Conquering Incoherence: Sarah Palin Swings And Misses

Posted by Mark NC on August 9, 2011 at 10:49 am. 6 Comments :

In 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.

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

Posted by Mark NC on August 5, 2011 at 6:28 pm. 6 Comments :

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.

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.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: On Palin Bus Tour

Posted by Mark NC on August 3, 2011 at 12:44 pm. 10 Comments :

This is a prime example of why political parody has become so difficult. The subjects of satire are too good at making themselves look stupid without any help. What does that leave for those of us who satirize them? Check out Fox Nation’s article on a planned mid-August bus tour by President Obama:

Really? Please note the “Obama 08” poster on Fox Nation’s photo proving that Obama obviously used buses before Sarah Palin did. Seriously, it’s their own photo. Yet Fox implies that Palin invented the political bus tour? Are they daft? (Don’t answer that). Palin didn’t even come up with an original name for her road trip. She copied the name, “One Nation,” from the progressive and union movement that held a rally in Washington, D.C., last October.

I think that the Fox Nationalists are actually pretty close to the truth this time. They just left out a small detail. Palin didn’t invent the political bus tour, she invented the “aborted” political bus tour. As we know, the cross-country trip that Palin planned (and is still promoting on her SarahPac web site) lasted all of six days and never made it past New Hampshire. Then she blatantly lied when asked about why the tour came to a screeching halt:

Palin: “Imagine our surprise when reading media reports today that the ‘One Nation Tour’ has been cancelled…The coming weeks are tight because civic duty calls (like most everyone else, even former governors get called up for jury duty) and I look forward to doing my part just like every other Alaskan.”

The only problem is that, unlike every other Alaskan, she never showed up for jury duty. In fact, she wasn’t even in Alaska. A few days after making her jury excuse for quitting the bus tour, she turned up at the debut of her crockumentary, “The Undefeated,” in Pella, Iowa. Incidentally, the film was a rip-roaring failure at the boxoffice and is already heading to video and the discount bins at WalMart.

Sarah Palin is a pitiful joke. The only thing she’s running for is the bank to deposit the cash she cons out of glassy-eyed fans who somehow find something coherent in her word jumbles. And the only way Obama could be charged with copying Palin on this is if he rolls into a handful of towns and then jets back to Camp David for some R&R.

What Got Into Jon Stewart?

Posted by Mark NC on July 27, 2011 at 2:09 pm. 5 Comments :

The Daily Show is routinely the most intelligent and entertaining program on television. And it achieves that despite being mostly about politics and the press. Stewart is one of nation’s great satirists and commentators.

However, last night’s episode (video below), while having moments of good humor, hit some surprisingly sour notes that were both unfunny and misrepresented the facts. The show’s first segment was focused on President Obama’s White House speech regarding the debt ceiling crisis. The first sign that Stewart was slipping out of bounds was his mockery of the President for delivering a “belt-tightening” speech in the opulent environs of the White House. Did Stewart expect the President to take a camera crew to a local soup kitchen? Would he have been satisfied if the speech was delivered from the White House laundry room? This complaint simply made no sense.

Then Stewart played a portion the speech where the President described the competing plans to resolve the crisis, saying…

“Basically, the debate has centered around two different approaches. The first approach says, let’s live within our means by making serious, historic cuts in government spending. Let’s cut domestic spending to the lowest level it’s been since Dwight Eisenhower was President.”

Stewart cut the video at that point to mock the President for proposing a plan that sounded more like it came from the Republicans. He would have been right except for the part he cut out that included this:

“Finally, let’s ask the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to give up some of their tax breaks and special deductions. This balanced approach asks everyone to give a little without requiring anyone to sacrifice too much.”

Had Stewart left that in there would have been no punchline. It was the core component of the President’s plan that seeks to raise revenue from corporations and the wealthy. It is what distinguishes his approach from the Tea Party/GOP. And Stewart left it on the editing room floor on behalf of mediocre joke. But the worst part came after Obama made an appeal for viewers to contact their representatives in congress:

“So I’m asking you all to make your voice heard. If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your Member of Congress know. If you believe we can solve this problem through compromise, send that message.”

To this Stewart offered his patented smirk and queried incredulously…

“That’s your idea? Call your Congressman? Did the President just quit? I mean seriously, you’re the President. You’re asking US to call congress? Oh yeah, sure I’ll the congress. Why don’t you come here and mow my _______ lawn because I got ____ to do. It’s like you’ve given up.”

Stewart’s humor generally contains poignant insights cloaked in hilarity. But on this occasion he is badly adrift. What exactly does he think is wrong with asking the American people to take an active role in their government’s processes? How can he characterize Obama as having “given up” just because he believes that the people’s voice matters? What could be more patriotic than encouraging citizens to get involved?

I’m sorry, Jon, if you think that asking people to participate in government, at a time when their welfare is at great risk, is too much to do. I’m sorry if you have to mow your lawn and can’t be bothered with conveying your opinion to your representative on a critical issue. Many Americans will not have lawns to mow if the nation goes into default, interests rates rise, and they can no longer make their mortgage payments.

The upshot of Stewart’s position is that people should tend to their personal affairs and the President, and others in Washington, should fix everything for us, magically discerning our wishes. That is neither democratic, constructive or funny. And for his trouble, Stewart was the featured headline on Fox Nation with a headline that blared: “Jon Stewart Turns on Obama.” Try again Jon. I’ll still watch tonight.

And, by the way, was it really necessary to suck up to Juan Williams and refrain from challenging any of his self-serving PR? I mean, you couldn’t even make fun of his book title, “Muzzled,” despite the fact that he broadcasts daily on a platform where he reaches millions. I wish I was that muzzled.

GOP Senators Loved Raising The Debt Ceiling Until…

Posted by Mark NC on July 22, 2011 at 12:16 pm. 8 Comments :

Republicans in congress have been holding the American people hostage for weeks now. Despite the fact that nearly every credible analyst – economists, politicians, academics, etc. – agree that a default by the United States would bring about an economic calamity, the GOP is still threatening to submit the nation to that fate if Democrats do not capitulate to the Tea Party platform of austerity for average Americans and opulent prosperity for the richest one percent.

Make no mistake, the Republicans know exactly what their threat entails. They know that default would be catastrophic. We know because they’ve said so. And we know because we have their voting record to prove it. Between the years 2002 and 2008 Republicans voted repeatedly to raise the debt ceiling while George W. Bush was in the White House. So what changed?

Oh yeah — that.

The Republican’s are playing “Chicken” with our economy. They don’t care about the deficit. They don’t care about taxes. They certainly don’t care about the elderly or the poor or you or me. They only care about their wealthy benefactors, the billionaires and corporations who bankroll their campaigns. And, of course, their obsession with defeating President Obama next year. They know that a bad economy makes things more difficult for incumbents to get reelected, so they are endeavoring to produce such an outcome to achieve their political goals – at the expense of everyone else and multiple future generations.

Thanks GOP. And thanks Corporate Media for failing to report this in context.

Fox Nation On Obama: Why Don’t They Just Call Him Boy?

Posted by Mark NC on July 16, 2011 at 10:22 am. 4 Comments :

For anyone who isn’t yet convinced that Fox News is not only brazenly partisan, but repulsively racist as well…

Make no mistake, this is a coordinated message that the right plants via not-so-subtle innuendo. From House Speaker John Beohner saying that Obama “spends a lot of time whining,” to Rush Limbaugh repeatedly referring to the President as a “man-child” (or boy), the intention to characterize Obama as less than an adult is obvious. It is a barely veiled return to the overt racism of diminishing the respect due to any other man (i.e. any other white man).

This is almost as bad as last month’s headline when the Fox Nationalists said that: Obama Has A Big Problem With White Women.

Victoria Jackson: The Greatest Comedy Hoax Ever

Posted by Mark NC on July 15, 2011 at 12:29 pm. 6 Comments :

OK…I’m convinced. The recent ravings of former Saturday Night Live resident ditzy blond, Victoria Jackson, have to be part of the most deviously complex comedy hoax ever. Somewhere in a secret bunker Andy Kaufman is obviously plotting this whole thing out. Here is what she writes in her latest column for WorldNetDaily:

“Hitler, like Obama, was a “socialist” who came from a dysfunctional family, had a communist father who abused alcohol, womanized and sired several children from different mothers, had a white mother, suffered child abuse and neglect, moved often, lied about his birth and heritage, changed his name, was a narcissist, rose to power with the help of disreputable men, had the Rothschilds as financial backers, stirred up racial conflict and class warfare, wrote a biography about race at age 35, followed up with another book used to launch a political career, supported infanticide (partial-birth abortion), gave big speeches in stadiums, promised change and a new social order, had youth groups singing his praises, used propaganda, used voter fraud and intimidation, controlled the media, created “crises,” used a poor economy, hated Jews (Israel), pretended to be “Christian,” advocated population control and euthanasia, socialized medicine, formed a private army and then … killed his political opposition with his private army.

Well, I am Obama’s political opposition. That’s why I am concerned.”

That’s right. Victoria Jackson thinks Obama is going to kill her with his private army. BRAVO! That is some righteous comedy. I hope. Oh God, I hope.

Comic Relief: Judicial Watch Reveals White House Bias Against Fox News

Posted by Mark NC on July 14, 2011 at 8:39 pm. 1 Comments :

Judicial Watch describes itself as a “public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption.” Today they announced that they have uncovered documents from Obama’s Department of the Treasury revealing evidence of an anti-Fox News bias within the White House.

Holy moly! What a scoop. Perhaps with a little more digging these intrepid muckrakers might have even discovered the anti-Obama bias within Fox News.

First of all, having an anti-Fox News bias is not in any way indicative of government corruption. If anything, it demonstrates a clearheaded analysis of the media giant. Fox News is a 24 hour hate machine aimed at President Obama, Democrats, and progressive politics overall. It would be surprising (and stupid) if the White House were not aware of the hostility spewed by Fox News, and did not take measures to defend itself.

Judicial Watch’s pretense to independence is about as honest as the Fox News slogan “fair and balanced.” In their press release announcing the documents [pdf] they received from a Freedom of Information Act request, they carefully highlighted only the few bits that reflected poorly on the communications staff at the Treasury Department. Note that none of the emails they retrieved were actually from the White House although it is the White House they blame for the bias.

The issue encompassing this pseudo-controversy was whether Fox News was excluded from interviewing the electrifying Kenneth Feinberg, the so-called “executive pay czar” administering the TARP program. Judicial Watch spun the story in precisely the same way that Fox News did when it occurred two years ago. The Fox angle was that they had been deliberately denied press access to Feinberg at the behest of the White House. Judicial Watch cited excerpts from the emails like “…we’d prefer if you skip Fox please.” And “I am putting some dead fish in the fox cubby.”

The first citation was a direct response to a question that specifically asked whether there would be time for Fox to conduct an interview. The answer was not a rejection of Fox in particular, it was just a response that indicated there would not be enough time. MSNBC was also not in the queue for an interview at the time. The second citation was clearly a joke by staffers who were tiring of the hard time they get from Fox.

Judicial Watch failed to put these emails in context. Even worse, their press release never even mentioned the many emails that indicated that Fox had never been excluded. In fact, Fox had not requested an interview, and when they eventually did, they got one. Here are some of the excerpts that Judicial Watch left out:

[Page 5] Fox News hadn’t made a request for an interview – certainly not to me [Jake Siewert] or Jenni who was handling. When called nets to pool, a producer did raise concern about why Fox wasn’t on the first round list. To accommodate more interviews – we had dozens of requests – we cut back Feinberg’s off-camera presser and moved a Hill briefing to create a bigger window of time and added more interviews, including Fox. Once we had more time we specifically called Major [Garrett] and dragged him out of the WH briefing to see if he could do an interview. Still no request from Fox. Major had time, came to the briefing and got his interview, same slot as everyone else.

[Page 14] Important to note that Major never requested an interview. We asked him.

[Page 18] They didn’t ask for an interview – and when they finally did ask, they got one. I know it makes for a much less interesting story but it’s true.

[Page 29] I told Major it was a non-issue. And that the WH was fine with us including them (in the end.) Anita [Dunn] specifically told me she was OK.

[Page 49-50] Press Aide: Major – We are able to offer you 5 minutes with Feinberg in a round robin following the pen and pad. Will you do the interview?
Garrett: I am stuck in the WH briefing. Will call as soon as I get out.

Despite the clear evidence that there was no effort to exclude Fox News, Judicial Watch’s press release is already circulating through the conservative media merry-go-round and peddling a narrative that is demonstrably false. This is nothing more than an attempt to tarnish the White House for something they had nothing to do with and which was not even done at all. They are confident that their audience will be satisfied with the dishonest press release and will never read through the 81 pages of emails posted on their web site.

And as if to cap off the hilarity of this nonsensical melodrama, Judicial Watch included an email [page 33] that must have been swept up in their request, but was not related to the issue at hand. It was an email from a producer of the Glenn Beck Show seeking to determine if the WH was trying to “force God off our coinage.” That conspiratorial absurdity nicely frames how ridiculous and phony this whole affair is. If we didn’t know better we might assume the whole thing was a story from The Onion.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: On The Debt Ceiling

Posted by Mark NC on July 12, 2011 at 12:53 pm. 2 Comments :

Fox Nation has posted another item that grossly misrepresents reality. Their featured story this morning concerns an interview that President Obama gave to CBS News.

Notice the headline from the Reuters article to which the Fox Nationalists linked: Obama: Seniors could be hurt without debt deal. The article quotes Obama saying that…

“I cannot guarantee that those [Social Security] checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”

However, the Fox Nation headline is: Obama Threatens to Withhold Social Security Checks from Seniors and Vets. That, of course, is a lie. There is nothing in the article or Obama’s remarks that even implies that he would withhold any payments. He simply pointed out a potential consequence of the Republican’s intransigence and unwillingness to compromise.

There is a huge difference between an alert and a threat. If I were to tap you on the shoulder and warn you not to cross the street because of oncoming traffic, Fox would report it as me threatening to shove you off the curb into the path of a speeding truck. In the world of Fox News no distortion is too twisted if it casts Democrats in a bad light.

Fox Nation: Obama Has A Big Problem With White Women

Posted by Mark NC on June 23, 2011 at 4:07 pm. 11 Comments :

Conservatives have lately been escalating their umbrage at being called racist. I keep telling them that the best way to get people to stop calling you racist is to stop being racists. But do they listen?

Today on Fox Nation there is a featured story with the headline: “Obama Has A Big Problem With White Women.” Could they have come up with a more racially charged banner with which to introduce a story on a public opinion poll? This framing deliberately recalls the worst of a hate-filled era characterized by irrational fears of marauding black predators stalking innocent and vulnerable Caucasian virgins.

What makes this even worse is that the article to which the Fox Nationalists linked was an Associated Press report on presidential approval polling that cited numerous reasons for recent declines. Among those were that support from women declined about 9%. However, support from independents declined 19%. The AP’s headline had nothing to do with women, reading: “Economic worries pose new snags for Obama.” The main focus of the article pointed to issues like jobs, housing, and gas prices, as the the primary factors contributing to weakening poll numbers. So Fox had to purposefully stretch the story to fit their predetermined racist theme.

They could have borrowed the economic angle that the AP used in their headline. They could have noted that independents were leaving the Obama camp, which would have been more correct because more of them were leaving. They could even have broadened the angle to attribute the polling slump to women generally. But, no. The issue was white women. I’m just a little surprised that Fox didn’t go with this headline: “Obama Polling: Where Da White Women At?”

Fox Nation, in citing the AP, also conveniently left out that…

“…16 months before the November 2012 elections, Obama also is perceived favorably by 56 percent of respondents and 52 percent approve of his job performance overall. Despite the overwhelming sentiment that the national economy is in poor shape, more than three of five of those polled rated the financial situation of their own households as good. And, echoing previous findings, about three-quarters of the survey participants said it is unrealistic to expect noticeable results on the economy in one term.”

These numbers are not particularly bad. And that last statistic is pretty remarkable. That’s about 75% who say that Obama should not be regarded negatively for not having repaired, in a single term, the titanic destruction done to our nation by the previous administration and GOP policies. And since Republicans have been throwing up obstacles to everything the President has proposed from Inauguration Day on, we’re lucky to see the progress that we have.

In light of this, the Fox Nationalists deemed it necessary to twist the story into something that would harm the President and stir up vile, anachronistic fears. And their implementation of that spin could not be more offensive. This is not the way to get open-minded, tolerant people to stop calling you racist.

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