Tea Party Caucus Forms As Tea Party Fractures

Posted by on July 18, 2010 at 1:24 pm. 6 Comments :

Michelle Bachmann (TP-MN) has received acceptance of her request to form a Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives. In a report on Fox News it was heralded as a “victory in Congress for the Tea Party.” It was further stated that the approval was acquired in record time for a new caucus.

I’m sure that Democrats around the country are sending their congratulations and best wishes to Bachmann. This may be a masterstroke of self-destruction for the Minnesota Republican. She would be wise to consider why the Committee on House Administration, with six Democrats and three Republicans, would so quickly sign off on her collective.

It will be interesting to see how many of her colleagues she recruits into her caucus. Membership will present a measure of risk as the decision to join will require a difficult political choice: Do you associate yourself with a controversial army of right-wing extremists and radicals by joining? Or do you suffer their unforgiving wrath by snubbing them? That dilemma is likely going to limit the growth of Bachmann’s Baggers.

Tea Party RacismAlliance with the Tea Party is becoming more hazardous with every day. The NAACP just passed a resolution calling on Tea Party leaders to renounce the overtly racist elements of their movement. That was met by flurry of outraged Tea Partiers who insisted that there was not even a trace of racism in their curiously mono-toned ranks. Then they switched to offense asserting that it was the NAACP that is racist.

In the course of this debate, the founder of the Tea Party Express, Mark Williams, posted a “parody” on his web site that was so offensive he was summarily booted out of the Tea Party Federation. Only right-wingers have the audacity to swear up and down that there are no racists among them even as they are kicking out a leader for being a racist. And Williams isn’t the first racist Tea Party leader to get the hook. Dale Robertson, founder of TeaParty.org was ousted earlier this year for sporting a sign with the “N” word (misspelled). We have yet to see Williams’ response to his ouster, but it may provide some more fireworks.

So as Bachmann is putting together her congregation of Tea-publicans in DC, a fissure is widening in the heartland. And they were never a particularly harmonious faction to begin with. Earlier this year there was a Tea Party convention that was roundly criticized by fellow Tea Partiers for being a for-profit event. They even committed the sacrilege of bashing keynote speaker Sarah Palin for participating. Bachmann herself was scheduled to speak, but bailed out with a lame excuse blaming the House Ethics Committee.

The followup to that convention was supposed to have been this past week in Las Vegas, but they claim to have rescheduled it for an unspecified date in October. That was a month ago and they still have no announced venue or dates.

It is notable that the Tea Party advocates responded to charges of racism by denying them, feigning ignorance (OK, maybe not feigning), and hurling back similar charges. I’m going to let Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP show them how it ought to be done. When confronted with allegations about the New Black Panther Party’s offensive and racist rhetoric, Jealous unhesitatingly replied…

“You know, bigots come in all colors. We absolutely denounce the New Black Panther Party. But they aren’t in our group. These folks are in your groups.”

What would have been so difficult for the Tea Baggers to simply respond that they don’t believe that racism is rampant in their movement and that they agree with the NAACP’s goal of stamping out racism wherever it is found? The reason they do not respond in that way is that they know that racists are a prominent and influential component of their coalition and they don’t want to alienate them. The action they are taking now is merely a consequence of the bad PR they are hoping to constrain.

As the truth about the Tea Party continues to be revealed. Bachmann’s campaign for legitimacy will flounder. And while she is getting attention from the press for her promotion of the Tea Party, I’m more interested in whether they will provide the same level of coverage a few weeks or months from now when her caucus meets and she brings her gavel down on an empty room.

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Fox News Fires Up Vacation-Gate

Posted by on July 17, 2010 at 5:04 pm. 2 Comments :

Here’s the headline from Fox News:

“Seizing on Good Week, Obama Takes Another Vacation Despite GOP Criticisms”

Another vacation? For anyone keeping track, Obama has taken about 65 vacation days since assuming office. By this point in his first term George W. Bush had taken twice as much time off (120 days). And that was in the midst of our nation still responding to 9/11.

The story Fox News ran was attributed to their own Wendell Goler and the Associated Press. Goler lifted most of the details from the AP, including the Obamas’ bike rides and stops for ice cream. However, he neglected to include the information on Bush’s vacations, which was in the AP’s article. That’s a pretty egregious failure to provide relevant context for a column whose title was so deliberately biased.

This omission cannot be explained away as an editorial decision to focus on Obama and leave former presidents out of it, because Goler did include Bush in the article by way of interviewing his former deputy press secretary, Scott Stanzel. Stanzel’s contribution to the story was to criticize Obama for taking his vacation in Maine rather than in Gulf Coast (where Obama has already been at least four times). Stanzel further defended Bush’s many excursions to Crawford, Texas, as being appropriate because he still got work done there. Although there was no similar defense of Obama who, like all presidents, is working 24/7.

Bush and McCain Eating CakeGoler also went out of his way to lie about one occasion when Bush was vacationing in Crawford and a hurricane happened to nearly destroy New Orleans. Goler said that Bush cut his vacation short, but the truth is that he extended it to play guitar with a country singer and to visit John McCain in Phoenix to celebrate his birthday.

You don’t get many better examples of deliberate bias than this. Goler based his reporting on an article from the AP that was actually pretty fair and balanced. But for Fox News it had to be altered to eliminate any context that might reflect favorably on Obama, while adding fiction that whitewashed Bush’s failures.

More proof that Fox News is the enemy of fairness and the defiler of balance.


Glenn Beck: The Jews Killed Jesus

Posted by on July 16, 2010 at 2:25 pm. 5 Comments :

How many times, and in how many ways, can Glenn Beck insult and offend people of different ethnicities than himself – and get away with it?

I missed this morsel from earlier this week, but Keith Olbermann picked it up:

Beck: “Jesus conquered death. He wasn’t victimized. He chose to give his life. He did have a choice. If he was a victim and this theology was true then Jesus would have come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did, that’s an abomination.”

Olbermann correctly pointed out that it was the Romans who crucified Jesus and that most Christian doctrine, including the Catholic Church, repudiated the accusation against the Jews. Although Jesus may not have made the Jews pay, generations of his followers picked up the cause and still endeavor to extract payment to this day. And now we can count Glenn Beck amongst them.

The discussion of this subject occurred during an interview with Alexander Zaitchik, author of Common Nonsense, Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, a highly recommended read. Watch the video from Countdown:


Tucker Carlson vs. Keith Olbermann: Master Of Your Domain

Posted by on July 15, 2010 at 1:35 pm. 3 Comments :

Tucker Carlson - Biggest LoserIf there were a contest for Most Pathetic Pundit, Tucker Carlson would get the Lifetime Achievement Award. He has been a recidivist failure on PBS, CNN, and MSNBC. After being canceled more times than a Shane MacGowan dentist appointment, Carlson was picked up as a pity play by Fox News, an organization he previously called “…a mean, sick group of people,” but for whom he now dutifully performs his organ-grinder monkey routine.

Now Carlson is proving that he is not merely an incompetent boob, but a hypocritical jerk as well. With the brashness of a child delighted at his ability to pull the wings off a fly, Carlson has announced that he, and his web site the Daily Caller, has acquired ownership of the domain name KeithOlbermann.com:

“This is part of our long-term growth strategy,” added Publisher and CEO Neil Patel. “Our future acquisition targets include several other annoying cable news commentators.”

Daily Caller - CrybabyThat seems like a brilliant business plan, and in keeping with their mission, having been founded by one of the all-time annoying cable news commentators, Carlson himself. On today’s front page of the the Daily Caller is a big, close up photo of Olbermann beneath an all-caps headline shouting, “CRYBABY.” The sub-head says, “Keith Olbermann threatens legal action against TheDC.”

This is a typical case of cybersquatting, wherein someone takes possession of an Internet asset that belongs to someone else. Domain names are subject to laws that protect intellectual property, trademarks, and copyrights. The hypocrisy comes into play when you learn that just two years ago. Carlson pursued a complaint against someone squatting on his domain name. He filed his complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization and won a decision to reclaim his name. The complaint said in part…

Complainant states that he is “an internationally famous television news anchor and author, most famous for his role as anchor of the eponymous televised newsmagazines Tucker (MSNBC) and Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered (PBS), as well as for his role as co-host of Crossfire (CNN).” Complainant states that his television debut came in 2000 as co-host of The Spin Room (PBS) and that he has also appeared on television as a contestant on Dancing With the Stars (ABC), the Tonight Show With Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Complainant states that his writings “are regularly featured” in Esquire, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic and The New York Times Magazine. And, Complainant states that he has appeared as an actor in various television shows and movies.

Apparently Carlson is “internationally famous” for getting canned repeatedly. It is also notable that just a couple of years ago it was Carlson who was the crybaby. His complaint conveniently outlines the very same arguments that Olbermann could make to retrieve ownership of his domain name. He even damages his own case by confessing that he intends to use the name for a commercial purpose.

As an added bonus, Carlson implied that Olbermann would be infringing on his First Amendment rights if he were to sue Carlson for the name. Of course, having to turn over the name does not in any way restrict Carlson from speaking. Especially since the name is only being used presently to pull up the Daily Caller home page. And accusing Olbermann of violating his rights would also be admitting that he violated the rights of the party he sued to get his name back.

So go ahead and cry about it, Tucker. You are only affirming your place in history as a miserable louse with no talent, intellect, or ethics. But most of us already knew that.


Fox News: The Republican Fundraising Network

Posted by on July 15, 2010 at 9:52 am. 1 Comments :

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Nevada Republican senate candidate, Sharron Angle, revealed how the right works hand-in-hand with conservative media to advance, not just their agenda, but their candidates. Answering a question about whether she has been dodging the press, Angle explained her media strategy and what she believes is the purpose of campaign interviews:

“The whole point of an interview is to use it – like they say “earned media” – to earn something with it. And I’m not going to earn anything from people who are there to badger me and batter, you know, use my words to batter me with.”

There you have it. According to Angle, candidates do not engage the media in order to disseminate their message or to inform voters. They do not subject themselves to inquiry in order to connect with people and make a case for support. The whole point is to make money. Therefore, there is no reason to take questions from anyone other than friendly reporters and sympathetic talk show hosts.

When pressed as to whether restricting her appearances to places like Fox News creates the impression that she is avoiding neutral or potentially adversarial outlets, Angle explained her reluctance to grace the “mainstream media” with her presence:

“Well, in that audience will they let me say I need $25 dollars from a million people – go to Sharron Angle.com – send money?”

So if you want to interview Sharron Angle you first have to agree to permit her to pitch her candidacy. If she can’t exploit your newspaper or TV station to raise money, you are useless to her. And the interests of the voters, who simply want the information they need to make an informed decision, are irrelevant.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the goto network for people like Angle is Fox News. She has made numerous appearances there where she did peddle her web site and beg for donations. And it isn’t just Angle. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida have pretty much set up campaign desks at Fox. It is a relationship that has proven to be quite fruitful. Even when the candidates are not on the air, their Fox representatives like Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, Laura Ingraham, etc., will carry the ball for them.

Last year, former White House Communications Director, Anita Dunn, called Fox News “the communications arm of the Republican Party.” Now we have evidence that it is also their fundraising arm as well.


Is Megyn Kelly Worse Than Glenn Beck?

Posted by on July 14, 2010 at 2:36 pm. 13 Comments :

It goes without saying that Fox News is a seething cauldron of sensationalistic propaganda. There have been innumerable examples of bias so egregious it would be more accurate to call it fiction. Still, the degree of separation from reality, or the Fox Fake Factor (3F) is not uniform across the Fox schedule. It can be segmented into three general categories that I define as…

  • Blatant Dishonesty (i.e. Sean Hannity)
  • Acute Idiocy (i.e. Steve Doocy)
  • Hysterical Dementia (i.e. Glenn Beck)

Defenders of Fox News argue that the network functions like a newspaper with clearly delineated sections containing straight news or editorial opinion. This includes Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, who went so far as to say that…

“…it’s a mistake to look at Fox News Channel’s primetime opinion shows and say they represent the channel’s journalism.”

In support of Ailes’ admission that his primetime lineup should not be mistaken for journalism, Fox’s Sr. VP Michael Clemente drew distinct boundaries in order to identify the channel’s actual “news” content. He said that it is just the hours of 9am to 4pm, and 6pm to 8pm, that air straight news. Of course that would include such thoroughly opinionated programs as Fox & Friends, Your World With Neil Cavuto, and Glenn Beck. It would also include Megyn Kelly.

For the past week or so, Kelly has been rabidly attached to a bogus two year old story about members of the New Black Panther Party who have been accused of voter intimidation. She has hosted numerous interviews with W. Christian Adams, a notoriously partisan activist who claims that Obama’s Department of Justice has adopted a policy of not pursuing cases involving white victims. Never mind the fact that it was the Bush Justice Department that degraded the case against the NBPP and concluded that the evidence did not merit criminal prosecution. Kelly would not let up and continued, day after day, to present the story with an overt expression of shock and judgmental disgust.

Kelly’s demeanor was hardly what one could call objective. In yesterday’s program she nearly bit the head off of Fox News Democrat, Kirsten Powers, who soldiered on despite Kelly’s insulting declarations that Powers didn’t know what she was talking about. And in a bid for total domination, Kelly even threatened to cut Powers’ mic.

This is not an isolated incident for Kelly. A few weeks ago she displayed the same sort of wild-eyed obsession over speculation of whether Pennsylvania senate candidate Joe Sestak had received improper incentives from the White House to drop out of the race. Sestak didn’t drop out, and there was never any evidence of wrongdoing on his part or that of the White House. But that didn’t stop Kelly from pushing the story incessantly. On one occasion she devoted fully 75% of her two hour program to just the Sestak matter, never once reporting on the gulf oil spill, Afghanistan or the economy.

Add to these the following journalistic indiscretions that seem to characterize Kelly’s absence of standards.

  • The false assertion that the Department of Health and Human Services had authored a report that showed the costs of health care rising as a result of the new legislation, and the allegation that the report was suppressed by HHS and/or the White House prior to the vote in Congress. This story was debunked later by Fox’s own Bret Baier.
  • The suppression of a letter revealing the marital infidelity of Senator John Ensign. Kelly kept the letter, from the husband of Ensign’s mistress, secret for five days, thus protecting the Senator from scandal. The story broke anyway and there is a possibility that it was Kelly who tipped off Ensign about the imminently breaking news.
  • The promotion of a non-scientific survey on the military’s support of Obama as if it were a real poll. Kelly misrepresented the survey to disparage the President shortly after he received an endorsement from Gen. Colin Powell.

The behavior of Kelly in these examples is squarely in alignment with the mission of Fox News. However, it is directly contrary to what they claim. It is the antithesis of fairness or balance. And it puts Kelly in the running to surpass Glenn Beck on the scale of reportorial incompetence and deceit.

I know that’s a harsh assessment, but look at the facts. Beck is a purveyor of paranoid conspiracies. People expect him to be a hyperbolic nutcase. Kelly is on from 1:00pm to 3:00pm ET, smack in the middle of the news day. She is supposed to be, according to Ailes and others, a straight news reporter. Yet while Beck (who is also in the news daypart) can be placed into only one of the 3F categories above, Kelly may qualify for all three.

Sure, she’s not as bombastic as Beck, but Beck doesn’t have a law degree or the implied credibility that comes with it. And she’s not as inclined to present herself as a cult or spiritual leader, but she does impose her views on an audience that has been made gullible by fear and repetition. Her imputed authority, and the force of her argumentativeness, has the potential to sway people from realistic appraisals of current events. And she has the added benefit of not appearing to be as obviously disturbed as Beck, which helps her to advance her opinions.

The manner in which Kelly presents her reporting is every bit as phony as Beck’s hallucinatory drivel. But the only people who will believe Beck are those who are already inclined to accept delusion as truth. Kelly, on the other hand, manages to come off as a serious newscaster whose reports contain some semblance of substance. And that’s what makes Kelly worse, or potentially more dangerous, than Beck. While Beck casts himself as a rodeo clown, Kelly is portrayed as a wise and sober analyst.

In the larger picture, Kelly is merely following the Fox format which also has so-called “news” casters like Neil Cavuto, Jon Scott, Bill Hemmer, and Bret Baier engaging in observably biased broadcasts. It’s a deliberate and articulated strategy by Ailes, Murdoch, et al. It’s the Fox Way.

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Fox Alert! The Taliban Is Recruiting Monkey Mercenaries

Posted by on July 13, 2010 at 2:29 pm. 1 Comments :

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has been giving the World Weekly News some pretty stiff competition. With Fox News making up stories about ClimateGate and the New Black Panther Party, and Fox Nation trying to spark fears of Boob Bombs and armed IRS ObamaCare enforcers, the Murdoch empire is not much more than a right-wing fantasy factory.

Today they have upped the lunacy by passing along a ridiculous story about the Taliban training monkeys to do battle with American soldiers. The story, sourced to the People’s Daily in China, was published by at least two Murdoch properties, Fox Nation and the New York Post. And if you weren’t frightened by the prospect of terrorists sneaking into the country with explosive breast implants, then maybe the thought of radical Islamic macaques and baboons armed “with AK-47 rifles, machine guns and trench mortars in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan” will set you to squirming. And both the Post and the Fox Nationalists featured an obviously doctored “photo” of a menacing Monkey Mercenary, along with this foreboding video:

Ordinarily I would dismiss this sort of rightist horror story without much consideration. After all, even the video supplied doesn’t show a single rhesus recruit, just some suspicious still photos. But upon reflection, I couldn’t entirely cast off the theory after observing the quality of Murdoch’s “news” operations. I mean, if the monkeys working for Murdoch can be reporters and publishers, then why couldn’t they be soldiers?


James O’Keefe In More Legal Hot Water Over ACORN

Posted by on July 12, 2010 at 8:57 pm. 8 Comments :

James O'KeefeConvicted criminal James O’Keefe is reportedly being sued by a former ACORN employee who was the reluctant star of one of O’Keefe’s videos. Earlier this year O’Keefe was sentenced to three years probation, 100 hours of community service, and a $1,500 fine for having trespassed the offices of a United States senator in Lousiana under false pretenses. He followed up that stunt with one wherein he fraudulently misrepresented himself to the Census Bureau in a pathetic scheme that not even Fox News would cover.

Now the ACORN escapade is coming back to bite him in his fat, petulant arse. Juan Carlos Vera was an employee in the San Diego office of ACORN. He was videotaped by O’Keefe allegedly offering advice on how to smuggle underage girls into the country for prostitution. At least that was the impression left by the videos that O’Keefe distributed to Fox News and other disreputable media shops like those of Andrew Breitbart, O’Keefe’s mentor.

As it turns out, the video was edited in a manner that deliberately misconstrued the actual events. Subsequent investigations proved that Vera had valiantly acquired as much information as he could extract from O’Keefe and immediately reported him to the police. But dishonest editing is not the only thing for which O’Keefe may be guilty.

Now Vera has filed suit against O’Keefe in federal court for violation of California’s privacy laws. In California it is illegal to make video or audio recordings without the consent of all of the participants. And wasn’t it generous of O’Keefe to provide the evidence of his own wrongdoing by making the videos public and bragging about his role in producing them?

Little Jimmy O’Keefe is proving himself to be an incorrigible delinquent. Although he considers himself to be a journalist, and he will remain a hero to the Tea Baggers, the reality is that he is nothing more than a cheap prankster, a recidivist lawbreaker, a partisan hack, and above all, an idiot. I suppose that’s what you get for attending the Borat School of Journalism.


More Proof That Fox News Is Not News

Posted by on July 12, 2010 at 6:57 pm. 12 Comments :

As if any further evidence was needed…..

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post wrote a profile of Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer. The piece began by making a completely unsupported assertion that Hemmer was “a middle-of-the-road guy.” However, Kurtz quickly redeemed himself by pointing out that Hemmer’s record of fairness and/or balance was something less than pure.

“The first solo guest on every show but one, from June 1 through July 2, was a Republican or conservative — including Karl Rove (twice), Steve Forbes (twice), House GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, economist Art Laffer and officials from the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. Conservative commentators, such as John Fund and Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal and Byron York and Chris Stirewalt of the Washington Examiner, appeared by themselves. Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican who is a leading opponent of illegal immigration, was on three times. By contrast, a relative handful of Democratic lawmakers were given solo spots, while Democratic strategists were generally paired in debates with Republican counterparts.”

The rest of the article pretty much receded back into the sort of mushy puff piece for which Kurtz is well known. Kurtz didn’t even challenge the anchor, whom he described as having an “infectious grin and golly-gee demeanor,” when Hemmer noted that…

“A viewer needs to understand a story in a short period of time, otherwise they will zone out or they will change the station. Complexities are difficult to sell.”

It’s a good thing Hemmer doesn’t have to report on anything complex like a war in Afghanistan, a Supreme Court nomination, a teetering economy, or an environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

You might also recall that Michael Clemente, senior vice president of Fox News, defines the hours of 9am to 4pm, and 6pm to 8pm, as the dayparts that air straight news. So Hemmer’s 9:00am program is the springboard to Fox’s news day. And like the rest of the Fox News schedule, it is infested with right-wing bias. In this case the bias is delivered with “boyish enthusiasm” and a comforting simplicity.

Update: Hemmer ventured off to Brian Kilmeade’s radio show to respond to charges of partisanship on his program. He blamed it on Democrats who, he says, refuse his invitations to appear.

I hope he’s right. Democrats should refuse to appear on Fox News. And for the same reason they wouldn’t appear on the Lyndon Larouche Network. Fox is not a legitimate news enterprise and should not be treated as one.


Sarah Palin’s Zoo

Posted by on July 8, 2010 at 1:07 pm. 16 Comments :


Sarah Palin (left) with Glenn Beck.

In a new video from Sarah Palin’s PAC, women are brought into the spotlight in some particularly unflattering portrayals. Rather than casting women as intelligent and productive participants in the nation’s affairs, Palin repeatedly analogizes them to animals. Starting with pit bulls, then advancing to grizzly bears, and ending with a flourish of stampeding elephants.

In every case Palin’s imagery is of angry and hostile beasts, as opposed to thoughtful and serious citizens. She describes the rise of conservative women as a “mom awakening,” but there is little evidence of enlightenment in the movement.

Palin declines to even acknowledge that women can be clear thinkers and problem solvers. Instead, she praises their stereotypical feminine assets “…because moms kind of just know when something’s wrong.” That’s the insight of intuition, not education, experience, reason, or intellect. Is that what Palin and her “mama grizzlies” would bring to governing? I can almost hear her response to a reporter’s inquiry on why she thinks the U.S. should bomb Iran: “I kind of just know, dontcha know?” Then adding, “And God bless America, also.”

The entire video is a tribute to Sarah Palin as she promenades through rallies, book signings, and tea parties. There is plenty of footage of her faithful followers demonstrating their devotion. And to no one’s surprise, the crowd is conspicuously devoid of faces of color. This is the sort of attendance that she can expect at her appearance with Glenn Beck in Washington, DC, next month. DC’s National Zoo may want to close down for the day because the real wild kingdom is going to be on display on the stage in front of the Lincoln Memorial.