Rupert Murdoch’s Climate Change Hypocrisy

Posted by on April 23, 2011 at 3:23 pm. 21 Comments :

The folks at Climate Progress have compiled a pretty comprehensive report documenting the hypocrisy of Rupert Murdoch and his cable news mouthpiece, Fox News. They cover the vast territory between the private and public pronouncements of the rightist propaganda empire.


This is an area that News Corpse has covered in the past exposing the dishonesty of Fox anchors like Glenn Beck and Neil Cavuto, as well as the editorial deceit of Fox’s Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon, who has issued directives to engage in deliberate disinformation.

The evidence of a so-called “news” network speaking out of both sides of its microphone are neatly detailed in the Climate Progress article. It shows that Murdoch and Fox are actively seeking to fleece both sides of the flock when it comes to the debate over Global Warming. They want to present a public image as a good corporate citizen for their business partners and clients, but they are also determined to advance the science denial rhetoric that their political allies and viewers expect.

That’s how you can have statements from Murdoch bragging about the environmental responsibility of News Corp as they achieve carbon neutrality, and later watch Sean Hannity as he declares that Climate Change is a hoax. It’s how you can observe the incongruous spectacle of Beck accusing all Global Warming activists of being socialists while a special, green-tinged Fox logo spins at the bottom of the screen during “Green Week.”


Keep it up Rupert. You are building an empire that is rapidly losing the trust of all sentient beings. But at least you can take pride in the knowledge that you are making your viewers more stupid with every minute they watch.

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What If Atlas Shrugged And No One Was There To See It?

Posted by on April 21, 2011 at 11:01 am. 10 Comments :

The film version of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s soporific paean to malevolent ego-centrism, has finally been released to the throngs of slobbering Tea Baggers desperate for some cinematic validation. Sadly for these pathetic flim(flam) buffs, this flick hardly fills the void in their lost souls.

Atlas ShruggedThe movie is being released as “Part 1” with the promise of two more in the unlikely event that this one turns a profit. But the circumstances of its production foretell its dreary fate. Producer John Aglialoro has stated publicly that he was forced to commence production a few days short of the expiration of his rights to the book. As a result it was hurried into production without a script or a cast. He also admitted that casting was difficult because “Talent agencies were not sending us many of their top people.” Apparently no one of note wanted to be associated with a project that had been aborted on numerous occasions. That’s why one of the most popular books of the last half century is coming to the screen with unknown TV talent in the leads. The director complained that he didn’t have the necessary time to make the movie he wanted to make. It’s almost as if the principals are preemptively making excuses for why the movie sucks so bad. And they aren’t the the only ones who think so. The reviews have been merciless:

Roger Ebert: “The most anticlimactic non-event since Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone’s vault. I suspect only someone very familiar with Rand’s 1957 novel could understand the film at all, and I doubt they will be happy with it.”

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: “The book was published in 1957, yet the clumsiness of this production makes it seem antediluvian.”

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: “It has taken decades to bring Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ to the big screen. They should have waited longer.”

Kurt Loder, Reason Online: “The new, long-awaited film version of Atlas Shrugged is a mess, full of embalmed talk, enervated performances, impoverished effects, and cinematography that would barely pass muster in a TV show. Sitting through this picture is like watching early rehearsals of a stage play that’s clearly doomed.”

Peter Dubruge, Variety: “Part one of a trilogy that may never see completion, this hasty, low-budget adaptation would have Ayn Rand spinning in her grave.”

Washington Post: “Nearly as stilted, didactic and simplistic as Rand’s free-market fable.”

Some of the most damning criticism highlighted above comes from those who might otherwise be considered the film’s target audience, for instance the Wall Street Journal (Fox’s newsprint cousin) and Reason Magazine (the imprint of Randian Libertarianism).

From the start the film’s prospects were dim. It was an independent with little backing and decades of false starts. In order to preserve his rights, Aglialoro bankrolled the project with $10 million of his own money. Without a heavyweight distributor they had to be creative. So they hit up the Tea Party circuit for support.

A trailer for the film debuted at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. It was screened for such cultural tastemakers as John Boehner, and Andrew Breitbart (yes, that was sarcasm). Then they brought in the big guns: FreedomWorks, the AstroTurf Tea Party organizers sponsored by the billionaire Koch brothers. Matt Kibbe, the president and CEO of FreedomWorks went to work promoting the film via his Freedom Connector social network (which has been prominently plugged by Glenn Beck), and a massive email list. It doesn’t appear to have worked.

The boxoffice for the opening weekend, timed to coincide with the federal tax filing deadline, was middling at best. The movie pulled in $1.7 million for three days from 300 screens. The take dropped nearly 50% from Friday to Sunday, which doesn’t bode well for increasing the number of screens in the weeks ahead (and the universally dreadful reviews won’t help either). The filmmakers are already touting the per-screen attendance numbers, but what they fail to acknowledge is that per-screen sales are generally higher for limited releases because more people are funneled into fewer venues.

[Update: Weekend #2 – Tea Baggers stayed away from Atlas Shrugged in droves. The movie earned half as much money as the previous weekend despite playing in 165 more theaters (+55%)]

The truth is that the Tea Party marketing has been less than spectacular (perhaps because the Tea Party doesn’t actually exist). If FreedomWorks has a couple of million people on their mailing list and all of the film’s viewers were FreedomWorkers (not likely), then 90% of their supporters ignored the call to action. The weak turnout by the Tea Party set mirrors their weakness at the annual Tax Day rallies where mere dozens bothered to show up.

The affinity for Ayn Rand by the Tea Party has always been a bit of a mystery. Sure, there is a shared hostility for government, particularly when it endeavors to fulfill its Constitutional obligation to provide for the general welfare. Both Rand and the TP’s despise efforts to aid society’s less fortunate, whom they believe deserve to suffer. But how do predominantly Christian, patriot, Tea Partyers justify their idolization of an anti-American, atheist who regards compassion as evil and selfishness as the pinnacle of human values?

Ironically, a key theme of the book and the film is the rejection of society by the wealthy business class who mysteriously disappear. There is a correlation to that plot point in contemporary America as we have already witnessed the disappearance of business luminaries like Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff, Dennis Kozlowski, Bernard Ebbers, and John Rigas, to name a few. It doesn’t appear that society has suffered from their absence. Yet there is another industrial titan who not only hasn’t vanished, he is masquerading across the airwaves as a presidential candidate. I’m not sure Ayn Rand would approve of this, however, the popularity of Donald Trump at Tea Parties is perfectly understandable. He is the ultimate manifestation of Randian politics: a greedy, conceited, selfish bully. But for every Tea Party supporter there are probably twenty other Americans who wish that Trump would “go Galt.”

There is another curious irony in the marketing strategy for the film. Tea Partyers and other Rand fans were furiously emailing appeals to their friends and Facebook buddies to implore them to see the movie – not because they considered it great cinema, they hadn’t seen it yet – but because strong ticket sales would somehow validate the book’s principles. In Rand’s world money equals truth. They regard the quality of the film as secondary to the need for boxoffice success in order to advance their agenda and to prove the power of the Tea Party as a consumer/political force. In other words, these Utopian free marketeers were afraid to trust the free market to decide the film’s fate.

Alas for them, it will anyway. And in the end, all anyone will remember of this drivel is that, when moviegoers were presented with a poorly planned, shoddily executed load of dreck, the audience shrugged.

This is far more entertaining:


Piss Beck

Posted by on April 20, 2011 at 11:37 am. 3 Comments :

BREAKING NEWS from the delusional world of Glenn Beck’s Acute Paranoia Revue:

Beck: Have you heard this reported yet? Palm Sunday. Four people from an anti-Christian group attacked two pieces of religious artwork in France.


There may be a very good reason why you haven’t heard that reported yet. If you were to go to the Guardian web site that Beck referenced you would find a story that says…

“When New York artist Andres Serrano plunged a plastic crucifix into a glass of his own urine and photographed it in 1987 under the title Piss Christ, he said he was making a statement on the misuse of religion.

Controversy has followed the work ever since, but reached an unprecedented peak on Palm Sunday when it was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an ‘anti-blasphemy’ campaign by French Catholic fundamentalists in the southern city of Avignon.”

You see, it was not “an anti-Christian group” that attacked the artwork, as Beck stated. It was a group of Catholic fundamentalists. So either Beck is lying or he never actually read the article. Furthermore, it is curious that Beck would condemn an attack on a piece of artwork that he surely regards as blasphemous. Is he defending “Piss Christ” as free expression? That would be an enlightened position for him to take and thus, unlikely. In any case, he still shouldn’t accuse anti-Christians of the vandalism when it was Christians who were responsible.

I wonder if Beck would still condemn the vandalism if he knew it was Christians who committed it. I also wonder if Beck will correct this “mistake” as he frequently brags that he will always put his corrections up front. We’ll see.

Flashback: Beck’s last excursion into art criticism was a hilariously demented tour of the art in Manhattan architecture that he said was loaded with subliminal socialist messages. He saw these messages everywhere and particularly in structures built by the notoriously communist Rockefeller family.


Andrew Breitbart Throws Glenn Beck Under The Bus For Throwing Him Under The Bus

Posted by on April 20, 2011 at 10:47 am. 2 Comments :

This just keeps getting better.

Last week the feud between conservative stalwarts Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson became public in a big way with Carlson’s web site citing numerous rightist pundits who claim that Beck has plagiarized them. Beck shot back accusing his critics of jealousy.

Andrew Breitbart was one of those cited in Carlson’s story. Today Breitbart upped the ante by telling the New York Observer that Beck “threw me under the bus” during the Shirley Sherrod affair when Sherrod was defamed as a racist in a deceptively edited video. Breitbart reveals that Beck had worked with him in the preparation and editing of the video.

Breitbart: Next thing I know, I’m under complete attack without the support of Glenn Beck, who I thought was somebody I could count on.

This is a startling revelation. First it’s an admission that there was an intent to misrepresent Sherrod in the video, something that Breitbart has previously denied. And it also casts Beck as a co-conspirator. This is significant because Beck has tried to portray himself as someone who had rejected the Sherrod video when it was first released by Breitbart.

Beck: We defended her and said her side of the story demanded to be heard – because context matters. That’s how we do things.

Not exactly. First of all, Beck only defended Sherrod on his afternoon television program after the video hoax had been revealed. On his radio show that morning he castigated her saying that we “have video tape of a USDA administration official discriminating against white farmers.”

So Beck participated in the dishonest editing of the video with Breitbart, used his morning radio show to promote the phony clip that he helped to create, and by the time his TV show aired later the same day, and the bottom had dropped out of the story, he pretends to be pristine and unaffiliated as he defends the poor victim of Breitbart’s slander and the White House’s knee-jerk over-reaction.

What a piece of ….. work.


Watch Out Fox News: FTC Seeks To Halt Fake News Sites

Posted by on April 19, 2011 at 2:19 pm. 5 Comments :

Fox NewsFrom the Federal Trade Commission,
April 19, 2011:

“The Federal Trade Commission is requesting federal courts to temporarily halt the allegedly deceptive tactics of 10 operations using fake news websites […] According to the FTC, the defendants operate websites that are meant to appear as if they belong to legitimate news-gathering
organizations, but in reality the sites are simply advertisements aimed at deceptively enticing consumers…”

Fox News is not one of the ten operations cited in this action, but given the description of the violations, could they be far behind? The FTC is taking aggressive steps toward reigning in deceptive practices that “attempt to portray an objective, journalistic endeavor,” says David Vladeck, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Almost everything about these sites is fake.”

If that is the basis for this action, then Fox News ought to be the next target of the FTC’s investigative unit. They blatantly endeavor to portray themselves as a legitimate news-gathering organization while deliberately deceiving viewers. They employ anchors who openly advocate for political issues and candidates despite claiming to be “fair and balanced,” a slogan that in itself violates the FTC’s truth-in-advertising statutes. In fact, some of their paid contributors are actually candidates themselves.

The Fox network is notorious for making false claims that misinform viewers and produce tangible harm. For instance, they spent weeks promoting heavily edited videos that defamed the community service organization, ACORN. They served as the PR agency for Tea Party interests and events. They disparaged health care reform as socialistic. During that debate a memo from Fox’s Washington managing editor instructed his staff to refrain from using the term “public option” because focus group testing had proven that “government-run” would produce a more negative response.

Even with routine reporting that is objectively factual, Fox purposely manipulated their broadcasts. They reported falsely that President Obama spent $2 billion on an overseas trade mission. They invented stories about the Department of Justice declining to prosecute civil rights cases if the plaintiff was white (and then failed to report that those allegations were proven false by an independent Congressional study). And on more than one occasion their anchor scripts and on-screen charts reversed the numbers for polling to show that the President, or the Democratic position, was disfavored by respondents when the actual poll result was the opposite.

To be clear, the FTC actions in the announcement above were taken in response to complaints levied about companies marketing acai berries for weight loss. But are the allegations really that different? If there is an institutional objection to fake news operations selling dubious nutritional products, wouldn’t it be even more critical to police fake news operations selling lies that could influence legislation and elections that impact millions of lives?

I don’t expect to see the FTC halting fake news operations like Fox any time soon. But it would be nice if they could prohibit the word “news” from being used in conjunction with such an operation. And if phony programs that misrepresent weight loss can be regulated to protect consumers, then why not phony programs that misrepresent news?


Glenn Beck’s Youth Bashing Crushed By Van Jones’ Optimism

Posted by on April 18, 2011 at 8:30 pm. NO Comments :

Glenn Beck has spent much of the past two years dismissing young people as ignorant, brainwashed, and/or “useful idiots.” He regards them as societal appendages whose obligation is to be obedient and silent. Most recently he blamed the uprisings in the Middle East on unruly kids led by Google executives and intent on forming alliances with western leftists and Al Qaeda to invoke Shariah law from Tripoli to Topeka.

Today Beck replayed old clips of Al Gore motivating young environmentalists by telling them that “There are some things about our world that you know that older people don’t know.” That is objectively true for every new generation. If it were not it would mean that civilization is standing still. We are supposed to get smarter as time goes by. Aren’t we?

Not according to Beck. In Beck’s world Gore’s remarks are an appalling affront to parental authority. As is the speech that Van Jones gave at the Power Shift Conference for young leaders this past weekend. Beck played a short video of Jones encouraging members of the audience to be forthright in their advocacy for a clean environment. As usual, Beck cut the video so as to mislead his viewers. What he left was this snippet:

“When you go home, shift the power at the Thanksgiving table. When your Uncle Joe, who loves Fox News, starts talking to you and starts dominating the discussion.”

That’s where Beck cuts it off to insert his response:

“I will tell you this, in a side note. That is why I’m leaving this network. This network has this audience cornered. You are here because it is telling you the truth. We have got to get to the youth.”

First of all, that is not why Beck is leaving the network. He is leaving because he was fired for alienating over 300 advertisers and losing half of the audience. Secondly, Beck doesn’t explain what audience he alleges to have cornered, but presumably it is not the youth audience. In fact, Beck’s viewers, like Fox in general, skew older than any program on cable news. That aside, it is important to hear the rest of Jones’ thoughts to understand the depths of Beck’s intention to deceive. Just following the point where Beck cut the tape:

“When you go home, shift the power at the Thanksgiving table. When your Uncle Joe, who loves Fox News, starts talking to you and starts dominating the discussion, and starts making you feel small, and that your ideas don’t count, and that you’re some kind of bizarre freak, shift the power. Because this movement is not just for Democrats, and it’s not just for lefties. This movement is for everybody. And you have the opportunity to say to your Uncle Joe, ‘Excuse me sir. Don’t you believe in liberty? And if you do, how can you live in a country where every American is forced to be an energy consumer for the rest of our lives?

“Shouldn’t we have the right as Americans to be energy producers?’ Shouldn’t we be able to put up solar panels on our own houses? Shouldn’t we be able to put up wind turbines in our backyards? Shouldn’t we be able, as Americans, to power our own community? Shouldn’t we have the right and the liberty to be energy producers and not be dictated to twelve times a years by energy companies that dictate how much we’re gonna pay for energy, when we’re gonna pay it, how many asthma inhalers we’re gonna have as a consequence? Shouldn’t we have the liberty, as Americans, to power this country in a new way?”

Beck surely knows that the rest of that segment was entirely respectful toward Uncle Joe. He knows that there was no attempt to dishonor the role of parents or elders. He knows this yet he purposefully manipulates the message to cast young people in a negative light. And he has the gall to do this while declaring that he wants to “get to the youth.” That’s a goal he also spoke of in Albany on Saturday, where he said that he planned to build a way to deliver news directly to the youth of America. Does he plan to do that by frightening them as he does his radio and television audiences? Because that won’t work with this demographic. They are far more independent and self-directed. And for all the disrespect that Beck hurls at them, he cannot win them over with lies and fear mongering.

And just for the heck of it, here is Jones’ inspiring conclusion to the speech (which you can watch in full here):

“I love liberty. Given what’s happened with my ancestors, nobody loves liberty more than I do. But the pledge of allegiance doesn’t stop there. The pledge of allegiance says ‘liberty and justice for all.’ ‘Liberty and justice for all.’ And that’s what your movement is about. Liberty, yes, and justice. Justice for the immigrant. Justice for the lesbians and the gays. Justice for the African-Americans. Justice for women. Justice for the rural poor. Justice for the Native Americans. Liberty and justice for all. Shift the power!”

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Bitches Brawl: Glenn Beck vs. Tucker Carlson

Posted by on April 18, 2011 at 12:33 pm. 3 Comments :

Glenn BeckA few weeks ago Tucker Carlson’s web site, The Daily Caller, ran the latest phony videos from scam artist James O’Keefe’s dishonest NPR sting. Shortly thereafter, Glenn Beck’s web site, The Blaze, took apart the videos revealing how deceptively they had been edited. This created a small schism in the right-wing media family.

Today that split has been wedged a little wider. TheDC published a lengthy article that accuses Beck of being a serial thief. He is shown to have appropriated the work of other conservative authors on multiple occasions so that it appears that he came up with the material himself. In some cases he went so far as to erase video logos from the originals in order to hide the source. Some of those whom Beck ripped off were vocally upset:

Andrew Breitbart, Big Journalism: “…sometimes he also uses other peoples’ work without crediting them, making it appear as though it were his own.”

Rebel Pundit: “You’ve got pretty much the biggest guy in the movement take your stuff and actually have his editors spend the time to scrub my name off of it.”

John Sexton, VerumSerum: “He’s used our stuff without any hat tip at all. I don’t understand that.”

Pamela Geller, AtlasShrugs: “I don’t know how to describe such outrageous and proud thievery. I like his work, but he’s a thief.”

Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media: “[Beck’s producers] told me Glenn wanted to handle the issue himself, which means he wanted to appear to be the expert.”

On his radio program this morning Beck and his crew escalated the conflict. They responded to the column in TheDC with a sarcastic reference to the article being an act of vengeance for the Blaze’s takedown on the NPR story:

Sidekick Stu: “Clearly there is no attempt at revenge to come up with a pathetic, horrible story about how Glenn steals from his own employees.”

Then Beck defends himself by saying that there are no original ideas – a justification that implies it’s OK to steal anything. He then proceeds to describe an item on The Blaze that has links to YouTube or some other source material. However, the complaints about Beck’s misappropriation were addressed to his television show, not his web site. And the TV show had no links or other attributions.

Previously Beck has been been called a plagiarist by the popular radio conspiracy guru, Alex Jones. Jones, who has called Beck a whore and a punk, has repeatedly lambasted Beck for stealing his research and twisting it to fit a rightist/GOP agenda.

It’s rather amusing that anyone would want to take credit for the garbage Beck spews, but pride of authorship extends even to nutcases who peddle insane conspiracy theories. If Beck rips them off they are entitled to their indignation. And the skirmishes that ensue ought to be entertaining for those of us in the reality-based world as right-wingers bark at each other. So have at it and may the craziest man win.

Update: Add Mike Huckabee to the list of those with whom Beck is feuding.


It’s Official! Donald Trump Is Dumber Than A Tree Stump

Posted by on April 17, 2011 at 2:59 pm. 8 Comments :

As he pursues his egomaniacal quest for attention and comb-over-exposure, Donald Trump is conclusively demonstrating that you can be a billionaire and an idiot at the same time. Like Henry Ford, who revolutionized manufacturing while supporting Hitler, Trump might be able to get an office building erected, but he can’t think past a third grade level on politics or social affairs.


It was recently revealed that Trump’s Birther obsession has been fueled by the wackiest wingnut publisher on the Internet, WorldNetDaily. WND’s editor-in-chief, Joseph Farah, says that he talks with The Donald “quite a bit.” That’s painfully obvious in that Trump has now adopted one of the most ludicrous, and easily debunked, schizoid rumors that WND has been promoting for years.

WND’s conspiracy nutjob, Jack Cashill, has been asserting for almost three years that Barack Obama’s book, “Dreams From My Father,” was ghostwritten by Bill Ayers. He concluded this by conducting a hare-brained study on the style of language used in the book. Unfortunately, even researchers he contacted would not endorse this nonsense.

Nevertheless, Trump paid a visit to the Hannity program on Fox News and announced that he believes the Cashill ghostwriting fable:

Trump: I heard he [Obama] had terrible marks, and he ends up in Harvard. He wrote a book that was better than Ernest Hemingway, but the second book was written by an average person.
Hannity: You suspect Bill Ayers?
Trump: I said, Bill Ayers wrote the book. […] He was best friends with Bill Ayers. Bill Ayers was a super-genius. And a lot of people have said he wrote the book. Well recently, as you know last week, Bill Ayers came out and said he did write the book.

Where to begin? There is so much about this that is just plain moronic. Let’s begin with the fact that Trump has no idea what Obama’s grades were, and he even admits it by saying it was something he “heard” (voices in his head?). The truth is that Obama earned an academic scholarship to Harvard and, while there, proved his worthiness by becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduating with honors.

Next, Trump’s assertion that Obama and Ayers were “best friends” is contrary to every factual account of their relationship which has always been at most an acquaintanceship.

Then Trump says that Ayers admitted to writing the book. Can Trump really be this monumentally stupid? He is referring to a speech Ayers gave wherein he was obviously mocking claims in the conservative press that he was the author. Ayers joked that it was true and therefore he wanted his share of the royalties. The audience got it and laughed appropriately. Trump is just regurgitating the take that WND had at the time.

So with no evidence whatsoever, Trump jumped aboard another runaway conspiracy train engineered by WorldNetDaily. He is embracing delusions that some of the most insane stalwarts of the right have rejected. For a supposedly serious GOP candidate to align himself with the crackpottery of WND says a lot about how seriously we can take today’s Republican Party.

Even Glenn Beck has gotten sick of the Birther craze saying “Stop With The Damn Birth Certificate!” [Note: As is typical with Beck’s proclivity for hypocrisy, last night he told an audience in Albany that “I don’t know where [Obama is from] I don’t think he’s from where they issue birth certificates – I think he’s from Hell.” So Beck has gone even further by asserting that Obama is from a place even worse than Kenya].

Perhaps the mind-numbingly idiotic moment of the Hannity interview was when Trump said this:

“Look, he was born ‘Barry Soetero.’ Somewhere along the line, he changed his name.”

Not exactly, Donald. Obama was the son of, and namesake to, Barack Obama Sr. His step-father Lolo Soetoro married Obama’s mother when Obama was four years old. Is Trump’s derangement so severe that he has completely lost his grasp of reality?

Some recent polls have shown Trump rising in popularity. It should be noted that these are polls of Republican primary voters, not the general public. This shows how frighteningly extremist the GOP base has become. They just adore paranoid conspiracies and mutilated facts. And they are oblivious to coherent arguments and objective truths. They happily ignore the fact that Trump once supported universal health care and was an advocate of gay rights. And imagine the rash of head explosions if the Tea Party crowd ever got wind of this quote from Trump’s book:

“I would impose a one-time, 14.25% tax on individuals and trusts with a net worth over $10 million. For individuals, net worth would be calculated minus the value of their principal residence. That would raise $5.7 trillion in new revenue, which we would use to pay off the entire national debt. […] Some will say that my plan is unfair to the extremely wealthy. I say it is only reasonable to shift the burden to those most able to pay. The wealthy actually would not suffer severe repercussions.”

Needless to say, Trump disavows these positions today in favor of Tea Party propaganda. He now believes that we should appropriate billions of dollars from other countries to pay down our debt (he doesn’t say how). He believes we should just take the oil from Libya and Iraq. And he favors military action against Iran and North Korea. And the Tea Party Republicans just love this guy.

Me too. I am now completely behind the Trump candidacy for the GOP nomination. I don’t think there could be any better nominee – for the Democrats. While Palin, Huckabee, or Gingrich, would lose to Obama by historic margins, Trump would not only lose, but he would so embarrass anyone from admitting an affinity for the Republican Party that it would ensure a Democratic majority for a couple of generations. So…..

Go Trump/Bachmann 2012!


Donald Trump Gets His Birther Material From WorldNetDaily

Posted by on April 16, 2011 at 10:10 am. 10 Comments :

The next time you hear Donald Trump spouting off nonsense about President Obama’s citizenship you should know from where he is acquiring his information.

Kendra Marr of Politico reports that Joseph Farah has been “on the phone with Donald Trump every day this week.” Farah is the publisher of WorldNetDaily, a fantastical compendium of demented disinformation and conspiracy theories. They are major sponsors of the Birther movement. They believe that Obama’s biography was ghostwritten by Bill Ayers. If there is a crazy story that reflects poorly on the President you can bet that WND is behind it. And if you question their journalistic credentials Farah will forthrightly declare that…

“Admittedly, we publish some misinformation by columnists, as does your publication and every other journal that contains opinion.”

Nice of him to be so honest. He is actually right about the fact that many news organizations publish opinions that are not factually vetted. However, most publications do not regard misinformation as an acceptable part of the news business, and the reputable ones will endeavor to make necessary corrections.

Farah seems to think it’s just business as usual. In his defense, if he had to correct every mistake or lie that appears on his site he wouldn’t have time to invent any new ones.

Trump is rapidly rising in my GOP presidential hopes primary. I have been rooting for a Palin/Steele ticket for quite a while, but now I think that Trump deserves some serious consideration.


10 Reasons Why Fox News After Glenn Beck Will Still Suck

Posted by on April 13, 2011 at 10:38 am. 10 Comments :

“If I were lying I’d be off the air.”
  ~ Glenn Beck, Jan 4, 2010.
“I’m going to be leaving this program later this year.”
  ~ Glenn Beck, Apr 6, 2011.

There has already been a barrage of media analysis and discussion of Glenn Beck’s not-so-surprising separation from Fox News. For the most part that discussion has been focused on speculation as to the cause of the break up and on what will become of Beck. But any suggestion that Beck’s departure polishes Fox’s reputation is pure folly. The worst of Beck’s haunted imagination is securely woven into the Fox News dis-comforter. The trademark Fox invective, sophistry, and bias predate Beck and will outlive him.


Many in the press, however, are more interested in prattling on about the alleged animosity for Beck amongst “serious” conservatives and his colleagues at Fox who think that his doomsday rhetoric and conspiracy theories give the “news” network a bad name. The purveyors of conventional wisdom are very concerned about Fox’s teetering credibility and are scrambling to defend it:

Howard Kurtz, CNN, The Daily Beast: …many senior Fox executives are relieved to be rid of Beck. [and] …some journalists and executives at the network privately expressed concern that Beck was becoming the face of the network.

George Will, ABC News Washington Post: I think that Glenn Beck and his drift into more bizarre and extreme positions was threatening the Fox brand. So I wish Glenn Beck health and happiness but I think the health and happiness of Fox is served by his departure.

Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers Magazine: You can’t be a rodeo clown and maintain credibility,

Matt Lewis, The Daily Caller: My take is that while Beck’s show was individually a ratings hit, he also risked tarnishing the overall Fox News “brand”.

Jeffrey McCall, professor of media studies, DePauw University: Beck was no longer just a personality with a show on FNC. He became an easy target for Fox News critics to characterize him as representative of the entire channel.

These august observers have frightfully short memories. The truth is that Fox earned its nefarious reputation long before Beck arrived and there is every indication that they will preserve it after he’s gone. In fact, it’s that reputation that made Beck such a good fit to begin with and lured him to the network despite his admitted reluctance when first approached. The pundits who are advancing the premise that by losing Beck, Fox can be redeemed are, to put it kindly, mistaken. Here is why Fox News without Glenn Beck will be just as bad as Fox News with Glenn Beck:

1) Bill O’Reilly: Before Beck called President Obama a racist, Bill O’Reilly ventured to Sylvia’s in Harlem and expressed his surprise that the mostly African-American patrons weren’t acting like primitives. And when the First Lady was criticized for expressing her pride that America had evolved to the point where they would elect an African-American president O’Reilly considerately declared that “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence.” Nice choice of words.

2) Sean Hannity: While Beck may suffer from an acute case of Nazi-Tourettes Syndrome (Louis Black™), Sean Hannity is a personal friend of the notorious neo-Nazi schlock-jock, Hal Turner, and graciously hosted him on his program. Turner won’t be be revisiting Hannity for a while because he is presently in prison serving 33 months for threatening judges.

3) Megyn Kelly: No one can spin a conspiracy theory quite like Beck, but Megyn Kelly comes pretty close. For months she’s been peddling a pseudo-scandal that alleges that the Department of Justice deliberately dismisses all charges of civil rights violations when the plaintiff is white. This has been debunked by the House Judiciary Committee’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Kelly also fronted phony investigations into the alleged terrorist ties of funders of the Park51 mosque in Manhattan. Somehow she left out the fact that one of those funders was Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, the second largest shareholder of News Corp outside of the Murdoch family. Kelly has a permanently affixed expression of indignation and a vocal delivery that makes every story appear to be shocking. She is the human manifestation of Fox’s ever-present “FOX ALERT!”

4) Judge Andrew Napolitano: There are conspiratorial paths where even Beck fears to tread. Judge Andrew Napolitano has no such fears. He is a frequent guest of proto-conspiratorialist and Beck inspiration, Alex Jones. He is an avowed 9/11 Truther who says that the World Trade Center attack was an inside job. He believes that the health care bill contains provisions for a civilian military force to suppress domestic insurrection. And he also happens to be Beck’s most frequent fill-in host and a leading candidate to replace him.

5) Bill Sammon: Fox News’ Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon, has espoused a hard-core conservatism that predates Beck and emanates from the executive suites far above him. He came to Fox from the “Moonie” Washington Times and authored several books lionizing George W. Bush and lambasting Democrats. He was also caught authoring memos that directed his reporters to dispense a brazenly partisan point of view. For instance, he told them to refrain from using the term “public option” during the health care debate because focus group testing proved that the term “government-run” produced a more negative response. Even more disturbing, he was recorded admitting to a friendly audience on a conservative cruise that he “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. Beck must be so proud to have worked for him.

6) Neil Cavuto: The glorification of ignorance is a staple of Beck’s brand, but Neil Cavuto has been contributing to the collapse of America’s collective IQ far longer than Beck. He proudly hosts such respected policy analysts as Ted Nugent, Joe the Plumber, and any random Tea Bagger to help him unravel our nation’s dilemmas. One of his favorite idiocies is his insistence that Climate Change is a hoax because it gets cold in the winter. But Cavuto really shines when he brings in guests whose only connection to the segment is a juvenile pun. For instance, in a discussion about whether Tea Party support was grassroots or AstroTurf, Cavuto interviewed the CEO of AstroTurf Technologies, whose expertise with synthetic fiber products contributed nothing to the debate on campaign organization. Cavuto is the prop comic of pundits who delights in interrupting and shouting down Democrats who are naive enough to accept his invitations to appear.

7) Fox & Friends: While there will always be only one rodeo clown in the vast right-wing conspira-circus, there is no shortage of stooges, and three of them are featured on Fox & Friends. First we have Steve Doocy, who wondered “Why didn’t anybody ever mention that [Obama] spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father.” Perhaps because Obama actually never knew his father who left the family when he was two years old. Then there’s Brian Kilmeade who fans the racist flames by saying things like “all terrorists are Muslims.” And don’t forget Gretchen Carlson, who called the late Sen. Ted Kennedy a “hostile enemy” of the United States. All of these vile inanities were delivered without any help from Beck. However, it should be noted that when Beck made his infamous remarks about Obama being a racist he did it on Fox & Friends.

8) Fox Nation: Any good 21st century propaganda outfit has to have an Internet component, and for Fox News it is the Fox Nation. This web site’s sole purpose is to disseminate the most despicably dishonest disinformation it can invent. There are way too many examples to itemize, but here are a couple that represent the ridiculous and the repulsive. Last July Fox Nation featured a story that claimed that the Taliban was recruiting monkey mercenaries. This absurdity was sourced to the People’s Daily in China. Fox Nation also ran an item that speculated about Obama’s death. This article brought out the hate in the site’s readers who posted numerous comments indicating how welcome that would be. Many of the stories on Fox Nation percolate up to Fox News for broadcast and they they are no less deranged than the nonsense Beck comes up with.

9) Roger Ailes: The president and CEO of Fox News sets the tone for the network as a whole. Roger Ailes was a long-time media advisor to Republican candidates prior to launching Fox News. He is the network’s spiritual leader. If you ever wondered how Beck could get away with aligning President Obama (and anyone else with whom he disagrees) with Hitler, your curiosity was satisfied when Ailes lashed out at NPR saying that “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism.” Ailes’ remarks prove that the hate speech at Fox goes from the top down. It’s not now, and never has been, unique to Beck.

10) Rupert Murdoch: Speaking of the top – Rupert Murdoch, the Chairman and CEO of News Corp, is as high as you can get. He is the company’s captain and conscience. Every material decision requires his concurrence, including his employment of Glenn Beck. While Beck may be leaving, Murdoch is not (yet). It is, therefore, important to note that when Beck called the President a racist, Murdoch responded by saying that “it was something that, perhaps, shouldn’t have been said about the President, but if you actually assess what he [Beck] was talking about, he was right.”

Murdoch has consistently stood behind Beck for more than two years, defending him at every turn for every scandalous affair and affront. Even as advertisers fled in disgust, Murdoch never conceded an inch. In the television marketplace it is advertisers, not viewers, who are the broadcaster’s clients. Murdoch snubbed his clients in order to allow Beck’s Acute Paranoia Revue and Disinfotainment Revival Hour to continue poisoning minds and influencing elections.

More importantly, Murdoch and Ailes together have fashioned a network whose persona is infested with the same conservative extremist ideology popularized by Beck. The examples above illustrate how ingrained that ideology is into the Fox News schedule in all dayparts. And those programs are augmented by an army of propagandists that include Sarah Palin, Stuart Varney, Eric Bolling, Monica Crowley, Dick Morris, Frank Luntz, and many more.

With this dedicated team of activist anchors and contributors in place, Beck’s departure, though gossip-worthy, will change nothing at Fox News. Beck was not cast off because his message was objectionable, but because he was an ineffective messenger who was alienating the audience. His replacement will surely continue the sordid tradition of which Beck was just a small, irritating part. The Fox mission remains intact and any talk of redemption due merely to having thrown off this defective cog is naive and oblivious to the dark reality that is Fox News.