Fox Nation vs. Reality: On Learning Ethics

The subject of ethics might seem like obviously foreign territory for Fox News, but the way Fox Nation positioned an article this morning serves to cement their utter lack of ethical principles.

The Fox Nationalists posted an item that linked to CSNNews, a subsidiary of the ultra-rightist Media Research Center. The headline reads: “Obama: ‘I Don’t Think Ethics’ Was My Favorite Subject.”

Fox Nation

Fox Nation was careful to selectively highlight just the portion of the article that made it appear that Obama shunned ethics. They quoted this portion of the article:

President Barack Obama told an audience of high school students in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday that he was “not always the very best student” and that ethics “would not have made it on the list” of his favorite subjects.

“I was not always the very best student that I could be when I was in high school, and certainly not when I was in middle school,” Obama said, speaking at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School.

“I did not love every class I took. I wasn’t always paying attention the way I should have,” Obama said. “I remember when I was in 8th grade I had to take a class called ethics. Now, ethics is about right and wrong, but if you’d ask me what my favorite subject was back in 8th grade, it was basketball. I don’t think ethics would have made it on the list.”

Even stopping there that would not be surprising for a typical 13 year old boy. But on a Fox web site it’s easy to imagine the responses in the comments by ignoramuses who never bothered to click through and read the article in full. The comments ranged from sorry attempts at humor to downright vile racism. They took from this excerpt that Obama had rejected ethics at an early age and that he has none today. Had they read further they would have learned what point Obama was actually making.

“I still remember that ethics class, all these years later,” Obama said. “I remember the way it made me think. I remember being asked questions like: What matters in life? Or, what does it mean to treat other people with dignity and respect? What does it mean to live in a diverse nation, where not everybody looks like you do, or thinks like you do, or comes from the same neighborhood as you do? How do we figure out how to get along?

“Each of these questions led to new questions,” said Obama. “And I didn’t always know the right answers, but those discussions and that process of discovery–those things have lasted. Those things are still with me today. Every day, I’m thinking about those same issues as I try to lead this nation.”

Clearly Obama was affected by his studies, and the lesson that he was passing on to the audience of school children was that subjects that may not seem interesting today are still valuable and will shape your character in years to come.

What a travesty! String him up. Another extremist, Marxist, attempt to indoctrinate American kids by the tyrannical Kenyan.

Fox News plainly lacks any speck of journalistic ethics. They could not have more deliberately misrepresented the facts in this story. And when you sink to these depths to twist facts that even the conservative source of the information reported accurately, you really should not be allowed to use the word “news” in your name.

Tom Morello Has A Message For Barack Obama

Musician/Activist Tom Morello (formerly of Rage Against the Machine) appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher last night with a pointed message for President Obama:

“Much like the President, I am half Kenyan. Like the President, I’m a Harvard graduate. Like the President, I’m from Illinois. And, like the President, I’ve been on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. I got a message for him. ‘Dude, it’s time to grow a pair. A lot of people who put you in office put you in office to fight for them; to fight against the Tea Party; to fight against this bullshit in Congress; to fight against those sons of bitches who are attacking the working class and the poor in this country.’ And he hasn’t done any of it.

At the same time, I’m not waiting for him. I’m with the people in Madison. I’m with the people who are occupying Wall Street. That’s what my music’s about. When progressive, radical or even revolutionary changes happen in this country, it’s come from below. When women got the right to vote, when lunch counters were desegregated, it was people you do not read about in history books who stood up in their place and their time for what they believe.”

Well said, Tom. And just to prove that this inspirational people’s advocate is also a radical shredder, listen to this rendition of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” with Bruce Springsteen:

[Update: 10/16/11] Tom showed up at OccupyWallStreet and answered a reporter’s question challenging his role as a political spokesman saying…

Tom Morello: When you pick up a guitar you don’t put down your first amendment rights. And I don’t think that you have to be a Harvard graduate in political science to comment on political matters. But I am a Harvard graduate in political science.”

IDIOT FOX: Bill O’Reilly Doesn’t Know What Income Taxes Are

In an analysis of Barack Obama’s speech before congress last night, Bill O’Reilly invited Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, to the program to discuss the speech and its proposals. As usual, O’Reilly demonstrated his immense capacity for misunderstanding even the simplest concepts. He also reminded us of why no Democrat should EVER appear on his show. Here is how Fox Nation is reporting the exchange:

Fox Nation

Technically, if Carney has been knocked into next week, then he’s ahead of the rest of us. Which is far better than living in the past like O’Reilly whose crusty and outdated approach to issues has proven to have failed unambiguously.

Much of the conservative media is disseminating the same absurd and false argument that O’Reilly made. The part of the interview that is making the rounds amongst the right-wingers this morning revolves around the example Obama gave of the inherent unfairness in the tax code:

“Right now Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary — an outrage he has asked us to fix.”

That is an objectively true statement. But that didn’t stop O’Reilly from pouncing on it with a fierce conviction of his righteousness as he demanded that…

“You’ve got to stop with Warren, OK? Warren is 88 years old or something. He says his secretary pays more tax. It’s not true. He’s talking about two different things. […] He’s talking about capital gains, Warren Buffett. The secretary pays federal income taxes, it’s two different taxes. But Warren and the president are trying to fool us. Stop it.”

Actually, the difference between earnings derived from capital gains and those derived from labor is immaterial with regard to reporting income. They are both subject to income taxes, (albeit at different rates) and are both reported as income on an income tax return. As can be clearly seen here:

Income Taxes

So contrary to O’Reilly’s lunk-headed theories, anyone who receives income, whether from capital gains or wages, pays federal income taxes. For O’Reilly and the rest of the right-wingnuts to deny it is foolish and/or dishonest. The points that both Obama and Buffett are making is that different types of income are being taxed at different rates and that the result is one that favors the rich.

The tax benefits enjoyed by wealthy folks like O’Reilly were put in place by legislators who respond to big donations from the very people who will receive the benefit. It is not surprising to hear O’Reilly and other elitist media pundits defend that system of reward. What is surprising (and sad) is that there are so many deluded, middle-class citizens who have allowed themselves to become lackeys of the master-class. The Tea Party is a pathetic example of the doctrine of the “useful idiot” who can be exploited to work on behalf of policies that are demonstrably harmful to their own interests.

Hopefully the ever more transparent greed of the 1% of the population that is hoarding most of the nation’s wealth will motivate the majority to rise up in opposition to the unfairness of the current situation. This is the time to make your voice heard. Your representatives and your local media need to know what the people are thinking. They can’t read minds. So do them and yourselves a favor and speak up – NOW!

Fox Nation vs. Reality: On Obama’s Stock Market Voodoo

It’s hard to believe that the Fox Nation web site is published by an organization that considers itself a news enterprise. Anyone who takes the site seriously is gravely in danger of becoming irreversibly idiotized. For example, this morning the Fox Nationalists posted this item declaring that “Stocks Tumble Worldwide After Obama Speech.”

Fox Nation

The implication, of course, is that Obama’s speech had something to do with the stocks tumbling. However, despite the deceptive headline, the article states that it is actually the “speculation congress won’t pass” the President’s proposals that contributed to the market decline. In other words, the markets favor Obama’s plan and want it to be implemented. So a more honest headline would have read “Stocks Tumble Worldwide Due To Republican Obstructionism.” But then again, if you’re looking for a more honest headline then you probably wouldn’t be reading Fox Nation in the first place.

Sarah Palin’s Estranged Union Brothers and Sisters

Sarah PalinIn a new Facebook treatise, Sarah Palin has proven again how oblivious she is to reality.

The essay begins by criticizing President Obama for remarks he didn’t make. Palin, and much of the conservative noise machine, is aghast that Teamsters President James Hoffa, Jr. gave a speech with colorful rhetoric about “going to war” against anti-labor right-wingers and “taking out” the Tea Party “sons-of-bitches” in congress in the next election. In the post-Giffords era it is unwise to use such provocative language. But for Palin, who still defends her brazenly hostile admonition, “Don’t Retreat – Reload,” to complain about it is an Olympian feat of hypocrisy.

Then Palin begins the third paragraph with something that actually sounds reasonable:

“To the same degree Americans are concerned about irresponsible, greedy corporate execs who got cushy bonuses from taxpayer-funded bailouts…”

That’s a pretty enlightened comment from a Republican. The problem is that she and her GOP pals have never before accepted the notion that corporate execs are greedy and irresponsible, even though the American people have known it for some time. But Palin spoils the moment with the remainder of her sentence:

“…we should also be concerned about greedy union bosses who are willing to tank our economy just to protect their own power.”

Here we have a small lapse in logic in that Palin provides no evidence that union bosses are doing any such thing. And since union bosses become bosses through union elections, union members are confident that their chosen leaders are working on their behalf. And if you listen to folks like Hoffa you can always hear their passion for policies that benefit labor, as opposed to Palin’s agenda of further enriching the wealthy and powerful. Palin goes on to make the ludicrous comment that union leaders are…

“…chasing American industry offshore by making outrageous, economically illogical demands that they know will never work.”

Why would they do that? How would it help them to retain their power, which is what Palin asserts is their motive? If What Palin says is true, then union leaders could just as easily support her agenda and produce more jobs, which would produce more union dues and the loyalty of members. So once again, Palin’s critique is utterly devoid of logic.

Then Palin really goes off the rails. She makes some sort of connection between union leaders and their “politically aligned corporate friends.” Since when were union leaders and corporate honchos friends? And Palin continues into fairytale land where Obama is both a socialist and a corporatist:

“This collusion is at the heart of Obama’s economic vision for America. In practice it is socialism for the very rich and the very poor, but a brutal form of capitalism for the rest of us.”

The gist of Palin’s argument is that Obama of advocating spreading the wealth to poor people via services to prevent them from starving, becoming homeless, or dying from lack of medical care. And she also accuses him of socialist advocacy for the rich via bailouts and cutting back on regulations. Unfortunately for Palin, Obama never signed a bailout bill. That was George Bush’s baby. And as for regulations, she is trying to have it both ways by accusing Obama of giving in to the corporations on regulatory policy at the same time as she is criticizing the administration for executing too may regulations. This peculiar schizophrenia is summed up in her next paragraph:

“Ask yourself if the folks you heard demonize concerned, independent Americans [her name for Tea Baggers] yesterday really speak for the working class when they’re all too happy to burden your families with the bill to bail out the President’s friends on Wall Street.”

Really? The union bosses are happy to bail out Wall Street bankers? Since when? Where does she get this stuff? I’m beginning to get worried about her. From this bit of dementia she segues to an insinuation that Obama is guilty of graft and cronyism simply because he lived in Chicago for awhile. She provides no proof, of course. It is just the most vile brand of guilt by association, which she says “isn’t just the result of a few bad apples. It’s the nature of a skewed system.” So, according to her, everybody’s guilty.

This long-winded assault on working people, and the leaders of the union movement that supports them, is Palin’s way of endearing herself to the group. I’m afraid she is not going to have much success with that plan. American labor isn’t stupid and they know when someone is trying to use and manipulate them. They know who their champions are, as well as their enemies. And without any doubt, they know who the sons-of-bitches are who would lie to them on behalf of the corporate masters that seek only to exploit them for greater wealth. Give it up, Sarah. It isn’t gonna work.

Fox News Racism Exposed In Perry/Obama Photos

The unvarnished racism of Fox News continues to reveal itself – over and over and over again.

The latest example of their repulsive hate messaging is an article purporting to show contrasting photos (below) of President Obama and Texas Governor Rick Perry in their youth. It’s actually generous to call it an article. To be accurate, it is just a link to a photo that some wingnuts are distributing on Twitter. The photo juxtaposes an image of Perry in military garb with an image of Obama that packs a more ethnic punch.

This deliberate attempt to insult the President is wrong on many levels. First, Perry’s photo may indeed be of him at or around the age of 22, but Obama’s photo is obviously much younger. [Note: I have confirmed that Obama was 18/19 when the pictures were taken by a student photographer, Lisa Jackson in 1980]. Second, while Perry did serve in the Air Force, he avoided combat duty despite the fact that his service began in 1972 and the Vietnam war was still raging until 1975.

The Fox Nationalists might just as well have featured a very different pair of photos that more realistically conveyed the contrasts between Perry and Obama. After all, Obama was an honors student who was the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated Magna Cum Laude. Perry, on the other hand, was a yell leader at Texas A&M and barely graduated with a 2.2 grade-point average and almost exclusively Cs and Ds on his transcripts.

Fox Nation Perry Obama

It is painfully clear what Fox is trying to convey to their gullible and bigoted audience. This sort of open prejudice and hate mongering needs to be exposed and disseminated widely so that Fox does not get away with such revolting behavior. And every day that the rest of the media continues to treat Fox as if it were a legitimate news enterprise is another day of shame for the press.

And on the lighter side, the brainiacs at Fox can’t even count:

Fox Can't Count

Notice that the article refers to Gawker and 7 other web sites that are dead or dying. However there are eight additional web sites represented by the logos. In fact, there are nine if you include the one in the bottom right corner. So Fox is admitting that they are dead or dying. And why not when they can’t even count to ten.

Fox Nation Exists Solely To Bash Obama

Fox Nation, the Internet community of Fox News, has completed its transition into a nearly 100% Obama Bashing Internet destination. Visit the site at any random time and you are likely to see something like this:

Fox Nation Obama Bashing

That’s 19 separate articles, all from just this morning, disparaging the President. They consume nearly all of the space on the site’s home page. Despite the fact that the Fox Nationalists assert that they aspire to fairness and balance, it is clear that they are engaged in non-stop propaganda to effect the political outcome they desire. It makes a mockery of their claim that…

“The Fox Nation is committed to the core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse, and fair and balanced coverage of the news.”

How brain damaged does one need to be to believe that BS? And if your stomach is strong enough to venture into the community comments, you will be repulsed by a collection of racists and advocates of violence and even assassination.

Obviously the folks at Fox are escalating their campaign of hate. With the election season heating up they are redoubling their efforts to malign the President and every other Democrat. Perhaps their desperation is due to the pathetic field of candidates they are saddled with promoting. They are in the embarrassing position of having to support Tea Bagger Bachmann, Perp Walk Perry, and Corporate Mate Mitt.

What’s more, the conservative/Tea Party wing of the GOP is suffering a dizzying decline in popularity.

“[T]he Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like ‘atheists’ and ‘Muslims.'”

No wonder Fox Nation is ramping up their war effort. They have a steep hill to climb and they are convinced that their only prayer for victory is to smear the enemy and to do so harshly and repeatedly. Steady your nerves – there is going to be much more of this to come. It will include accusations of socialism and treason, as well as naked fear mongering. It will probably backlash against them completely, but it will still be an ugly spectacle.

Falling Skies? A Perspective On The Gyrating Stock Market

Ever since the Tea Party Downgrade, the stock market has been a roller coaster of wild swings. Triple-digit ups and downs have become routine. And throughout, the media, and partisan politicians and pundits, have fretted over impending doom and the end of civilization.

So just to help us keep things in perspective…..

Falling Skies

Neil Cavuto, and others on Fox News, have been relentlessly harping on every scrap of negative news they can find. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have been predicting London-style riots. But we should not buy into the Fox News pessimism.

The market is up more than 50%, and over 3,000 points, since Barack Obama was inaugurated as president. Corporations in many sectors of the economy are reporting record profits. Does that mean we shouldn’t be concerned about the recent gyrations. Of course not. We still have a serious deficiency of jobs and a severely unbalanced income gap. But at least we should recognize the reality of the big picture.

There is much to be hopeful about, and if Washington will do the right thing – i.e. invest in growth and job creation, and make the rich pay their fair share – we can prevail over hard times. To do that we must fight back against the obstructionism of the TeaPublicans whose only agenda is to enrich their wealthy, corporate contributors and defeat Democrats in 2012.

Conquering Incoherence: Sarah Palin Swings And Misses

Sarah PalinIn her latest Facebook treatise, America’s Quitter Queen, Sarah Palin, spoke out on the subject of the nation’s debt crisis and the recent credit rating downgrade. Titled “Conquering the Storm.” Palin attempts to take credit for predicting precisely what she and her Tea Party comrades deliberately created by refusing to negotiate on a balanced approach to debt reduction.

However, in delivering her ever-so-serious platform for economic renewal, she couldn’t help taking a swipe at the man who demolished her dream of being able to quit the Vice-Presidency of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Reaffirming her hostility to higher education and intellectual achievement, Palin mocked Obama’s grasp of the stumbling economy saying…

One doesn’t need a Harvard Law degree to figure this out!

Oh, doesn’t one? How about a Harvard Economics degree? Palin seems to think that the legal curriculum is the path to financial expertise. Her dig at Obama’s education is kind of like saying that one doesn’t need a degree in architecture to figure out marine biology. Technically, it’s true. There is a Dadaist elegance to her pseudo-logic. No wonder she knows so little about the media. Her degree (which took five colleges to acquire) is in journalism instead of farming. And by the way, Obama, who graduated from Harvard Magna Cum Laude, minored in economics.

But Palin isn’t done yet. She expanded on her criticism by belittling the President’s economic agenda as “magical.”

“By what magical thinking did we figure we could run up perpetual trillion dollar deficits and still somehow avoid the unforgiving mathematics of a downgrade?”

Unfortunately, Palin must have missed the news that S&P’s “unforgiving” math was off by $2 trillion dollars, and it was Obama’s economic team that corrected them. Subsequently, S&P had to rewrite their justification of the downgrade replacing economic concerns with political ones because the debt argument no longer satisfied the criteria for a downgrade. And the new political justification is where S&P indicted Palin and the TeaPublicans for their intransigence and resistance to commonsense tax reforms.

Tea Party Downgrade

Palin ignored this criticism to, once again, play the victim:

“Blaming the Tea Party for our credit downgrade is akin to Nero blaming the Christians for burning Rome.”

That’s an interesting allegory because, according to the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, “while the Christians didn’t actually start the fire, they didn’t do much about putting it out either, because they saw it as the sign of the second coming of Christ.” The parallels between this and Palin’s socially conservative congregation are plentiful and disturbingly amusing. It was the Tea Bag Brigades that advocated doing nothing about the debt ceiling and letting the nation go into default.

The remainder of Palin’s Facebooking reads like a broken record of GOP platitudes extolling tax cuts, deregulation, and drilling here, there, and everywhere. She castigates the President for not offering a plan, but her own plan is one that has proven to be a failure. And if she can’t even put together a coherent criticism of her political opponents, how can we trust her to protect America from the terrorist plots of Al Roker?

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Obama And The Tea Party

Once again, Fox Nation outright lies in a headline article. The arrogance of the Fox Nationalists is astonishing in that they will brazenly lie even while providing a link to the source data the exposes them as liars.

Fox Nation - Obama and the Tea Party

Here we have Fox Nation headlining that President Obama is more unpopular than the phantom Tea Party. The source is a poll by the New York Times. But if you look at the actual poll results you will find that the truth is exactly the opposite of what the Fox Nationalists are saying. From the Times:

“The public’s opinion of the Tea Party movement has soured in the wake of the debt-ceiling debate. The Tea Party is now viewed unfavorably by 40 percent of the public and favorably by just 20 percent, according to the poll.”

“The president’s overall job approval rating remained relatively stable, with 48 percent approving of the way he handles his job as president and 47 percent disapproving.”

To repeat, 48% approve of Obama while only 20% approve of the Tea Party. That means Obama’s approval is more than twice that of the Tea Party. What’s more, Obama is viewed favorably by slightly more people than view him unfavorably. The Tea Party is viewed unfavorably by twice as many people as view it favorably.

The only way to spin this poll positively for the the Tea Party is to deliberately misconstrue the data by taking into account only the unfavorable numbers as if they existed in a vacuum. The liars at Fox fail to acknowledge that nearly 40% of respondents were undecided or hadn’t heard enough about the Tea Party to have an opinion (more evidence that it is a phantom party). Of the respondents who do have an opinion, they dislike the Tea Party by 2-to-1. If that ratio held as people became more aware of the Tea Party, their unfavorables would shoot up to 66%.

Leave it to Fox to lie to their audience and produce a community characterized by ignorance and wishful thinking. It is this sort of disinformation that creates delusional political factions like the Tea Party in the first place.

[Update 8/17/2011] New polling shows that the Tea Party is even less popular that atheists and Muslims.