wing propagandists like Frank Luntz have been manipulating language to distort the real issues that impact so many lives of American citizens. They engage in dishonest wordcraft that disguises their true meaning in order to shape public opinion and deceive voters. It’s time to counter that rhetorical offensive by restoring definitions that actually reflect reality.

One of the most recent and insidious examples of this practice is the conservative effort to replace references to “the rich” with the phrase “job creators.” It is of no interest to these hacks that no evidence exists to validate the claim. In fact, NPR’s congressional reporter, Tamara Keith, asked members of congress and representatives of conservative business groups to refer her to business people who could substantiate the assertion that tax cuts for the wealthy would induce them to increase hiring. They were unable to come up with a single name or example to affirm their half-baked theory. However, Keith found several examples of her own that utterly refuted it. This caused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to note that “Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They are impossible to find and don’t exist.”

The agenda that Republicans have adopted has literally no popular constituency. Every poll taken on the subject reveals that majorities of Americans (including majorities of Republicans) favor increasing taxes on the rich. Even polls of the rich show that they believe that they are not presently sharing the sacrifice required to restore the nation’s economic health. An independent group of Patriotic Millionaires released a video beseeching Congress to raise their taxes.

So the next time you hear some GOP flunky whining about the plight of the rich whose only desire is to be unburdened from the shackles of what are the lowest taxes in decades, remember that they have not, and cannot, certify any claim that lower taxes will spur hiring. In fact, the evidence is all to the contrary. And whenever possible, we need to recapture the phrase “job creators” and use it in a manner that is more in line with reality. Here is a handy, shareable chart that illustrates who the real job creators are:

(click to view larger)
Job Creators

Some conservatives are beginning to admit that lavishing benefits on those who are already wealthy does nothing to stimulate the economy. Bill Kristol recently said that “It won’t kill the country if Republicans raise taxes a little bit on millionaires.” Ben Stein, with some apparent reluctance, told Gretchen Carlson that “With all due respect to Fox…” “We’re going to have to raise taxes on very, very rich people.”

This is the beginning of the wall crumbling down. The right knows that they cannot continue to be seen as only fighting for the welfare of the rich. They know that they have already lost this argument and that now it is only a matter of finding a way to concede without losing face (or Tea Party support).

FLASHBACK: Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party

Posted by Mark NC on November 10, 2012 at 3:15 pm. 5 Comments :

With the 2012 presidential election behind us, there has been a flurry of post-election analysis by observers from all across the political spectrum. One theme that I have seen coming from both the left and right is the notion that Fox News has not been particularly helpful to the Republican Party, despite that being their primary mission. This criticism reminded me of an article I published three years ago titled “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” So I went back and read it, and to my surprise, it seems just as relevant to today’s political landscape as it did then. In fact, it’s rather frightening (and disappointing) that so little has changed. That is, unless your a Democrat, because the harm that Fox is causing to the GOP is a gift to the Democrats.

So on this lazy Saturday afternoon I thought I would reprise this article for your enjoyment. I reprint it here without a single modification.

[Purchase FreakShow stickers at Crass Commerce]

The case was made long ago that Fox News is a blight on the media map. It is bad for journalism. It is bad for Democracy. It is bad for America. A so-called “news” network that repeatedly misinforms, even deliberately disinforms, its audience is failing any test of public service embodied by an ethical press.

I, personally, have made the case for an embargo of Fox News by Democrats and progressives (see Starve the Beast: Part I, Part II, Part III), documenting via studied analysis that there is no affirmative value to appearing on Fox News – a network that has established itself as overtly hostile to the Democratic message and its messengers.

However, there is another side to this that has not been addressed previously. Republicans might be well advised to avoid Fox News as well. There is a case to be made that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party. In fact, it may be the worst thing to happen to Republicans in decades. That may seem counter-intuitive when discussing Fox News, the acknowledged public relations division of the Republican Party. Fox has populated its air with right-wing mouthpieces and brazenly partisan advocates for a conservative Republican agenda. They read GOP press releases on the air verbatim as if they were the product of original research. They provide a forum where Republican politicians and pundits can peddle their views unchallenged. So how is this harmful to Republicans?

If all we were witnessing was the emergence of a mainstream conservative network that aspired to advance Republican themes and policies, there would not be much of note here. Most of the conventional media was already center-right before there was a Fox News. But Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). So while most Americans have never heard of actual Republican party bosses like House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, posers like Joe the Plumber and Carrie Prejean have become household names.

Fox News has descended into depths heretofore reserved for fringe characters. They are openly promoting the wackos who believe that President Obama is ineligible to hold office because he isn’t a U.S. citizen. They feature commentaries by secessionists and even those calling for an overthrow of the government and the Constitution. This explains how folks like Ralph Peters, a retired military officer who said that the Taliban captors of a U.S. Soldier would be saving us a lot of trouble and expense if they would just kill him, earn airtime on Fox. Peters previously told Fox News that he favors military strikes against media targets. This explains how Glenn Beck can agree with a guest that it would be a good thing if America were attacked again by Osama bin Laden. And don’t even get me started on Victoria Jackson, who has joined an ever-lengthening line of psycho-Chicken Littles who compare the President to Hitler.

Good Advice:
“If crazy ideologues have infiltrated the news business, we need to know about it.”
~ Bill O’Reilly, 7/16/09

The list of loonies extends to politicians like Michele Bachmann, entertainers like Ted Nugent, and of course, the talk show pundits like Rush Limbaugh, whose maniacal rantings are elevated by Fox into their version of political dialogue. It’s a dialogue that is consumed with ACORN conspiracies and Manchurian presidents. The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum.

As a result, the Fox News audience is being dumbed down by a parade of paranoid know-nothings. This strategy appears to be successful for Fox in that it has attracted a loyal viewership that is eager to have their twisted preconceptions affirmed. The conflict-infused fare in which Fox specializes is a ratings juggernaut – just like any good fiction. However, this perceived popularity is having an inordinate impact on the GOP platform. By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

With the Fox network unabashedly promoting the most ridiculous rumors, myths, and nightmares of the rightist fringe, moderate and independent Americans will grow ever more suspicious of the Fox/GOP agenda. Most Americans do not believe that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist; or that FEMA is constructing concentration camps; or that we are on a march toward socialism, communism, fascism, or whatever the right is peddling this week. Most Americans do not believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a reptilian alien, or the anti-Christ. In short, most Americans think that the loopy yarns spun by Fox News are fables told by madmen – and believed by even madder men and women who wallow in their doomsday utopia.

Fox News is fond of boasting about their ratings dominance. It is a daily occurrence and the structural core of their argument that they reflect the mood of America. The GOP has bought this argument in its entirety. So it is important to note here that success in the Nielsen ratings has no correlation to public opinion polling. The ratings only measure the program choices of Nielsen’s survey participants. That is a subset of the population at large, and not a particularly representative one. It is a sample focused on consumers, not voters. And its respondents are just those willing to have their TV viewing monitored 24 hours a day, which skews the sample in favor of people who aren’t creeped out by that. What’s more, viewing choices are not necessarily an endorsement of the opinions presented in the program. There are many reasons people choose to watch TV shows, the most frequent being its entertainment value. So any attempt to tie ratings to partisan politics is a foolish exercise that demonstrates a grievous misunderstanding of the business of television.

As for what constitutes success in the television marketplace, due to the broad diversification of available programming, it doesn’t take much to be heralded as a hit. A mere 3 share (3% of people watching TV) will land you in the top 10. For cable news the bar is set even lower. In fact, the top rated show on the top rated cable news network (The O’Reilly Factor) only gets about 3 million viewers. That’s less than 1% of the American population. It’s also less than World Wrestling Entertainment, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the CBS Evening News (the lowest rated broadcast network news program). By contrast, America’s Got Talent is seen by 12 million viewers – four times O’Reilly’s audience.

Numbers this low ought not to inspire much excitement from political operatives. Nevertheless, Republicans are riding the coattails of Fox News as if it were representative of a booming conservative mandate in the electorate. They are embracing Fox’s most delusional eccentrics. This is leading to the promotion of similar eccentrics within the party. Which brings us the absurd spectacle of the network’s nuts interviewing the party’s pinheads.

The inevitable result of this system of rewarding those farthest from reality is the creation of a constituency of crackpots. It is an endorsement of the philosophy brewed by the Tea Baggers that espouses racism, tyranny, and armed revolt. It is enabling a frightening corps of openly militant adversaries of democracy, free speech, and Constitutional rule. It is the sort of environment that produced the murders of Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen Johns.

This is a textbook example of how the extreme rises to the top. It is also fundamentally contrary to the interests of the Republican Party. The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds. It seems like such a waste after all of the effort and expense that Fox put into building a pseudo-journalistic enterprise with the goal of confounding viewers with false news-like theatrics.

Make no mistake, Fox News is still managed by hard core party patrons. And I’m not referring just to opinion-driven commentators like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, although they are bad enough. No, I am talking about executives and editors like CEO, Roger Ailes, former Nixon and Bush media consultant. I’m talking about Washington Managing Editor and VP, Bill Sammon, an avid right-wing alum of the Washington “Moonie” Times. I’m talking about Business News Chief and VP, Neil Cavuto, antagonistic interrupter extraordinaire. And let us not forget the head hype-master, Rupert Murdoch, whose UK operations were just discovered to have been unlawfully wiretapping celebrities, politicians, and even members of the Royal Family. Augmenting that executive roster are the GOP regulars who are straight out of the just retired Republican White House: Karl Rove, Dana Perino, John Bolton, Dan Senor, and Linda Chavez. And then there are the Fox News clowns…er…“contributors” like Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Bernie Goldberg, Michele Malkin, and on and on. If nothing else, Fox is a full-employment program for rightist weasels (and they also operate the Conservative Book Promotion Club).

The mission of Fox News from its inception was to be more than just a voice of opposition to Democrats. It was to utterly crush the left end of the political spectrum leaving only a teetering right wing with no counter balance. Yet, despite the torrid embrace between Republicans and Fox News, it is apparent that Fox is the source of a sort of friendly fire that is decimating the GOP by exalting its most outlandish and unpopular players. And since Republicans have not been particularly popular anyway lately, the anchor being thrown to them by Fox can’t be all that helpful – – – Except to Democrats.

The more things change, the more they get even crazier than they were before.

Romney, Nugent, Trump, Et Al: A News Corpse Retrospective Of The 2012 Campaign In Words And Pictures

Posted by Mark NC on November 7, 2012 at 3:39 pm. 2 Comments :

I can’t remember an election season that I was ever so glad was over. The magnitude of malice and mentally defective diatribes was monumental. And that was just from Donald Trump.

In case you missed it, Trump was so apoplectic after the election was called for President Obama, he vented on vehemently on Twitter. The coward has since deleted those but the evidence remains:

Trump: “He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!”

Except that President Obama won the popular vote by two million votes, as well as an electoral vote landslide (303-206. 332 if Florida goes to Obama where he is presently leading) But it isn’t bad enough that Trump’s facts are wrong, his inciting a revolution because he doesn’t like the results of a democratic election is disgusting, and anti-American. What’s more, he doesn’t grasp that if there were a revolution, it is likely that he would be among the first against the wall.

Then there’s Ted Nugent, the Motor City Douchebag, who went on a Twitter-spree that affirms the shaky nature of his psychological condition. He’s “crying tears of blood” for an America filled with “subhuman varmints” that “just voted for economic & spiritual suicide.”

Nugent: Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters hav a president to destroy America

Nugent has boarded the Histrionic Express, which already boasts Trump, Glenn Beck, Clint Eastwood, John Sununu, and other like-mindless zombies as passengers. They are hurtling toward an obliviousness that is nurtured by the Fox News bubble-sphere that only reports what they think their politically comatose audience can withstand.

It’s a methodology that results in the Republican Party bowing to its Tea Party masters so that seats once regarded as certain are lost. In 2010, the GOP lost an opportunity to take over the senate, but for weak tea candidates like Christine O’Donnell (DE), Joe Miller (AK), Ken Buck (CO), Linda McMahon (CT), Carly Fiorina (CA), Sharron Angle (NV), and Carl Paladino (NY). This year the same thing occurred with losers in races the GOP could have won: Richard Mourdock (IN), Todd Akin (MO), Linda McMahon (CT), Scott Brown (MA), and Josh Mandel (OH). And the House saw its share of defeats as well: David Rivera (FL), Joe Walsh (IL), Chip Cravaack (MN), Frank Guinta (NH), Denny Rehberg (MT), and my personal favorite loser, Allen West (FL). Michele Bachmann held on by a slivery 500 votes.

What follows are a few of my favorite political graphics of the season. I hope you enjoyed this adventure and my accompanying illustrations. It isn’t over. There is still much to done and the rightist media led by Fox News will certainly be redoubling their efforts to deceive the nation’s voters. So we must stay alert and engaged – starting now.

Glenn Beck: If America Votes To Reelect Obama Then “We Have To Be Destroyed”

Posted by Mark NC on November 6, 2012 at 2:01 pm. 11 Comments :

This has been an interminably long, divisive, and vitriolic campaign. Romney’s camp complains that he was accused of murdering the wife of a former employee of a company that Bain Capital drove into bankruptcy. President Obama has been charged with intentionally allowing an ambassador to be murdered as he watched. Romney’s campaign co-chair, John Sununu, declared that “This country can’t be saved unless we get rid of this president.” Ted Nugent came just shy of threatening to assassinate Obama, earning a visit from the Secret Service. And Americans across the country had to suffer through Meat Loaf butchering the national anthem.

Yes, it’s been a brutally difficult time for the country, but leave it to Glenn Beck to put the poisoned cherry on top of a stomach-churning sundae:

Transcript:

If you look at history through a biblical world view, the last step before a nation is completely destroyed is they drive the righteous from among them. If this isn’t a sign of a group of people that will drive the righteous from among them, and that’s the last step before God’s wrath comes, I fear for our country and it is – it cannot be overstated, it cannot be called paranoid … If you are a God?fearing person, hear me. Last call, America. Last call. Because the righteous will be driven from among them.

They are nasty, divisive and, I’m sorry, but there is no way to describe that quote from Valerie Jarrett other than evil. Warning: Saul Alinsky is just the beginning of these people.

But I believe in the American people. I believe that we are not too far gone. I believe that people can watch and see the difference. They can feel the difference. When you watch Barack Obama, you can just see he is angry. When you watch Mitt Romney, you can see he is not. We are not an angry nation. We don’t listen to demagogues like that. It doesn’t work. No matter how much power he has amassed, no matter how many friends in the media he has, Americans know. And if they reject it this time, if they’re so dead inside – that’s a possibility – if they’re so dead inside that they can no longer see the difference between good and evil, we have to be destroyed because we will be a remarkable evil on this planet.

Beck’s trademarked dementia has once again proven to be a show-stopper. His assertion that an Obama victory somehow translates into “drive[ing] the righteous from among” us, makes no sense whatsoever. Why wouldn’t the “righteous” stick around and continue to advocate for their agenda? Where does Beck think they are being driven to? Canada? Israel?

If God’s wrath is coming, what form will it take? Perhaps a hurricane in our most populous region? Oh wait, that already happened even before the election and many right-wingers claim that it helped Obama. Was that God’s intention? Could Beck’s God have deliberately assisted Obama? Remember, Beck’s God is also Romney’s god – Mormon. Does Romney share this Apocalyptic view?

Beck insists that he cannot be called paranoid, even as he sounds the alarm that it is “last call” for America. No, that’s not paranoid. And it isn’t as if he has signaled the end times before. Oh yeah, he has done that – repeatedly heralding the arrival of the “Perfect Storm.”

Beck disingenuously says that he “believes in the American people,” while leaving open the possibility that we are “dead inside” and “can no longer see the difference between good and evil.” It is that inner death that would define us as “a remarkable evil on this planet,” and condemn us to destruction.

There is one thing for which we can all be grateful on this election day: Glenn Beck cannot be elected to any divine post from which he could carry out his dementia.

UPDATE: Obama Wins! So it’s official. We are dead inside and have to be destroyed. Can it wait until after breakfast? And perhaps we should start with Beck and his followers. They are probably in more of a hurry to get to Heaven anyway (although they may be woefully disappointed when they reach their destination).

UPDATE II: Beck is now advising his disciples to buy farmland and guns. Next he’ll be leading them to a commune in Guyana (Becktown?) and making them Kool-Aid.

SUCK IT MITT: Voting IS The Best Revenge

Posted by Mark NC on November 4, 2012 at 10:09 am. 14 Comments :

In yet another example of the juvenile mental capacity of Mitt Romney, he is once again obsessing over a single word extracted from a speech by President Obama. This time Romney is flabbergasted that Obama would encourage supporters to vote by advising them to eschew negative outbursts and direct that energy to getting themselves and others to the polls.

The now familiar refrain is “Don’t boo, vote,” to which he added “Voting is the best revenge.” Romney appears to be unable to comprehend the meaning of that statement. He thinks it has something to do with actual vengeance and retaliation. In fact, it is a paraphrasing of the well-known aphorism “The best revenge is living well,” that first appeared in the Hebrew scripture, the Talmud, over two thousand years ago. It’s meaning is unmistakably positive in that it advocates a rejection of vengeful behavior in favor of a more productive focus on improving one’s own lot in life.

Nevertheless, Romney latched onto these remarks like a frenzied piranha. He demonstrated his inability to employ rational reasoning skills and his preference for childish tantrums and name-calling. He literally escalated his rhetoric to another attack on Obama’s patriotism by misquoting the President and then countering the misquote saying, “Vote for revenge? Let me tell you what I’d like to tell you: Vote for love of country.” So Romney thinks that Obama and his supporters (at least half of the population) don’t love their country. That’s not really a surprising position for Romney who also said that half the nation are moochers that it’s not his job to care about.

The Romney campaign has made it their mission to mangle the President’s words throughout this election cycle. It is a strategy that he resorts to because he is unable to make a positive argument for his candidacy. Here are some examples of the low-brow context mangling that Romney has made the centerpiece of his campaign:

“You didn’t build that.” This is a deliberate misquoting of Obama who was actually referring to roads and bridges, not the private businesses that Romney has tried to imply were the subject of the remarks.

“The private sector is doing fine.” This is another misrepresentation where Obama was correctly making a relative comparison of the private sector, which has grown over the past three years, to the public sector, which has been shrinking.

“We tried our plan and it worked.” Here Romney deliberately asserted that Obama was referencing his own record and implying that it had achieved complete success. In fact, Obama has consistently said that more needs to be done and this comment was plainly referencing the success of the Clinton era policies as opposed to the failure of the GOP’s years under Bush’s policies.

“[Obama] removed the requirement of work from welfare.” Romney made this accusation that is directly refuted by the facts. What Obama did was to permit waivers for states that could affirm their progress in moving people from welfare to work, and allowing them flexibility to enhance their programs. It’s a modification that Romney himself had requested when he was governor of Massachusetts.

“I actually believe in redistribution.” This was purposefully clipped from a much longer statement wherein Obama was praising entrepreneurs and the free market, while also seeking to improve the parts of government that provide services like schools, roads, etc.

Of course, Fox News has been instrumental in helping Romney to advance these phony messages. And that is true in this most recent case as well. The “revenge” scandal has been plastered all over Fox News and its web sites. They have no problem with these infantile tactics because it fits so perfectly with the stunted maturity level of their remedial audience.

For the record, Obama is in good company paraphrasing the “best revenge” meme. Here are some others who have found it to be a useful vehicle for expressing a positive course of action:

The Talmud: The best revenge is living well.
Benazir Bhutto: Democracy is the best revenge.
Frank Sinatra: The best revenge is massive success.
Ivana Trump: Looking good is the best revenge.
Marcus Aurelius: The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

That last one is particularly appropriate. Obama would do well to heed that advice and be as unlike Mitt Romney as possible. And here is a handy, shareable version of this information to disseminate to your friends and family to inspire them to vote on Tuesday:

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post Prints Racist, Pro-Assassination Cartoon – Again

Posted by Mark NC on November 3, 2012 at 11:37 am. 9 Comments :

OK, so the New York Post is a puerile, dishonest, sensationalist rag. But how on earth could anyone have approved this cartoon for publication?

You might think that a cartoon depicting President Obama as the bug-eyed prey fleeing fearfully from a stallion-mounted Romney, who is armed to the teeth, would have given a major metropolitan newspaper editor pause. You would be wrong, particularly if the newspaper is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an ultra-conservative propagandist who will do anything to manipulate an election.

The racist overtones of that cartoon should have been noticeable to anyone who even glanced at it. It practically shouts recollections of slave owners chasing runaway slaves. And even setting aside that repulsive message, the cartoon presents a wholly unsavory theme of violence directed the President.

What could have possessed the editors of the New York Post to publish this offensive garbage? And why hasn’t it stirred more of reaction from the public? If this were an isolated incident it would be bad enough, but three years ago a similarly themed cartoon made it into the pages of the Post:

And by the way, it was the same cartoonist, Sean Delonas, who did both of these racist, pro-assassination, pictorial diatribes. It is just inconceivable that this sort of thing is considered appropriate and that a paper like the Post can get away with it. There ought to be consequences and, hopefully, the people of New York will impose them.

Fox & Friends Bashes NBC’s Sandy Telethon: Is It A Hurricane Benefit Or A Concert For Obama?

Posted by Mark NC on November 2, 2012 at 3:21 pm. 9 Comments :

The compassionate cast of petulant pundits on Fox & Friends bashed the efforts by NBC and a collection of celebrities to raise money to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy. Their complaint is that the program might have a positive effect on the campaign of President Obama. And to prevent any possibility of that, Fox thinks the benefit should be called off or delayed.

Great idea. Let’s just forget about the millions of people struggling to provide for their families without power or clothes or food or homes. They can wait another week or two until we’re certain that the President won’t get any ancillary afterglow from the charity program. After all, what’s more important? Taking care of people whose lives have been turned upside down by a natural disaster, or placating heartless Republicans who are against helping people in the first place?

These weasels turn my stomach. And in case you thought it might just be limited to the imbeciles on one Fox News program, Fox also published a story saying much the same thing on their web site. That story quoted only a right-wing PR executive and a VP of the uber-conservative Media Research Center. No one from NBC or any artists representatives were allowed to comment. However, Fox did include comments from anonymous Tweeters who shamefully advocated boycotting the benefit. Seriously, they want to boycott a charity event for hurricane victims. What’s next? Picketing cancer survivors? Tripping blind people? And all of this unsympathetic bombast is being spewed prior to the event when none of these critics know what will take place, or who will participate.

Typical right-wing, knee-jerk opposition to any project that might help people. Brought to you by the same folks who opposed Social Security and Medicare, and now want to see those programs scrapped in favor of vouchers and private sector solutions so that businesses can profit from other peoples misery. Which, by the way, is precisely how Mitt Romney proposed to deal with disaster relief.

Succumbing To Desperation: Fox News’ Loony Last Days Of The Election

Posted by Mark NC on November 2, 2012 at 12:24 pm. 4 Comments :

As hard as it seems to believe after an interminably long and divisive campaign, election day is upon us in just four short days. And with momentum shifting toward President Obama, Fox News is pulling out all the stops to find something – anything – to smear the President and grease the skids for Oily Mitt Romney. But this is getting ridiculous…

These articles are bordering on Dadaist absurdity in their wild flailing about for subjects of attack. If anything, this only makes Fox look more desperate and childish than they usually do.

For Fox to note that there are New Yorkers who are still struggling with the devastation of Superstorm Sandy is not exactly news. Every projection of the impact of the storm prior to its arrival made it clear that there was going to be severe damage and that recovery would take weeks, if not months. But to ask “Where’s Obama,” as if he should be delivering cans of soup from the back of a van is ludicrous. The truth is that Obama’s federal response is managing a variety of agencies working on restoration of power, cleanup, rebuilding, and rescue and medical attention. On top of that, CNN reported that…

“The federal government shipped one million meals Thursday to New York, where National Guard troops were distributing them to people in need, [New York Governor Andrew] Cuomo told reporters.”

Obama has cut red tape to declare disaster status and accelerate aid. And he has been universally praised by the local authorities, including political adversaries like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Where’s Obama? Right where he should be – in charge and showing leadership.

The other daft article by Fox was a reporting of a column from the Daily Caller, a right-wing rag run by Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson. The headline snidely asks if Obama had a grade-point average of 2.6 while at Columbia University. But as if to refute their own brash slander, the second paragraph of the story says…

“The 2.6 grade can’t be confirmed, is contradicted by some evidence, and it doesn’t say anything about the courses, professors and associations Obama was immersed in during his two-year stay in Columbia.”

They why fu heck print it? This is the lengths that the right will go to tarnish the President on the eve of the election. It has nothing to with his record, his leadership, or his vision for the future. It reaches back twenty years to speculate about something that they admit they have no evidence of. However, if they are determined to bring up Obama’s academic history they could just mention that he graduated from Harvard Law Magna Cum Laud. That’s verifiable and a clear indication of his scholastic excellence. It’s interesting that Fox continues to be obsessed with Obama’s decades old school files but isn’t the least bit interested in Mitt Romney’s tax returns, which are far more relevant to the question of fitness to serve as president.

Fox News NewsBusters This sort of reporting brings Fox down to the level of the broadly ridiculed “challenge” by Donald Trump to ransom Obama’s academic records in exchange for five million dollars. The tone of Fox’s reporting just keeps getting sillier. That may be because they have handed off their editorial duties to the uber-conservative Media Research Center and their comically inept NewsBusters. Recently Fox stacked their op-ed page with content exclusively acquired from MRC/NewsBusters. Fox seems to have outsourced their opinion pages to one of the most partisan GOP flacks in the nation. The four articles featured were by Noel Sheppard, Tim Graham, Clay Waters, and Dan Gainor, all MRC/NewsBusters hacks.

This actually isn’t too surprising considering that Fox’s former chief anchor, Brit Hume, effusively credited MRC when he retired from the anchor desk saying…

“I want to say a word, however, of thanks to Brent and the team at the Media Research Center […] for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report, I don’t know what we would’ve done without them. It was a daily buffet of material to work from, and we certainly made tremendous use of it.”

Just four more days. Thank God. How much more preposterous do you think Fox can get in that brief window of opportunity? Will we see articles blaming Obama for extreme weather catastrophes? Will they charge him with murdering American ambassadors? Will they find his Kenyan passport in a shoebox along with love letters from Hugo Chavez? Don’t rule it out. Desperation causes strange and deranged behavior. And Fox is already exhibiting symptoms of Obama Dementia Disease (ODD).

Obama SAVED Lives In Benghazi: An Alternative To The Bogus Fox News Narrative

Posted by Mark NC on October 28, 2012 at 1:50 pm. 4 Comments :

What happened in Benghazi, Libya, was unarguably tragic. There is no excuse for the sort of violence that took place at an embassy outpost whose purpose is to promote peace and encourage international harmony. Those who lost their lives were sacrificed for a pointless expression of hostility that benefits no one.

Sadly, the tragedy has been compounded by conservative blowhards, led by Fox News, who can’t seem to resist their compulsion to politicize anything they think will tarnish the reputation of President Obama. Even though survivors of those killed have begged politicians and the media to refrain from such politicization…

Ambassador Chris Stevens’ father: “It would really be abhorrent to make this into a campaign issue.”
Navy SEAL Glen Doherty’s mother: “[Romney] shouldn’t make my son’s death part of his political agenda.”

…Fox News ignores them and persists with their flagrant exploitation. They have turned their network into a 24 hour Benghazi scandal sheet that trumpets rumors as fact and brazenly disrespects the victims and those endeavoring to find the truth. Their goal is to construct a scandal from scratch where none exists. Then they get pissy when the rest of the media demonstrates that they aren’t stupid enough to buy into Fox’s falsehoods.

The effort to create a false narrative around these events is well coordinated. Pundits and politicians have taken to referring to the affair as Benghazi-Gate, despite the fact that there is no remote connection between it and the corruption of Watergate. But even we look at just the allegations presented by Fox, many of which are pure conjecture without evidence, it is possible to build a scenario that is starkly different than the one Fox News is peddling.

The outrage at Fox centers around the allegation that the Obama administration knew of the imminent danger at the Benghazi compound and explicitly denied help, even after it was requested. That, Fox says, was an irresponsible abdication of duty and sealed the fate of the victims. But even accepting the premise, which is a stretch, it is just as likely that the Obama team did exactly the right thing and saved lives as a result. Here’s the alternative scenario:

There were hundreds, if not thousands, of protesters in Benghazi who were advancing on the compound. At least some of the protesters were armed with military style weapons (mortars, grenades, etc.). Those inside were protected by a small security contingent. Remember, embassy facilities are not army posts. They were never meant to be fortresses with soldiers in abundance and stockpiles of munitions. Their mission is to encourage diplomatic engagement with the local residents and assist traveling Americans.

When news of the attack got back to State Department security personnel there were likely to have been calls for assistance. But the active monitoring of the assault may have revealed that it was too dangerous to send others into the fray. They would have been outnumbered and overcome. There were reports that drones were flying over the scene and would have been able to relay this information with video demonstrating the foolishness of ordering more Americans into a chaotic situation that would likely have resulted in more fatalities.

This may be when two members of the security team, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, sought permission to leave the CIA safe house and attempt to help those at the embassy compound. When superiors, who were better informed of the nature of the risk, told them to stand down, they chose to disobey orders and go anyway. At the compound they were met with gunfire and worse. They were unable to save Ambassador Stevens, so they returned, under fire, to the CIA annex. In effect, they led the terrorists back to the CIA safe house that was previously secret. That endangered the lives of those at that location and it is where Woods and Doherty themselves were killed.

In this scenario it is clear that the correct decision was to stand down and wait until a sufficient force was deployable to fulfill their mission. The officers, and possibly administration officials in Washington, were right in their assessment and very likely saved lives. The outcome could have been much worse if troops were sent on what might have been a suicide mission without proper support and reinforcements. And while the intentions of Woods and Doherty may have been admirable and heroic, their disobedience may have cost them their own lives and the lives of others. There is a reason that officers, with a view of the bigger picture, are the ones who make command decisions. Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, summed it up saying that…

“There’s a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here. But the basic principle here … is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on.”

The not “knowing what’s going on” is key to this situation. Decisions had to be made instantaneously with a severe lack of hard data. Given what was known at the time, had the Air Force swooped in to randomly drop bombs on the scene they might have just killed dozens of rowdy protesters. It wasn’t until much later that any reports surfaced of physical assaults or fatalities. Indiscriminate bombing without solid intelligence that it was warranted could have irreparably damaged relations with the new Libyan nation and destroyed the goodwill of the people who were grateful for our help in toppling the dictator Gaddhafi. Proof of that goodwill came in subsequent days when tens of thousands of Libyans took to the streets to express their regrets for the loss of the American lives.

Much of the above scenario is conjecture, but no more so than what Fox News is broadcasting as fact. At least I acknowledge that the investigations into what occurred are ongoing and we don’t have all the facts yet. Fox pretends to know what happened based on speculation, and unreliable sources. What’s more, they weight their reporting in favor of their preconceived notions. They interview relatives of victims who are angry with the President, but have never invited the relatives quoted above to come on and give their opinions. That is repulsively disrespectful to the people who are actually suffering through this on a personal level.

Fox News doesn’t give a shit about the people who died in Benghazi. All Fox cares about is bashing Obama, and they will use and abuse anyone to that end – even dead American heroes. The narrative that they are pushing is wholly unsupported by reality. The narrative I’ve proposed here makes far more sense. If people are interested in jumping to conclusions, I believe they have a much better chance of being right if they adopt this scenario wherein the Obama administration saved lives by responding to an unfolding crisis in a responsible manner. And I challenge any of the liars at Fox to present a coherent argument that their bullshit is any more probable than my logical explanation.

Clint Eastwood’s Unpatriotic Ad For Mitt Romney

Posted by Mark NC on October 24, 2012 at 9:22 pm. 8 Comments :

What is it about desperate politicians who are afraid they are losing that makes them resort to ugly and counterproductive rhetorical assaults? In 2008 we saw Sarah Palin accuse Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” Now, in 2012, Mitt Romney’s surrogates have dispatched Clint Eastwood to up the ante.

The ad featuring Eastwood (video below) was produced by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads Super PAC, which is funded by millionaires who are ashamed of disclosing their identities. Super PACs themselves are unpatriotic in that they are a perverted distortion of the democratic principle of “one person, one vote.” When millionaires are allowed to anonymously aggregate unlimited sums of money you have something more like “one dollar, one vote.”

Eastwood’s performance in this ad is a big improvement over the one he gave at the Republican convention. Of course, he had a script for this. The problem is that the script contained this bit of foolishness: “Obama’s second term would be a rerun of the first and our country just couldn’t survive that.”

Precisely how weak does Eastwood (and his handlers at American Crossroads) think this country is? Does he really believe that America will dissolve into dust if Obama is reelected? Does he think that our enemies will subdue and enslave us? What dreadful fate awaits in the second term of Obama’s presidency that would cause us not to survive? That sounds like the kind of fear mongering that is more often associated with Apocalyptic prophets or Glenn Beck’s fans. And it is a starkly different message than the one he delivered in his famous halftime ad for Chrysler when he spoke about the difficulties are nation had endured:

“But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one. Because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one.”

Apparently Eastwood has lost that sense of optimism and now thinks that when we encounter tough times we will fold up like paper dolls and be swept away by a light breeze. Or maybe it just tells us something about the differences between a commercial trying to sell us a car and one trying to sell us a horror story about monsters from Kenya who hate freedom.

It is also curious why Eastwood thinks a rerun of Obama’s first term would be unsurvivable. Which part does he think would do us in? The part where Osama Bin Laden (and dozens of Al Qaeda leaders) was put to rest? The part where the war in Iraq was concluded? The part where the stock market doubled? The part where unemployment went from 10.1% to 7.8%? The part where a full-on depression was avoided and companies like Chrysler were rescued so they could hire actors like Eastwood to make commercials?

America survived a civil war, two world wars, a depression, presidential assassinations and corruption leading to resignation, and George W. Bush. If people like Eastwood and Rove and Romney are so pessimistic about America that they think it will not survive another four years of Obama, they have very little faith in the nation they profess to love and they should stop pretending they are patriots.

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