Rush Limbaugh’s Predictable Predictions

Posted by Mark NC on September 11, 2012 at 9:49 am. 6 Comments :

Yesterday talk radio’s king of drug-addled asininity, Rush Limbaugh, settled into his paranoid dementia to dispense his predictions of a future wherein democracy is carried out and President Obama retains his residency of the White House. Limbaugh has a well known disgust for democracy if its results are not to his liking. But yesterday he let loose with a dire forecast that must surely have rattled the marbles inside his followers dittoheads.

9/10/2012: “If Obama’s re-elected, it will happen. There’s no IF about this. And it’s gonna be ugly. It’s gonna be gut-wrenching, but it will happen. The country’s economy is going to collapse if Obama is re-elected.”

Uh oh. What ever will we do now? Limbaugh has divined the course of our destruction and there appears to be no way out other than casting our votes for Mitt Romney, a man who will not tell us what his plans are for the economy; will not release his tax returns; will not disclose his wealthy campaign bundlers; will not stick with the same position for more than a couple of hours; and has a record of destroying jobs while bankrupting companies and stashing his ill-gotten gains in foreign banks. Yeah, that’ll save us.

And, as we know, Limbaugh’s predictions are so accurate that we absolutely must heed his every word. We know that his vision of certain doom is looming over us because his prior prognostications have been so on target. Two days after Obama was elected in 2008, Limbaugh said…

11/6/2008: “The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen. Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama recession. Might turn into a depression. He hasn’t done anything yet but his ideas are killing the economy. His ideas are killing Wall Street.”

That was two days after the election. Obama was still two months from being inaugurated. And since then the stock market has died to the tune of more than doubling in value. The ideas that killed Wall Street worked so thoroughly that anyone who invested when Limbaugh made those remarks must feel like they’ve died and gone to heaven.

There is another prediction that Limbaugh made yesterday in the same rant. This one is more pointedly political but just as important to our nation’s well being going forward:

9/10/2012: “[Chris] Matthews was saying…if Obama wins it’s the end of conservatism. Nope. If Obama wins let me tell you what it’s the end of … the Republican Party.”

You promise? We can only hope and pray that you’re right about that one.

The Ten (Plus) Rankest Hypocrisies Of Mitt Romney And The Republican Party

Posted by Mark NC on September 10, 2012 at 9:03 am. 3 Comments :

A slightly abridged version of this article was published on Alternet

The Republican National Convention was a rare opportunity to peer into the soul of a party that has embraced an open aversion to the truth. It was a veritable festival of falsehoods, from Paul Ryan implying that a GM plant that had shut down before President Obama was inaugurated was somehow his fault, to Mitt Romney perpetuating the myth that Obama’s health care plan had cut $700 billion from the benefits of Medicare recipients. Even the theme of last Wednesday’s program, “We Built This,” rested on a thoroughly dishonest misrepresentation of the President’s words.

Less noticed was a parade of hypocrisies that would bring shame to anyone with a modicum of self-respect. The degree of hypocritical expressions emanating from the right has reached historic proportions. It’s as if they have lost the ability to recognize the obvious contradictions they exude. Or, more likely, they simply don’t care. They are more interested in scoring political points which, unfortunately, is a deceit at which they are occasionally successful.

The hyper-hypocritical tendencies of today’s GOP has spread through the Party’s blood stream and is discernible from almost every angle. Below is a sampling of recent examples of rank hypocrisy caught gushing from the right and its most prominent proponents.

1) Hypocrisy On Health Care: Romney has promised that his first action on day one of a Romney administration would be to repeal ObamaCare. Of course, he wouldn’t have any authority to do that and attempting to pass legislation in congress would get stopped short in the Democratically-controlled senate. However, he may want to have a discussion with his running mate. It was recently disclosed that Ryan quietly applied for funding of a Wisconsin health care clinic in his district. The funds would come entirely from the Affordable Care Act that Ryan and Romney now propose to repeal. Also, after insisting that he would repeal Obamacare in its entirety, Romney told David Gregory on Meet the Press “I say we’re going to replace Obamacare. And I’m replacing it with my own plan.” Somebody needs to remind Romney that Obamacare IS his own plan, including the individual mandate.

2) Hypocrisy On Political Ads: In an interview on the Bill Bennett radio show, Mitt Romney lashed out at what he considered to be false ads by a pro-Obama Super PAC. In the course of his tirade he lamented that “in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad.” Romney said this even as he refused to pull his own ads that had been rated “Pants-on-Fire” lies by PolitiFact. Subsequently, the Romney campaign decided to abandon any pretense to honesty and declare that fact-checkers had “jumped the shark,” and that they would no longer “let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” In other words, we’ll lie if we feel like it.

3) Hypocrisy On Women: At the GOP convention in Tampa, Ann Romney gave a keynote speech wherein she saluted women saying “You are the best of America. You are the hope of America. There would not be an America without you.” It was a naked attempt to appeal to women voters with whom the GOP is having trouble connecting. However, beyond her vacant flattery she never uttered a word of support for issues of importance to women. There was no mention of equal pay, gender discrimination in the workplace, parental leave, or child welfare services like health care or nutritional programs. The only references she made to education were how fortunate her husband and children were to have the benefit of attending first-rate institutions that most Americans will never see. And the GOP platform strikes a markedly different tone by banning access to family planning services and effectively asserting that women, “the hope of America,” are not competent to make decisions about their own bodies.

4) Hypocrisy On Misogyny: The comments of GOP senate candidate Todd Akin regarding “legitimate rape” caused a firestorm of criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. Many on the right insisted that Akin withdraw from the Missouri senate race. However, most of the criticism was directed at the harm that Akin caused to the GOP’s prospects of winning the seat, rather than to the offensive views Akin articulated. There was abundant gnashing of teeth over Akin’s stupidity for putting the election at risk, but little condemnation for what he actually said. The reason for that is that when it comes to women, the right’s policies are actually a logical conclusion of Akin’s dumb outburst. In fact, Ryan cosponsored a bill in the House with Akin that sought to redefine the term “rape” so that federal funds were unavailable for victims unless the crime was deemed “forcible,” which would have excluded many assaults that were statutory, incest, or under duress.

5) Hypocrisy On Voting: Fox News and Romney have both recently made an issue of legislation in Ohio that would remove early voting availability for all voters except those in the military. The Obama Justice Department challenged the law arguing that every voter should have early access to the polls. Romney and Fox responded by accusing the President of wanting to make it more difficult for soldiers to vote, even though the administration’s position was to make voting easier for everyone. What Romney and Fox did not say was that their position would have denied early voting to over 900,000 Ohio veterans (in addition to millions of other Ohio residents) who were not included in the GOP’s bill. [Note: An Ohio court just ruled in favor of the administration’s position, but the Ohio Secretary of State insisted that he would defy the court order to open the polls. Then, after the judge demanded the Secretary of State appear before him to explain himself, he backed down and agreed to the court’s order].

6) Hypocrisy On Tax Shelters: Mitt Romney’s problems with his financial records are well known. He continues to refuse to release his tax returns even as more evidence comes out that he has engaged in shenanigans involving off-shore banks and other tax avoidance schemes. Nevertheless, Romney had the audacity to address a group of donors and complain about big businesses that “save money by putting various things in the places where there are low tax havens around the world.” Apparently that’s only acceptable for wealthy presidential candidates.

7) Hypocrisy On The Economy: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Mitt Romney says “Yes.” The key issue of the Romney campaign from its inception has been his contention that the economy is in dismal shape and that it’s the President’s fault. Romney has said on numerous occasions that Obama may have inherited a troubled economy, but he made it worse. However, when asked by radio host Laura Ingraham about improving economic indicators he unflinchingly admitted “Well, of course it’s getting better. The economy always gets better after a recession.” Ingraham was stunned and gave Romney a second shot noting that he wasn’t helping his argument. Romney held firm saying “Have you got a better one, Laura? It just happens to be the truth.” Soon after, Romney returned to falsely accusing Obama of making things worse.

8) Hypocrisy On Terrorism: While running for the GOP nomination for president in 2007, Romney was asked by reporters if he agreed with comments by then-candidate Obama that if Osama bin Laden was discovered in Pakistan he would take action if the Pakistanis did not. Romney responded “I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours.” Earlier this year, on the anniversary of the death of bin Laden, who was killed by American Special Forces in Pakistan, Romney diminished the President’s role by saying that “Anybody would have made that call.” Well…not anybody.

9) Hypocrisy On The Auto Bailout: Romney was a vocal opponent of the auto industry bailout orchestrated by the Obama administration. He famously wrote an op-ed for the New York Times with the title “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.“ Fast forward a couple of years to a newly profitable and growing automobile industry and we find that Romney has shifted his position to one where he not only claims to have supported the bailout, but he considers himself responsible for its success. He told ABC News that “I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back.” That’s a little like Pontius Pilate taking credit for Jesus coming back.

10) Hypocrisy On Abortion: When Romney ran for the senate in Massachusetts in 1994, he claimed to support abortion rights and punctuated his commitment to that position with a story about a close relative who died as the result of an illegal abortion. In a debate with his opponent, Ted Kennedy, Romney referenced his family’s loss and said “It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that.” So Romney was once driven by his grief to make an unwavering commitment to never force his beliefs on others, but now he’s pushing for a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Is he through with grieving now? Is he comfortable with the grief that other families will suffer if his promise to repeal Roe v. Wade is fulfilled?

Hypocrisy and the Republican Party have never been far apart. They were the originators of the health care insurance mandate, but flipped to opposing it after it was proposed by a Democratic president. They supported the DREAM Act until Obama put it on the legislative agenda. Cap and trade was a GOP innovation. And the war hawks of the Republican right – Bush, Cheney, Rove, Boehner, Bolton, Limbaugh, Hannity, Kristol, Beck, etc. – never saw a day of combat. Mitt Romney, after protesting in favor of the draft to send other kids to Vietnam, avoided service via his Mormon missionary work in Paris, and received multiple academic deferments.

The lies that have been so freely disseminated by the right are a serious impediment to democracy, made worse by their arrogant persistence in lying even after having been exposed. But their hypocrisy is just as thickly applied and just as deceitful. It is emblematic of the character (or lack thereof) of the Republican Party and its spokespersons, including their leader, Mitt Romney.

Special Feature: Here are the runner-ups that didn’t make the top ten:

11) Hypocrisy On Socialism: The featured convention speeches by the Republican standard bearers contained some flowery language intended to motivate their delegates and sway voters watching at home. Some of their rhetoric, however, would not have been so well received if it had been offered by President Obama. On Wednesday Paul Ryan said that “We have responsibilities, one to another. We do not each face the world alone.” That was followed by Romney on Thursday saying “The America we know is the story of the many becoming one.” To some listeners those may sound like distinctly socialist sentiments. That sort of collectivist dialogue is commonly heard in leftist conclaves and union halls. All Obama had to say was that he favored “spreading the wealth around” and he was deemed an avid Marxist. For Rom-n-Ry to talk this way and not get branded as subversives is a bit surprising. Particularly when the Republican model of shared sacrifice is lower salaries for teachers, lower benefits for seniors, and lower taxes for millionaires.

12) Hypocrisy On Music: Paul Ryan, in an attempt to connect with a younger voting demographic, has lately been touting his rocker cred. He said that his favorite band is Rage Against the Machine. That prompted Rage guitarist Tom Morello to ask “I wonder what Ryan’s favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of ‘Fuck the Police’?” Then Ryan told the GOP conventioneers that his iPod was stoked with songs by “youth-oriented” artists like AC/DC and Led Zeppelin that an old-timer like Mitt Romney couldn’t appreciate. What he failed to note was that his playlist seems to be dominated by bands that debuted some 40 years ago and that Romney is younger than Zeppelin’s lead guitarist, Jimmy Page.

13) Hypocrisy On Immigration: A core part of the Fox News agenda is to demonize immigrants. Last month the Fox Nation web site featured a story about a sexual assault on a child with a headline that blared “Illegal Alien Charged with Raping 4-Year Old.” Of course, the immigration status of the alleged perpetrator is entirely irrelevant to the crime. Fox would never have published such a story identifying a white Protestant American in the headline, although that happens far more frequently. It is also interesting that Fox never posted a story with the headline “Fox News Reporter Charged with Sexual Assault on 4-year Old” when that occurred a few years ago.

14) Hypocrisy On Taxes: Mitt Romney has been campaigning mightily to disabuse voters of the notion that he is an out-of-touch multimillionaire who has benefited unfairly from his wealth and position. Nevertheless, he refuses to come clean about his taxes or his resume with Bain Capital. Part of the reason he chose Paul Ryan to join his ticket was to divert attention from these questions that have been hounding him on the campaign trail. However, he may not get the reaction he hopes. Ryan’s budget plan includes the elimination of capital gains taxes, and since that is almost the entire source of Romney’s income, it would reduce his already low (13.9%) tax rate to nearly zero (0.82%).

15) Hypocrisy On Medicare: The charge from Democrats that the Romney/Ryan Medicare plan will end the program as we know it has rankled the Romney campaign. They respond by saying that no one over the age of 55 will be affected by their reforms. Setting aside for the moment the ludicrous notion that seniors would be happy knowing that only their children would suffer the loss of benefits, Romney’s plan to repeal ObamaCare would immediately end prescription drug benefits and access to preventative care that today’s seniors are currently receiving.

And sadly, this list is still incomplete.

Idiocracy: Mitt Romney’s Convention Speech Was Written Below An 8th Grade Level

Posted by Mark NC on September 7, 2012 at 4:16 pm. 3 Comments :

The Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level test is used extensively in the field of education to judge the readability level of various books and texts. It’s results reveal the education required to understand the text.

An analysis of the speech that Mitt Romney delivered at the Republican National Kvetch-a-Sketch came in at slightly below an eighth grade level (7.98). For comparison, After President Obama’s State of the Union Address, Fox News published a story that reported his Flesch–Kincaid results at 8.4. They accompanied the story with this graphic:

Clearly the implication is that Obama is an idiot for having delivered a speech that only scored 8.4 on the Flesch–Kincaid test. Therefore, Romney is even dumber for having scored only 7.98, and Fox will be posting an article saying so shortly. And if you believe that you’re even dumber than the congressional Tea Party Republicans who performed even lower on a series of these tests conducted by the Sunlight Foundation.

For the record, Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention scored well above the ninth grade level (9.59). That may account for why the ratings for Fox News during the DNC were so depressed. Their audience wouldn’t have been able to understand the big, multisyllabic words that the President used. After all, studies have shown that Fox viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. Which in turn may also explain why Fox viewers enjoyed Clint Eastwood’s speech more than any other at the RNC, including Romney’s.

Update: I also ran the a few more scores that might be of interest:
Michelle Obama: 7.81
Ann Romney: 6.25
Bill Clinton: 10.46
Clint Eastwood: 4.51

News From The Future: Viewers Tune Out Obama’s Convention Speech – Ratings Plummet

Posted by Mark NC on September 2, 2012 at 12:40 pm. NO Comments :

The Republican National Kvetch-a-Sketch wrapped up last Thursday with a speech by Mitt Romney that threatened to put the makers of Ambien out of business. The speech was mostly notable for what he left out.

The television audience for Romney’s address was less than spectacular. Nielsen reports that about 30 million people viewed the speech. That’s down 25% from the 40 million viewers of John McCain’s nomination acceptance speech in 2008. And most analysts would not have put anticipation for McCain’s speech very high.

Fox News chose to ignore the dismal ratings for what they said was the most important speech of Romney’s political life. However, that cannot be said about Fox’s coverage of the Democrat’s convention next week in Charlotte, North Carolina. My sources from the future tell me that Fox News will feature bold headlines announcing that President Obama’s popularity, measured by the television ratings for his re-nomination speech, has crumbled in comparison to 2008’s ratings. Here is the headline from Future Fox declaring that American’s have rejected Obama:

Never mind that most analysts expect the ratings to decline considering that the last time around Obama was a new face on the political scene and the first African-American ever nominated for the presidency by a major political party. And set aside the fact that Fox didn’t think that Romney’s dismal ratings were newsworthy. It’s a pretty good bet that Fox will make a different assessment should Obama’s ratings fail to match or surpass those from 2008. And should he come up short, we can expect stories to proliferate on Fox and other right-wing media celebrating the downfall of Obama.

It’s important to remember that Obama does not need to match the exceptional ratings produced by an historic election year. He simply needs to stay ahead of his opponent through election day. Prior to the GOP convention, Romney’s campaign gave a Powerpoint presentation wherein they projected that Romney would get an 11 point bounce in the post-convention polls. So far Romney’s bounce has been a statistical zilch. So their prognostications are about as reliable as their “facts” are provable.

Another interesting observation from the television ratings is that the decline for Romney occurred almost entirely on networks other than Fox News. For Fox the drop was only 2% from 2008. The other broadcast and cable networks lost between 25% and 50%. What that tells us is that Fox’s audience is still just as insular and cult-like as ever, while the other networks more accurately reflect the lower levels of engagement in the current campaign. The result is evident in the degree to which Fox viewers have such a divergent and unrealistic appraisal of the political landscape. All they know is what they see on Fox with it’s distinct biases, so they come away with far more negative views of the President and far more positive impressions of Romney’s prospects for victory.

We’ll know by next Friday whether my future correspondent is correct. If so, the results will be posted here at News Corpse. Until then, I’ll see you in the future.

Socialist Republicans And Mitt Romney’s Promise To Do ‘Something’

Posted by Mark NC on August 31, 2012 at 4:56 am. 3 Comments :

Wrapping up the Republican National Kvetch-a-Sketch, Mitt Romney delivered a barn-boring speech that nevertheless stirred the sheep in the convention hall. With a different theme every night, Romney chose to highlight a bold new message that is sure to resonate with the Replicant base:

“Now is the moment when we can do something. With your help we will do something.”

So there you have it. Mitt Romney pledges to do “something.” That soaring rhetoric ought to inspire America’s voters. And consistent with his campaign to date, Romney refused to say specifically what that something would be. Contrary to the build up from Chris Christie and Paul Ryan, who hailed Romney as a leader who would tell the nation the “hard truths,” Romney stuck to soft platitudes and appeals to the disappointed demographic.

However, a familiar hint of a vision did emerge from both of the GOP’s standard bearers. Romney and Ryan united to express their shared belief in the spirit of collectivism and the sense that we, as Americans, are all in this together:

Romney: “The America we know is the story of the many becoming one.”

Ryan: “We have responsibilities, one to another. We do not each face the world alone.”

Those are admirable sentiments that reflect the views of many Americans who are committed to holding the nation together community by community. Even Chris Christie declared that “We all must share in the sacrifice.” The problem with those remarks is that, had President Obama made them, they would have been castigated by Tea-publicans as anti-American, socialist sermonizing. Fox News and talk radio McCarthyites would have built days of programming around such objectionable ravings.

But an even bigger problem is that Rom-n-Ry don’t mean what they say. Their philosophy leans more toward going it alone – an “I got mine” individualism that rejects social welfare and unity of purpose. The Republican model of shared sacrifice is lower salaries for teachers, lower benefits for seniors, and lower taxes for millionaires.

There’s going to be plenty of analysis in the media in the next couple of days of Romney’s speech on both its style and substance (although Clint Eastwood may have stolen the RNC finale, and not in a good way). However, much of the right-wing press has already dismissed fact-checking as a liberal plot to which they don’t have to pay attention. That’s convenient considering the frequency with which they lie.

Perhaps the most blatant falsehood in Romney’s speech was when he said “Unlike President Obama, I will not raise taxes on the middle class.” Not only has Obama cut taxes for the middle class, but Romney’s tax plan actually does raise their taxes. But the funniest misrepresentation was when he said that “My dad had been born in Mexico and his family had to leave during the Mexican revolution.” Romney left out the fact that his father had been born in Mexico because his grandfather, and his five wives, had to flee the U.S. in order to sustain their polygamy. I wonder why Romney glossed over that devotion to the institution of traditional marriage.

Update: This photo just came in off the wires of another hard hitting interview with Invisible Obama:

The Top Eight Fox News Election Lies In Just The Last Eight Weeks

Posted by Mark NC on August 30, 2012 at 9:43 am. 1 Comments :

With the election season fully in bloom, the aroma of deceit and desperation is growing more pungent by the hour. Mitt Romney, The Original Bankster, continues to be evasive about his international business affairs, and he refuses to release more than a single year of tax returns in order to quell speculation. His electoral prospects have not been noticeably enhanced with the addition of Wisconsin congressman, and extremist right-winger, Paul Ryan to the ticket. Consequently, the GOP PR machine (aka Fox News) has swung into action to attempt to cauterize the wounds and manufacture some positive spin on behalf of the struggling Republican standard bearers.

The most effective contribution of the Fox spinners is their expertise in disseminating brazenly dishonest propaganda without shame or fear of reprisal. They construct fabrications that benefit their patrons and broadcast them to an audience that is so undiscriminating that they’ll watch Sean Hannity more than once. And since the majority of rational news consumers will never see much of what Fox works so hard to invent, we have complied a list of some of the most dishonest moments so far in the 2012 election cycle. [Note: in order to pare this list down to a manageable length, it has been limited to just just the last eight weeks. There’s only so much bandwidth on the Internet]

1) President Obama Did Not Call Mitt Romney A Felon
Mitt Romney claims that he had ceased to be involved with Bain Capital in 1999, although his signature on SEC documents affirms that he was the sole shareholder and CEO as late as 2002. Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager, Stephanie Cutter, pointed out that Romney had to have lied on either the SEC forms or his public statements that contradict them. Fox News turned that into an accusation by Obama that Romney is a felon. However, there is a big difference between calling someone a felon and simply noting that if one were to commit a felony they would be a felon, which is all that Cutter had done. But Fox is not inclined to miss an opportunity to invent a controversy where none actually exists.

2) Fox News Built That
In a speech to supporters in Virginia, Obama praised the hard work of individuals and businesses while also noting the collective value of American investment in economic prosperity. So Fox News plucked an out-of-context soundbite from the speech that said “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” What Fox deliberately left out was that Obama was referring to public services like teachers and police, and to infrastructure like roads and bridges that contribute to the success of all businesses. It’s a position that Romney himself has taken. However, Fox News blew this distortion up into such a frenzy that the Romney campaign adopted it and now have made the Fox-built fallacy the theme for the GOP convention in Tampa. [Note: The GOP convention is being held in the Tampa Bay Forum, a facility that was built with mostly public funds]

The tactic of taking quotes out of context has been a favorite of the Fox News gang this year. They did precisely the same thing with remarks Obama made about the economy (the private sector is doing fine) and his record in office (we tried our plan and it worked). In both cases Fox left out critical language surrounding these remarks that revealed just how purposefully dishonest the Fox News team is.

3) The Swift-Boating Of President Obama
Fox News has proudly announced the commencement of a Swiftboat campaign against President Obama. The organization set up to carry out the assault is described as “A group of former U.S. intelligence and Special Forces operatives,” but in reality is a partisan assembly of Republicans and professional Obama haters. The Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund (SOOEF) plans to produce and distribute videos and advertisements that will criticize Obama for “taking credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.” This is an archetypical implementation of Swiftboating whose purpose is to spread lies about a key achievement of Obama’s leadership as Commander-in-Chief.

The assertions by the SOOEF that Obama has improperly heralded himself for the demise of Bin Laden are demonstrably false. Their video features gross misrepresentations of Obama’s statements on the subject that loop portions of his speech referencing himself, but leaves out his abundant praise for the military and intelligence operatives who carried out the mission. The opening line of the President’s address to the nation announcing that Bin Laden was dead explicitly and unselfishly stated that “the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden.” He went on to thank “the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome,” and he praised “the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country.”

None of that was in the SOOEF video which Fox has featured in numerous broadcasts. What’s more, Fox actually uses the term “Swiftboating” to describe the anti-Obama campaign. Either they have completely given up on trying to pretend that they are a “fair and balanced” news enterprise (which no one believes anyway), or they don’t know that Swiftboating means lying.

4) Fox Nation Ignores Polls By CNN, Reuters, And — Fox News
Virtually every time a new poll on presidential politics is released Fox News will make a point to publish the results – so long as the poll shows Obama losing. In a particularly egregious example of this bias earlier this month, Fox prominently reported on a poll by the right-wing Rasmussen operation that placed Mitt Romney in the lead 47-43. What Fox neglected to report was that there were three other polls released at the same time that all put Obama ahead. And the most striking part of this omission was that one of the polls that Fox declined to cover was conducted by Fox News itself and put Obama ahead of Romney by nine points.

Fox couldn’t even bring themselves to report on their own poll conducted by their own pollsters. That’s the sort of biased cherry-picking that is the hallmark of Fox’s “news” charade. And it’s a crystal clear message to pollsters from Fox: If you want to be covered, you better say what we like. And that goes for Fox’s pollsters as well.

5) Welfare-To-Work Rules Were Not Weakened By the Obama Administration
The Romney campaign recently accused Obama of directing his administration to relax the welfare-to-work provisions of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform bill. That accusation 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. Nevertheless, Fox News picked up the accusation and ran with it. In every segment on the subject they portrayed the issue precisely as Romney had framed it despite every fact-checking operation concluding that Romney’s charges were entirely false.

And speaking of fact-checking, Romney has been rated untruthful 67 times by PolitiFact, and 14 of those were “Pants-on-Fire” lies (including the welfare lie). In fact, 43% of PolitiFact’s findings on statements by Romney are rated as untruthful. He’s downright pathological, but Fox has not yet reported that fact.

6) Obama Did Not Sell Amnesty For $465.00
After Obama issued a directive to the Department of Homeland Security not to advance the deportation of young immigrants who had been brought to this country by their parents and who had demonstrated achievement in school or the military, there was a rush of dishonest reporting from Fox News that Obama was placating law breakers and opening our borders to criminals, drug traffickers, and terrorists. Of course, none of that was true. News reports from more objective sources correctly noted that the beneficiaries of the program had broken no laws and that the public overwhelmingly supported the President’s plan.

After the initial drama subsided, Fox News decided to take another stab at promoting their false narrative. They began running reports alleging that Obama was “selling amnesty” to illegal aliens. What Fox was grossly misrepresenting was that the program had an application fee to help offset its costs. One would think that deficit minded conservatives would have approved of that fiscal responsibility. But Fox chose to present it as the purchase price for amnesty even though no one in the program would receive amnesty.

7) Soldiers Were Not Prevented From Voting In Ohio
The issue of voter suppression has been a major factor in this years election contests. In states across the country Republicans have been working strenuously to reduce early voting availability and impose unreasonable identification requirements that serve to disenfranchise mostly voters who are minorities, seniors, students, and low income. But perhaps the worst example of distorting the issue occurred when Fox News accused the Obama administration of seeking to trample on the voting rights of people in the military.

The actual story is that the Republicans in the state of Ohio passed a bill that reduced early voting for everyone in the state except the military. The Obama Justice Department contested the move arguing that the same early voting privileges should be available to all Ohio voters. So the Obama administration was actually advocating for expanding voting rights for everyone, including veterans who would have been excluded under the GOP bill. The characterization by Fox News was 180% opposite of the truth.

8) Fox News Reports Obama Birth Certificate “Definitely Fraudulent”
In a stunning piece of journalistic malpractice, Fox News reported assertions that Obama’s birth certificate was “definitely fraudulent.” The remarks were from Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, and while they were correctly attributed, nowhere in the article did Fox note that the birth certificate had been authenticated and that every credible source agrees that it is valid. The only references to the birth certificate’s authenticity were framed as merely “claims.” And Fox being “fair and balanced” regards all claims as having equal weight, even those without any substance to back them up.

Pray for Fox News This is a necessarily abridged collection of Fox falsehoods. There are far too many more to list here. But in the last eight weeks Fox News has disseminated some glaring whoppers in an attempt to prop up the flailing Romney campaign. Expect this to continue through the upcoming conventions and straight through to November. Because when you are supporting a candidate who refuses to reveal his taxes, his business history, or even his proposed policies, all you have left is what you can make up.

More Swiftboating Of Obama From Performing SEALs

Posted by Mark NC on August 28, 2012 at 10:54 am. 2 Comments :

The Swiftboating campaign against President Obama has just launched another lame attack ad by a group of veterans pretending to be patriots. The ad exhumes a ridiculous claim that Obama is undercutting America’s role as a superpower by bowing to foreign leaders.

Sadly, it appears these former Navy SEALs have suffered some pretty debilitating head trauma, because their advertisement is such an idiotic piece of garbage that no one with a healthy mental condition would ever associate themselves with it.

President Obama shows respect for the leaders of other countries, something that Bush refused to do. The Republican foreign policy agenda has seriously harmed America’s standing in the world through its obsession with military and economic threats. And as the picture above makes clear, it is not a sign of weakness to respect your world neighbors. In fact, it produces greater strength through alliances and mutual trust.

The performing SEALs who appear in these ads are not diplomats. They are former soldiers whose area of expertise clearly does not include international affairs. They have crafted a campaign that is so embarrassingly stupid that it’s surprising that they actually made it public.

And helping them to expand the reach of this nonsense is the right-wing media who must also be lacking in the intelligence department. Fox News and Breitbart News, amongst others, are heavily promoting this new video in the hopes of slandering the President with any mud that might happen to stick. It is a sign of desperation that they think these phony, substanceless ads will sway voters. What’s more, it’s an insult to voters who will see right through this charade.

So, in the end, the puny minds who concoct these asinine schemes will be wasting their money and alienating the vast majority of the public who do not believe that Obama is a traitor. The only people who will pay any attention to these ads are the birthers, truthers, and other morons who are already on the other side of the political battle. And, frankly, I’m glad they are. I wouldn’t want those idiots on my side.

Allen West’s Crap Sandwich: You Want Lies With That?

Posted by Mark NC on August 26, 2012 at 3:26 pm. 2 Comments :

GOP whackadoodle congressman Allen West has once again demonstrated the classlessness of the Republican Party. During an appearance on Fox News with Neil Cavuto, West went on another deranged rant against President Obama saying…

“Let’s be very honest and let’s put this military vernacular. If you’re feeding a person a crap sandwich with a smile, it’s still a crap sandwich. That’s what you see coming from President Obama. He said America is just a load of you know what.”

I would challenge West to document his claim that Obama ever said that America is “a load of you know what.” Obviously, that never occurred. However, West has said…

I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party.
If Joseph Goebbels was around, he’d be very proud of the Democrat Party.
President Obama seems determined to punish and wipe out economic success in this country, leveling tax weapons of mass destruction on all taxpayers.
Barack Obama is undeserving of the title Commander-in-Chief.
[Obama] can take [his message] to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.
You [Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz] are the most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the US House of Representatives.
Mainstream media’s is no longer reporting the news, they are propagandizing […] Goebbels is doing somersaults and back flips in his grave.

Allen West is certainly one of the most mentally unstable people who was ever elected to office. He was virtually thrown out of the military after being fined and reprimanded for engaging in torture against innocent Iraqi citizens. And now he has the gall to talk about crap sandwiches. This inane and tasteless crack was featured as the top headline story on Fox Nation this morning. I particularly enjoyed the fact that it was accompanied by an advertisement for Whataburger.

West’s opponent for the 18th district congressional seat in Florida is Patrick Murphy. Feel free to toss him some support. And here’s his latest ad that shows that he has a pretty good sense of humor and an eye for creative messaging.

Press Pussies? Fox Nation Resorts To Profanity To Attack Obama And The Press

Posted by Mark NC on August 22, 2012 at 11:13 am. 5 Comments :

A story today on Fox Nation featured a headline that other news organizations might have considered obscene: Press Pussies Soft on Obama.

For the Fox Nationalists, obscenity is no barrier to another opportunity to smear the President. Anyone who doesn’t believe that Fox deliberately chose to use profane language that is a pejorative allusion to vaginas in order to emasculate their targets doesn’t know Fox very well.

The story linked to an article on Fox’s sister newspaper the New York Post by right-wing hack Michael Goodwin. The underlying article was a lame effort to disparage Obama’s press conference yesterday. Goodwin filled the column with nonsense attacks and ad hominem insults. He began by comparing Obama’s presidency with the scandal-plagued administrations of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Of course, Obama has not had any scandals attributed to him, much less those with serious consequences like criminal break-ins and sexual misconduct.

What Goodwin thinks are equivalent controversies consist of the President having held fundraisers. Saints preserve us – a politician has engaged in soliciting donations! Then Goodwin is shocked – SHOCKED – that the President made a few references to his political opponents. That must be a first. Then, just before accusing Obama of lying “virtually every time he appears in public,” Goodwin outright lies by asserting that Obama leaked classified information for political gain. He made no effort to document that falsehood.

Goodwin went on to refer to the President as grubby, but then said that it was Obama who was taking the low road. He faulted Obama for “capitaliz[ing] on the nutso ‘legitimate rape’ comments of a GOP Senate candidate,” even though Obama was answering a question from a reporter. But in Goodwin’s delusional mind the reporter was a White House plant.

It should come as no surprise that when an ultra-right-wing enterprise like Fox News decides to employ profanity to attack their perceived enemies, they would choose one that is a derogatory reference to women. Yet somehow they still complain when they are criticized for engaging in a war on women.

For Goodwin to publish this column so soon after the lunatic ravings of Todd Akin demonstrates just how tone deaf the Republican machine is, and how insensitive they are to sexism and prejudice and the suffering of its victims.

Fox News Launches The Swift-Boating Of President Obama

Posted by Mark NC on August 16, 2012 at 3:53 am. 4 Comments :

The 2004 presidential election pitting George W. Bush against Sen. John Kerry was tarnished by one of the most virulently dishonest attacks in modern politics. Sensing a real threat due to Kerry’s patriotic service during the Vietnam War, the Bush campaign, led by Karl Rove, concluded that Kerry’s military resume had to be buried beneath a mountain of mud and lies.

Thus was born the Swift-Boat Veterans for Truth, an organization comprised of partisan liars who had little to no knowledge of Kerry’s service, but who were recruited to slander him in the media. Their allegations were revealed to be unsupported by facts and the term Swift=Boating entered the American lexicon to describe false political attacks, particularly those aimed at the target’s personal strengths.

Now Fox News has proudly announced the commencement of a Swift-Boat campaign against President Obama. The organization set up to carry out the assault is described as “A group of former U.S. intelligence and Special Forces operatives,” but in reality is a partisan assembly of Republicans and professional Obama haters. The Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund (SOOEF) plans to produce and distribute videos and advertisements that will criticize Obama for “taking credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.” This is an archetypical implementation of Swift-Boating whose purpose is to spread lies about a key achievement of Obama’s leadership as Commander-in-Chief.

None of that was in the SOOEF video which sought to portray the President as self-obsessed by cutting together snippets of his speech where he used the words “I” and “my.” However, a quick analysis of the speech shows that he only used those words ten times. By comparison he used the words “we,” “our,” and “us” ninety-one times. That shows just how determined the video’s producers were to mischaracterize the actual events.

The SOOEF is a brazenly dishonest election year effort to smear the President and to prevent him from getting the credit he is due for his role in bringing Bin Laden to justice. And it does not diminish the courage and skill of the Special Forces who stormed Bin Laden’s compound to note that the President was a unique participant in the operation. He had to personally take responsibility for approving the the plan, the timing, the coordination with allies, etc. If the operation had failed Republicans would have been merciless in their condemnation of the incompetency of the White House. Just ask Jimmy Carter about that. Consequently, it is hypocritical and ungrateful not to recognize the efficiency, and leadership that contributed to this success.

What’s especially disturbing about this propaganda exercise is that Fox News is openly participating in it. What’s more, they are even calling it by its name: Swift-Boating.

Either they have completely given up on trying to pretend that they are a “fair and balanced” news enterprise (which no one believes anyway), or they don’t know what Swift-Boating means. But by stating in their headline that “Navy SEALS Start ‘Swift-Boating’ Obama,” they are admitting that they are committing political character assassination. Granted, Fox News does that every day, but they rarely come out and say that’s what they’re doing. Apparently, they have grown so at ease with their mission of slandering Democrats and disinforming their viewers that they no longer feel any need to disguise their intentions.

Update: As a sign of their desperation, Fox Nation is plastering their page with postings that further demean the President and make wildly false claims. One headline reads “Navy SEALS Respond After Media Matters Calls Them ‘Gutless’.” However, Media matters did not call the Navy SEALs gutless. They said that the former SEALs-turned-politicos didn’t have the guts to admit that they are a partisan organization. That’s simply a fact. What’s more, Navy SEALs did not respond, only the same aforementioned Republican operatives. No actual SEALs have had any comment on this matter, including any comments supporting the SOOEF.

The other headline reads “OBAMA CAMPAIGN ATTACKS NAVY SEALS.” That is absurd on its face. The Obama campaign only reacted to the lies in the propaganda distributed by the Republican group that is attacking the President. Again, no actual SEALs are a part of the SOOEF campaign and none were attacked by the President.

These two examples of dishonest distortions of reality illustrate just how worried the right is about this election. There is nothing they won’t lie about to smear their opponents.

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