Are You Braindead And Biased Enough To Work At Fox News?

Posted by Mark NC on June 3, 2012 at 1:31 pm. 3 Comments :

This week Fox News revealed what they regard as the professional and personal attributes to secure and maintain employment at their enterprise. What it comes down to is having a commitment to distorting the news, swinging hard to the right, and focusing like a laser beam on anything negative about President Obama and the Democrats.

The example was set by Chris White, the Fox producer responsible for the now famous four minute anti-Obama campaign-style video that was broadcast on Fox & Friends. In the wake of that shoddy exercise of pseudo-journalism, White was thrown onto a roller coaster that first sent him up a steep track of praise from Fox & Friends’ idiot hosts. That was followed by criticism and ridicule from many of his peers in the press and a vaguely critical statement from his boss, Fox News EVP of programming, Bill Shine, who said…

“The package that aired on FOX & Friends was created by an associate producer and was not authorized at the senior executive level of the network. This has been addressed with the show’s producers.”

The video itself appeared and disappeared from Fox’s web sites, finally falling into an abyss from which it never returned. White was reported to have been offered a new job at CNN prior to this controversy, but that offer was subsequently rescinded. With his fate up in the air, another statement emerged from Shine saying that…

“Chris White will remain employed with FOX News. We’ve addressed the video with the producers and are not going to discuss the internal workings of our programming any further.”

So Fox pulled White’s carcass from the fire. And why not? He represents everything the network reveres. No doubt he will soon get a promotion and additional responsibility so that he can slap together some more partisan GOP propaganda in advance of the election in November. That’s what Fox pays him to do. That’s what they pay Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto, Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly, and the rest of their staff to do.

However, Shine’s statement was notable for more than just his support for the disgraced producer. Shine’s arrogance in declining any further discussion of this matter is emblematic of the arrogance of Fox News overall. There is much left to discuss, and Fox News would be the first to demand more discussion and transparency from their competitors were they to be embroiled in a similar scandal. For instance, White was not the only person involved in the broadcast of that video. There were others who participated in its production including the Fox & Friends gang who were so openly effusive in their praise, yet they have not commented on it at all.

Where is the accountability for this abuse of ethics? Fox is determined to keep hidden any repercussions or, more likely, rewards they may have administered. And that is true to form at Fox. They have a history of hiring disgraced rejects. For example, Juan Williams, Don Imus, Doug McKelway, and Lou Dobbs were all put on the Fox payroll after having been terminated for cause at other networks. And as for their management of in-house malfeasance, here is a list of Fox personal who ought to have been fired for their brazenly inappropriate and unprofessional behavior, but who are still cheerfully plying their partisan trade at Fox (from my article last February):

Todd Starnes: Unsurprisingly, Fox News has smeared the Occupy Movement from its inception. They have disparaged them as everything from unfocused to unclean to un-American. But it took Starnes, the host of Fox News & Commentary on Fox Radio, to equate them to mass murderers by asking, “What should be done with the domestic terrorists who are occupying our cities and college campuses?” By comparing Occupiers to the likes of Timothy McVeigh, Starnes is engaging in rhetorical terrorism and insulting hundreds of thousands of concerned Americans.

Cody Willard: This Fox Business reporter brazenly exposed his bias when he attended a Tea Party rally and feverishly barked at the camera this call to arms against the U.S. government, “Guys, when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country?”

Andrew Napolitano: The “Judge” is a notorious 9/11 Truther who believes that the attack on the World Trade Center towers was an inside job, orchestrated by agents of the United States government. That’s a position considered so crazy by Fox Newsers that it was instrumental in their campaign to get Van Jones fired from his post as a green jobs adviser to President Obama. But, in typical Foxian hypocrisy, it has no impact on the employment of Napolitano. [Note: The entire primetime schedule of the Fox Business Network, including Napolitano, Eric Bolling and David Asman, was recently canceled. But it was due to poor ratings, not content. And all remain active Fox News contributors.]

Bill Sammon: The Fox News Washington managing editor was recorded admitting to a friendly audience on a conservative cruise that he would go on air and “mischievously” cast Obama as a socialist even though he didn’t believe it himself. In other words, he lied to defame the President and rile up his gullible viewers. That would be cause for termination at most news networks, but probably earned Sammon a bonus at Fox.

Eric Bolling: Hoping to sustain Fox’s leadership in inappropriate Nazi references, Bolling accused President Obama of engaging in class warfare that was “forged in Marxist Germany.” And if that wasn’t asinine enough, he sided with Iran against the U.S. by accusing the American hikers who were held in an Iranian prison of being spies and said that Iran should have kept them.

Bill O’Reilly: Dr. George Tiller, a family physician in Kansas, was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist who may have been incited to violence by rhetoric like this from O’Reilly: “Now, we have bad news to report that Tiller the baby killer out in Kansas, acquitted. Acquitted today of murdering babies.” O’Reilly regards the acquittal of a doctor for performing legal medical services “bad news,” and the services themselves “murder.” But he never took any responsibility for fanning the flames of violent incivility that led to the actual murder of Dr. Tiller.

Col. Ralph Peters (Ret): In a rant that argued that the United States should fight back against our enemies with the same tactics they use against us, Peters turned the media into military targets: “Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. And like Bolling, Peters also took the side of our foes by suggesting, without evidence, that a missing American soldier was a deserter and that “the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills,” presumably by killing him.

Michael Scheuer: This former CIA analyst was concerned that the American people were not sufficiently afraid of future terrorist attacks. He regards that absence of fear as dangerous complacency. But he has a solution: “The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”

Roger Ailes: The CEO of Fox News proves that a fish stinks from its head. In response to NPR’s firing of Juan Willimas for bigoted remarks about Muslims, Ailes let loose a tirade wherein he viciously attacked the NPR executives saying that… “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism.”

Liz Trotta: What started out as a verbal stumble became a call for assassination when Trotta said, “Now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, umm, Obama. Well, both if we could.” Trotta followed that up with a commentary berating women in the military for complaining that they get raped too much (she did not define what an “acceptable” amount of rape is).

So if you’re looking for work at Fox News, you now have an idea of how you need to present yourself. Just go in breathing right-wing fire and hostility for liberals, along with a petulantly defiant attitude toward any criticism. Never back down, and remember that even conceding an error is a sign of fatal weakness. The CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes, exemplified this trait masterfully when he hysterically insisted that “in 15 years we have never taken a story down because it was wrong.” Hmm. Then what happened to the anti-Obama video?

But also keep in mind that a successful career at Fox may not translate into success more generally in the media. Once associated with the disreputable network you may become tainted goods and damage your prospects elsewhere. In response to the Chris White affair, the Baltimore Sun’s television critic David Zurawik told Media Matters that…

“I wouldn’t hire anybody who worked at Fox even if I knew them, because I believe they’ve been compromised.”

It’s a safe bet to presume that he’s not alone. So work for Fox at your own risk, and only if you’re pretty sure that you’ll never want to work anywhere that isn’t a right-wing disinformation center. And, of course, be sure that you have an all-consuming passion for twisting the truth to advance conservative dogma. If you’re willing to be steadfastly dishonest, insulting, and obnoxious, you have a promising career awaiting you at Fox News. Good luck.

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Mitt Romney Gives His Tea Party People What They Want – Pigheaded Nastiness

Posted by Mark NC on June 2, 2012 at 4:49 pm. 2 Comments :

From the start of the 2012 election cycle there was one thing that was clear and consistent about Mitt Romney’s campaign: that he would be neither clear nor consistent.

Romney has been on both sides of every major issue. Whereas he once bragged about his unwavering defense of Roe v Wade, he now calls for it’s repeal. He once claimed that he would be a stronger advocate for gay rights than Ted Kennedy, but now adamantly supports the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act. He mercilessly bashes ObamaCare, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his own RomneyCare in Massachusetts was the basis for it. Point to a Romney flip and there is a flop following closely.

The only consistent thing about Romney is his clockwork-like predictability in changing his shape to become whatever he thinks the far-right Republican base wishes for him to become.

Perhaps the most fervent desire of the conservative crowd is for a candidate that will mix it up with his opponent, Barack Obama. They want a fighter who will throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into the ring. Nothing is off the table – not birtherism, not race, not religion, nothing. They want a knock-down, drag-out brawl that leaves Obama bloodied in a gutter. And that is exactly what Romney is now promising to deliver. According to a Romney adviser…

“There were a lot of folks who didn’t think he’d have the edge to really take on the president […] They’ve been pretty surprised and impressed at how willing Boston has been to push back.”

Rush Limbaugh gave what to him must be the highest praise, saying that “This is not the McCain campaign.” Indeed, Romney is trading in substance for belligerence. His strategy hinges on avoiding weaselly policy positions that he knows will upset his base, and feeding them raw anger that appeals to their bloodlust for Obama. And above all, never back down or apologize. Even if it means tolerating Donald Trump’s ignorant birtherism and Ted Nugent’s violent wet dreams. Another Romney aide, after being told that conservatives were comparing his tactics to the late, notoriously dishonest bomb thrower Andrew Breitbart, said “Oh great, that’s what we were going for.”

The media, as usual, is getting it all wrong. After Obama made some comments about Romney, who unlike John McCain, lacked the moral leadership to denounce creeps like Trump and Nugent, a report by the Associated Press bore the headline, “Obama longs for GOP rival like McCain.” That’s taking it a bit too far, to say the least. Obama would just like to see the crazy fringe dwellers, like those who think Obama is a Muslim plant sent to hand America over to its enemies, be shunted to the sidelines where they belong. On occasion McCain would do that, but to Romeny that would signal weakness to his Tea Party masters.

A couple of days ago Bill Clinton was interviewed on CNN and said that Romney had “a sterling business career,” and that he was certainly qualified to run for president. The right-wingnut crowd frothed with excitement that this polite remark was tantamount to an endorsement of Romney, even though Clinton explicitly said that Obama was by far the better choice. That led to Clinton’s clarification today:

“I said, you know, Governor Romney had a good career in business and he was a governor, so he crosses the qualification threshold for him being president,” Clinton said. “But he shouldn’t be elected, because he is wrong on the economy and all these other issues.

“So today, because I didn’t attack him personally and bash him, I wake up to read all these stories taking it out of context as if I had virtually endorsed him, which means the tea party has already won their first great victory: ‘We are supposed to hate each other to disagree.’ That is wrong.”

That’s precisely what today’s Republican Tea Party is advocating. There is simply no place for reasonableness, compromise, or maturity. At the same time, there is no disgracefulness that is beyond the pale. The lesson that the right learned in 2008 was that any expression of respect or courtesy, or any accommodation to civility, is a betrayal of principle. The ideal aspiration of the right is for a candidate with the most pigheaded sense of nastiness and an absence of shame. And if that’s what they want then, by God, that’s what Romney will give them.

Romney’s most urgent goal now is to portray himself as the fiercest warrior on the battlefield. It doesn’t matter what he’s fighting for so long as he leaves a lot of corpses on the ground. As I said once before, he is “The Punisher.”

Right-Wing Racists Ask: Where Da White Women At?

Posted by Mark NC on June 1, 2012 at 2:58 pm. 5 Comments :

If you think that’s funny, you should hear the remarks made by Tim Graham, the Director of Media Analysis for the uber-conservative Media Research Center. In an interview with NRA News, Graham was curious as to why the press refrained from reporting a particular aspect of President Obama’s past:

“…they talked about his white girlfriends in college. Which again you would think that would be a story that a news media that is so conscious about race seemed to not think that was an interesting development, that Obama had these white girlfriends.”

Really? Why exactly would that be an “interesting development?” Is there something wrong with interracial relationships? Was Graham disturbed that the purity of his white sisters was being defiled by a young black man? How would he have the media report this scandalous revelation? And what relevance does he think it has to the presidential election today?

Graham has outted himself as a most vile bigot. He pretends that there is some social significance to the fact that Obama had white girlfriends, but the reality of it is that he’s just plain racist. And this is a theme that right-wingers have attempted to sneak into the campaign ever since Obama emerged as a national figure. Last year Fox Nation posted this thinly disguised racial attack on Obama.

It’s five months before the election and already the conservative haters are loading their attacks with overtly racist themes. And then they complain when people correctly point out their flaming prejudice. Well I have one message for them: If you don’t like being called racist, stop being racist.

Fox Nation: Historic Debacle At CNN

Posted by Mark NC on June 1, 2012 at 1:07 pm. 3 Comments :

It has been well documented that Fox News is a disreputable enterprise that shuns any semblance of journalistic ethics. The most recent example, producing and airing an anti-Obama campaign-style video, perfectly demonstrates how far afield they are from a being legitimate news organization. Amongst the traits of Fox News that separate them from the pack is their tendency to attack their peers in the news business. That is almost unheard of from other cable networks, newspapers, or other outlets.

Today Fox News continued in that vein by leaping on the Nielsen ratings reports for May 2012. To be sure, CNN’s ratings were dismal. But so were the ratings for Fox which declined double digits and notched a primetime low that they haven’t seen since 2008. Nevertheless, Fox reported only on CNN’s numbers and ignored their own sickly showing. And nowhere in their story did they note that the decline was primarily due to the inflated ratings in May 2011, when the killing of Osama Bin Laden, hurricanes in the Midwest, and Casey Anthony were dominating the airwaves.

That said, Fox is inadvertently correct about a debacle at CNN, but not the way they mean. CNN is suffering a decline in viewership that is historic mainly because they pioneered the concept of the 24 hour cable news network but are now languishing in last place. But if they are perplexed by the sorry turn of fate they have experienced in recent years it is only because of their own willful blindness to the circumstances that led to it.

When Fox News began to approach and overtake CNN in the ratings, CNN management made the foolish mistake of concluding that Fox’s success was related to their blatant conservative bias and abandonment of journalistic principles. While that was (and is) the model for Fox’s programming, that played only a small part in their success story. The real reason that Fox excelled was that they had switched the deck. They were not in any practical sense a news network. Their programming was (and is) closer to an entertainment channel than anything else. They feature shallow, sensationalistic stories that rely heavily on melodrama, controversy, emotion and sex – the main characteristics of soap operas and reality shows. And they decorate their broadcasts with flashy graphics and sound effects that would be more appropriate for game shows. That’s what draws their viewers in, and that is always more compelling than actual news content.

However, CNN panicked and decided that the way to compete with Fox was to emulate their right-wing partisanship and theatrics. Ironically, even Fox’s business network recognized that emulating Fox News was a losing strategy. Fox Business Network VP Kevin Magee sent a memo to his staff saying that…

“…the more we make FBN look like FNC the more of a disservice we do to ourselves. I understand the temptation to imitate our sibling network in hopes of imitating its success, but we cannot. If we give the audience a choice between FNC and the almost-FNC, they will choose FNC every time.”

CNN Tea Party Unfortunately, no one at CNN could grasp that simple truth. Instead they installed Ken Jautz, a rabidly right-wing promoter, as it’s chief. Jautz was the man who gave Glenn Beck his first job in television. Then CNN went on a hiring binge that consisted of the most unsavory figures from Wingnutlandia including: Amy Holmes (of Glenn Beck’s GBTV), Will Cain (of Beck’s The Blaze), Erick Erickson (of the uber-conservative blog RedState), Dana Loesch (of Breitbart News and the Tea Party), and E.D. Hill, a former Fox anchor and Bill O’Reilly guest host, who is most famous for saying that a friendly fist bump between the President and the First Lady was really a “terrorist fist jab.”

CNN demonstrated its new found rightist perspective by producing programming that was straight out of the conservative PR playbook. They were the only cable news network to broadcast live Michele Bachmann’s Tea Party response to Obama’s State of the Union address. They co-sponsored a GOP primary debate with the corrupt Tea Party Express. They also co-sponsored a debate with the ultra-right-wing Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

For a network that claims to be the only truly neutral source for news, CNN has conspicuously failed to permit a representative from MoveOn.org to respond to a presidential address, nor to co-host a debate with the Center for American Progress. They have navigated toward a full-on Foxification of the network without any pretense to objectivity or balance.

And what have they got for it? A steep collapse to last place in the ratings, an embarrassing forfeiture of credibility, a severe loss of viewer loyalty and respect, and the pleasure of becoming a target of Fox’s ridicule.

As a division of TimeWarner, CNN has the resources to brand itself as a powerhouse news provider. They have more domestic and international news bureaus than any television news enterprise. They have access to the talent and technology that could set them apart from their competitors. Yet they fail to take advantage of these assets. And worse, they squander them in the vain hope of being FoxLite.

That’s what I call an historic debacle. And it’s why CNN just posted their worst ratings in twenty years. It’s also why they are now seen as an object of sympathy as Fox News batters them in the ratings and in the press. The first step in rehabilitating themselves would be to recognize their problem and clean house. Then they would need to fight back. If they would aggressively hammer at Fox as a lightweight purveyor of lies in a flashy, soap opera package, they might just begin to recover some measure of pride and start their long trek back to legitimacy.

Fox News Ignores Story About Their Anti-Obama Video

Posted by Mark NC on May 31, 2012 at 11:09 am. 6 Comments :

Fox News Faux Pas Yesterday Fox News aired a brazenly biased video that could have passed for a Republican attack ad against President Obama. It confirmed the widespread, well deserved, reputation of Fox as the PR arm of the Republican Party.

The video was quickly and harshly criticized by pundits and television critics from across the political spectrum. Even Fox recognized the highly inappropriate nature of the video in their own response. First they removed it from their web sites. Then they edited it to remove all traces of the Fox & Friends connection to it and reposted it online. But even the revised version was deemed too far over the line and they later deleted that as well.

The news of this partisan escapade was reported by numerous media outlets including:

Atlanta Journal Constitution
Newsday
McClatchy Washington Bureau
CBS News
Washington Post
Daily Beast
Seattle Times
Hollywood Reporter
Huffington Post
National Journal
Baltimore Sun

One notoriously absent news bureau that failed to report on the matter was Fox News. In fact, there was no mention of the story from any Rupert Murdoch news division except for a reprint of an Associated Press story buried in the Wall Street Journal online.

Most notable, Fox & Friends had nothing to say about their embarrassing participation in this blatant political activism. Their program this morning completely ignored the matter, even though they had all gushed with effusive praise for the video yesterday when they ran it.

Fox’s response to the controversy was a tepid statement saying only that the matter had been “addressed” with the producers. There was no detail as to whether that meant there would be any disciplinary action. Contrast that with the response to inappropriate behavior a few weeks ago by NBC personnel who misleadingly edited an audio transcript of George Zimmerman. They were promptly terminated and public notice of such was given.

There can be no mistake that this was not the work of a rogue associate producer. The video required many hours of work on company time. It would have to have been approved by multiple people on its way to broadcast. The abundance of stock video and music in the piece required that someone with authority approve the expenditure. So the excuse that no senior level executive was aware of it simply does not ring true.

The fact that Fox is so embarrassed that they can’t even publish an honest account of what happened is evidence that they knew they were wrong and that they will go to great lengths to cover it up. It illustrates ever more conclusively that Fox News is not a credible news enterprise and should not be treated as one by their viewers or their peers.

Fox News Produces An Anti-Obama Video – Then Scrubs It, Sanitizes It, And Scrubs It Again

Posted by Mark NC on May 30, 2012 at 5:32 pm. 2 Comments :

This morning on Fox & Friends, the program’s hosts, two couch potatoes and one couch tomato, introduced a video that purported to examine “Four Years of Hope and Change.” What it was in reality was a four-plus minute campaign video attacking President Obama that presented a variety of soundbites by the President accompanied by ominous graphics and eerie music that falsely implied that his campaign promises were unkept. The video addresses subjects such as…

The national debt (which ballooned as a result of Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, bailouts for banks, and two wars).
The unemployment rate (which Fox failed to note has fallen from 10.1 to 8.1, and which was the result of an economic collapse precipitated by Bush’s pandering to, and deregulation of, Wall Street).
The price of gas (which at $3.63 a gallon is still lower (and falling) than at the height of the Bush administration when it reached $4.12).
And a variety of statistics that one would expect in a recession that were caused by the economic mismanagement enumerated above.

The video (which Media Matters thoroughly debunks here) could not have been a more pro-Romney, anti-Obama attack had it been produced by the Republican National Committee. When critics observe that Fox News is the PR arm of the GOP, it is precisely because of brazenly biased political activism like this. If there were ever a time for Fox News to be investigated by the Federal Elections Commission for improper political contributions, it is now.

Apparently Fox News has also recognized the gross inappropriateness of their anti-Obama attack ad. Minutes after the video was posted online it was removed from every place it had been posted. On Fox Nation a reader would have been greeted by a “Lost at Sea” page indicating that the content was no longer at that address. On the Fox & Friends site the video was replaced by an error message saying that they “were unable to play the media you selected.” What could have prompted Fox to bury their own video that had already been broadcast on the air?

Approximately an hour later the video reappeared on Fox Nation. However, it had been edited to remove all of the footage of the Fox & Friends crew introducing it and summing up at the conclusion. It’s almost as if Fox were trying to destroy any evidence of their involvement with the video.

Unfortunately for the propagandists at Fox, the evidence persists. Media Matters captured the whole production and made it available for all to see:

It was nice of the Fox Friends to credit the video’s producer, Chris White, for the fine job of partisan obfuscation he had done. Steve Doocy beamed, “No kidding. He remembered everything everybody said over the last three and a half, four years.” Well, actually he only remembered to piece together random bits from Obama’s speeches juxtaposed with negative graphics and false conclusions.

This should put an end to any talk that Fox News has been trying to moderate their bias, as some pundits suggested last year. Fox hasn’t changed at all. They are just as committed to falsifying their reporting, promoting their far-right agenda, and making imbecilic drones of their audience, as they ever were. This video would be ample evidence of that all by itself, but add to the mix Fox’s attempt to surgically excise their responsibility for it and you know all you need to know about their deceitful and dangerous intent.

Update: 2:30: The video has mysteriously disappeared again from the Fox web sites.
Update: 3:40: Now information is emerging that Fox News has been taking considerable heat for their bad behavior. It appears that the video has been disappeared by Fox. A weaselly statement was issued by Fox EVP Bill Shine who said…

“The package that aired on FOX & Friends was created by an associate producer and was not authorized at the senior executive level of the network. This has been addressed with the show’s producers.”

One has to wonder what happened to Fox’s “Zero Tolerance” policy that was instituted after a series of stupid mistakes. Now it seems that Fox is merely scapegoating an underling despite the glowing treatment that the Fox Friends gave the video and their effusive praise for the producer. The New York Times is reporting that Fox CEO Roger Ailes “was not aware of the video” even though he has previously taken a keen interest in the program. However, a lot of people were aware of this video because it was not only broadcast on air, it was posted to several sites online.

A few weeks ago a couple of NBC employees misleadingly edited an audio tape of George Zimmerman’s call to 911. NBC fired them and announced it publicly. Don’t expect the same from Fox. They don’t bother with trivialities like journalistic ethics. All they will do is say that it’s been addressed and then probably give the producer a bonus. That’s how Roger Ailes can make the ludicrous claim that “in 15 years we have never taken a story down because it was wrong.”

There is no way that Fox can avoid responsibility for this atrociously unethical affair. By now it is so obvious that Fox exists to promote Republicans and bash Democrats that this video fits squarely within their mission. The only difference this time is that they got caught crossing a line that they obviously weren’t worried about. That’s because they are so comfortable wandering across it that they’ve lost all cognizance of the line’s existence.

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Mitt Romney – Mexican Anchor Baby – Releases Fake Birth Certificate

Posted by Mark NC on May 30, 2012 at 2:57 am. 20 Comments :

For the past week Donald Trump has been bringing new verve to the birther babble as only he can. His revival of this nonsense corresponded to an upswing in his duties as a surrogate for Mitt Romney. For his part, Romney has pretended to distance himself from Trump’s birtherism even as he embraced Trump personally and leaned on his ability to pander to the mental deficients who still think that President Obama is a Manchurian alien sent from Kenya to hand America over to godless Muslim socialists.

Today, even though Romney has been fiercely denying that birtherism will play any role in his campaign, Romney released a copy of his own birth certificate:

The question is, why would Romney do this at this time? Has anyone asked him for his birth certificate (well, besides me)? If he isn’t interested in the issue, why would he raise it again by doing this? And clearly he has had time to consider the matter. Note that the certificate has a “date issued” on it of January 18, 2012. So Romney has been sitting on this for five months waiting for the right time – which must have come today as Trump was still beating the drums of this conspiracy.

However, it needs to be noted that the document that Romney provided is not an authentic birth certificate. It is a “certificate of live birth.” When Obama released a similar document it was dismissed by birthers as insufficient and evidence that he was trying to hide something. So what is Romney trying to hide? Could it have something to do with his father’s citizenship. This document states that Mitt’s father was born in Mexico making Mitt an anchor baby at best. Therefore, Mitt cannot be eligible to be president because, according to birthers, he is not a natural born citizen of two citizen parents.

Amidst this foolishness there is a far more serious matter that also concerns the release of documents. That’s because Romney still refuses to release more than a single year of his tax returns. Obama has already released twelve years of his tax returns. Romney’s father, George, also released twelve years of returns when he ran for president in 1968. Romney has plenty to hide because many of those years will contain information about his investments and potential conflicts of interest.

It would be nice if the media would devote some of the time they waste on Trump to asking why Romney fears being more forthcoming with regard to his finances – an issue that he has placed at the top of his justifications for being president.

Non-News Of The Week: Donald Trump Makes Ass Of Himself

Posted by Mark NC on May 29, 2012 at 9:59 pm. 7 Comments :

Perhaps the most insignificant news on this or any day is that Donald Trump made an ass of himself. It would be like reporting that the sun came up. But Trump’s appearance today on CNN is notable mainly for its comedy value. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Trump revealed himself to be an arrogant, ignorant, egotistical, moron with delusions of grandeur. Again, that’s not exactly news – except for the part that it was Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s resident potted plant and icon of blandness who exposed Trump. It doesn’t really take much.

The interview began with Blitzer welcoming Trump to the program. That led to Trump launching into a defensive rant without even saying hello.

Trump: I thought your reporter was very inaccurate in his description. And I thought the introduction was totally inappropriate and was actually very dishonest.

Blitzer then gave Trump an opportunity to explain specifically what troubled him about the report that preceded the interview. Trump declined and just repeated that he thought the reporter was “wrong” and was shilling for President Obama. Blitzer gave Trump another chance to explain himself, and Trump weaved and dodged and finally failed to describe a single thing that was wrong with the report.

From there the conversation devolved into name calling. Blitzer observed that Trump’s defensiveness and evasion was making him sound ridiculous. So Trump responded with a very literal “I know you are but what am I?” Trump repeatedly commented on Blitzer’s ratings, as if that had anything to do with the substance of his reporting. He rattled off some false assertions that Obama had told a former publisher that he was born in Kenya. And several times he dismissed the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate saying that “a lot of people don’t agree with that birth certificate.” That’s true – a lot of really stupid people. But when Blitzer asked him to provide a single name, Trump harrumphed that “I don’t give names.”

I have been waiting for someone to ask Trump what became of the investigators that he had sent to Hawaii and Blitzer finally did so. Blitzer played video of Trump saying that “I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding.” So Blitzer asked Trump to reveal what they had found. Trump’s response: “We don’t have to go into old news.” Except that Trump has NEVER revealed what his alleged investigators found, and didn’t do so today either. The truth is most likely that he never had any investigators. This was another stunt from a reality show clown.

Contributing to the hilarity is Fox Nation who posted an item about Trump’s visit with Blitzer with this headline: “Trump Knocks Wolf Blitzer Into Next Week.” For the Fox Nationalists it literally doesn’t matter what happens in the real world. They will just slap their headline to the top of it and pretend that everything went their way. It doesn’t matter that Trump couldn’t answer a single question and acted like a jerk while desperately trying to avoid any substantive responses. Fox knows that their audience will devour whole whatever Fox tells them. By making up phony headlines they can comfort their glassy-eyed audience who simply can’t handle the truth.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Reviving Trump Birther Charges To Attack Romney

Posted by Mark NC on May 29, 2012 at 2:09 pm. 5 Comments :

Talk about desperate…

The Fox Nationalists have posted this article asserting that a desperate Obama campaign is “Reviving Trump’s Birther Charges.” And it is a devious strategy that Obama is plotting by somehow managing to get Donald Trump to reiterate his lunatic position on Obama’s citizenship. Last week, without any noticeable provocation from the Obama camp, Trump volunteered that “It’s very simple. He said [Obama] was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia.” Imagine the sophistication of the Obama Machine that can revive the Trump Birther charges straight from the mouth of Trump without anyone, including Trump, catching on.

And now that the charges have been revived, Obama can use Trump’s delusional extremism to attack Mitt Romney. This is also evidence of just how complex the Obama strategy is. After successfully manipulating Trump into making idiotic statements, Obama’s team has somehow maneuvered Romney into embracing Trump and forcefully declining to repudiate Trump as his chief surrogate. Romney responded to criticism of his association with Trump by saying…

“You know, I don’t agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in. But I need to get 50.1% or more and I’m appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people.” [Note that Fox Nation excised the part in bold from their article]

How on earth did Obama get Romney to say publicly that he is willing to abandon his principles in order to get a majority and win the election? Then again, perhaps that wasn’t the hardest part of the plan since Romney’s principles are fairly malleable to begin with. It’s true that Romney may not agree with all of his supporters. On most issues he has taken positions in stark disagreement with himself.

Trump, it should be noted, has not been cowed by this controversy. He tweeted today that…

“@BarackObama is practically begging @MittRomney to disavow the place of birth movement, he is afraid of it and for good reason. He keeps using @SenJohnMcCain as an example, however, @SenJohnMcCain lost the election. Don’t let it happen again.”

Jeremiah Wright If directing criticism at Romney for his connection to the birther movement is evidence that Obama is afraid of it, then Romney’s criticism of Obama’s campaign for raising Bain Capital as an issue is evidence that Romney is scared Mittless of that. The difference is that Bain Capital is real and birtherism is a manifestation of acute mental decay. And that makes it all the more remarkable that Trump believes the reason McCain lost in 2008 was that he didn’t latch onto birtherism. While everyone else knows that the real reason Mccain lost was because he wouldn’t hit harder on Rev. Wright.

Only Fox Nation could look at this situation and come to the conclusion that it was Obama’s campaign that revived Trump’s inane attack. But that’s the purpose of Fox Nation – twisting reality into unrecognizable pretzel bits in order to to keep their audience as ignorant as possible. How else could their candidates win?

THE VETTING: Mitt Romney Is A War Mongering Draft-Dodger

Posted by Mark NC on May 29, 2012 at 12:31 pm. 10 Comments :

Breitbart News has been running a series of articles purporting to “vet” President Obama. They contend that the so-called “liberal” media never properly examined Obama’s past and the events of his youth that formed his character.

For the most part, the Breibrats vetting has been a circus that uncovered silly trivialities or outright lies. For instance, with no evidence whatsoever, they alleged that Obama’s college grades were lower than George W. Bush (They weren’t. Obama graduated magna cum laude, while Bush squeaked by with a C- average). They furthered the Birther conspiracy by claiming to have discovered documents that prove Obama was born in Kenya (He wasn’t. The documents were in error and the person responsible admitted it). They accused Obama of having anti-white, Marxist views associated with his Harvard law professor (He didn’t. Neither Obama nor Prof. Derrick Bell held those views).

However, in the spirit of vetting, and fully informing the public about the histories of our presidential aspirants, Here is a factual account of Mitt Romney’s past that you probably won’t see on Breibart News:

In 1966 Mitt Romney briefly attended Stanford University in California. It was a tumultuous time when the Vietnam war was stirring up dissent among America’s youth and a vibrant peace movement was growing. Mitt Romney, however, would have none of that. He was a staunch defender of the war. The photo above shows Romney (far right) at a counter-protest to a sit-in at the office of Stanford president Wallace Sterling organized by peace activists who opposed Sterling’s plans to assist in the drafting of students. Doesn’t Romney look dapper in his white slacks and sport coat?

Despite Romney’s steadfast support for the war, he still secured a deferral that kept him from serving in the military. And even though he claimed that his deferral was due to his position as a missionary on behalf of his Mormon church (and later a student deferment), he nevertheless found time to attend rallies in favor of sending other young men to war.

Romney Boys Like many Republican hypocrites, Romney is a chickenhawk who advocates the glory of battle only for other people’s sons. As for his own family, he once responded to a question concerning why none of his five boys were serving in Iraq or Afghanistan by saying that “one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected.” That’s a typically Romulan statement that illustrates what an elitist he is, who considers himself exempt from the rules by which the rest of the peasant hordes must abide.

The Breitbrats will surely ignore this new and revealing photo of Romney. Because even while they pursue their mission of vetting the President, they oppose and ridicule any examination of Romney’s past. Earlier this month Breitbrat Ben Shapiro castigated the Washington Post for publishing an article about Romney’s high school bullying of a classmate. Shapiro made it all too clear that, in his opinion, the Post was outside the bounds of ethical reporting by digging up dirt from Romney’s high school days. However, on the same day, Shapiro himself posted an article about Obama’s alleged drugs use when he was in high school.

That’s how brazenly hypocritical these right-wing pseudo-journalists are. They aren’t interested in vetting anyone, They are only interested in disseminating propaganda and character assassination.

Bonus Bit: In further vetting of Romney, Buzzfeed discovered an old news item about a visit Romney made to a veteran’s homeless shelter in Massachusetts in 1994, during his losing campaign for the senate against Ted Kennedy. Before leaving Romney asked the shelter’s director what the biggest problem at the shelter was. The director said that it was getting enough milk on the meager allowances the shelter received from the state. Romney responded, “Well, maybe you can teach the vets to milk cows.” Good one, Mitt. And maybe they can just eat cake. The Breitbrats have already posted an item complaining about Milk-Gate.

Etch-a-Sketch Update: Apparently Romney was for the Vietnam war before he was against it. Despite his activism in support of the war in 1966, by 1970 he had turned against it saying that it was a “political blunder” and that “I think we were brainwashed.” Another outright flip-flop.

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