Hey Tea Baggers: Did You Know That You Are Supposed To Be Boycotting Fox News NOW?

Posted by Mark NC on March 23, 2013 at 1:13 am. 4 Comments :

Attention all Tea Partiers. The massively humungous national boycott of the pinko liberal Fox News network is currently in progress. Join the movement that is demanding that Fox News cease to be a mouthpiece for the left.

This crusade is being undertaken because Fox has betrayed the Tea Party and its far right members. They will no longer allow themselves to be taken for granted by an allegedly conservative network that is really just exploiting and deceiving them. The charade is over and these stalwart patriots are standing up to the powerful media moguls who run Fox News.

These “Tea Party Fire Ants” have a list of demands that they insist be heard and obeyed:

We want FOX to become an active, investigative news organization serving the needs and wants of the “far right” audience.
We want FOX to have at least one segment on Benghazi every night on at least two of the three shows in prime time.
Yes, the BIRTH CERTIFICATE. Obama’s birth certificate. You know, that thing you mocked and the people you mocked who turned out to be right when they said it was a fake?
We’re not interested in “Fair and Balanced”.

You got that Fox? You can no longer enjoy a free ride. The Tea Bagger Brigade is locked and loaded and ready for battle. Enough already with the leftist BS you have been shoving down their throats. They are already claiming a victory from their first boycott earlier this month which they say caused a 22% decline in Fox’s ratings (even though no such decline occurred). And they are prepared to take their wingnut business elsewhere if Fox doesn’t straighten up and fly (even farther) right. After all, they have Drudge and Breitbart (who they suspect Obama murdered) and this summer will see the launch of the One America Network from the “Moonie” Washington Times.

So if you are a Tea Bagger, be sure to shut off Fox for the remainder of this weekend. Fox needs to learn that the Tea Party will not be taken for granted. Until they commit to 24/7 programming of Benghazi-gate and a pledge to expose Obama’s Kenyan birth, Fox is no friend of the Tea Party or any other conservative.

[Editors note: These freaks are for real, but if they want to stop watching Fox for a few days it couldn’t do them any harm. It would be a brief respite from the brainwashing and lies to which they subject themselves.]

Question: Is The Tea Party Dead? Answer: It was Never Alive

Posted by Mark NC on March 20, 2013 at 12:56 pm. 10 Comments :

Dave Weigel at Slate has done some fun sleuthing and discovered that the House Tea Party Caucus, launched by Michele Bachmann, is, if not dead, in critical condition and slipping away fast:

Today, the membership page for the caucus is defunct. The caucus hasn’t met since July 2012; it has posted no news since July 2012. In the press, “Tea Party caucus” has become an offhand way to refer to conservatives. In her speech to CPAC, which included a typically Bachmann-ian error about how much TANF money is wasted on administration, Bachmann didn’t mention “the Tea Party.”

The only dispute I have with Weigel’s analysis is that the Tea Party cannot be dead if it was never alive. It has long been my observation that there never was a Tea Party. All of its constituents are Republicans (or vote Republican). All of the elected representatives who associate themselves with it are Republicans. All of its policy positions are straight from the GOP Party platform. Much of it’s original organizing muscle was provided by establishment Republican operatives like Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and GOP flacks Russo Marsh & Rogers. The Tea Party is, and always has been, a wholly owned subsidiary of the GOP, and everyone from Republican leadership to the GOP PR agency (aka Fox News) knows it:

John Boehner, House Minority Leader: There really is no difference between what Republicans believe in and what the tea party activists believe in.

Michael Steele, Republican Party Chairman: It’s important for our party to appreciate and understand that so we can move toward it, and embrace it.

Mark Skoda, Tea Party Leader: This movement is beginning to mature … not as a third party but a force to be reckoned with in the traditional party structure.

Carl Cameron, Fox News: They plan to establish separate spin off political action committees to fund raise for candidates who back Tea Party goals and the official Republican National Committee platform.

Newt Gingrich, Former GOP House Speaker: If the Republican Party offers a positive alternative in a way that Tea Party activists and independents join them, the tide could turn.

GOP Tea Party Consequently, the Tea Party could not have died. Its purpose was to promote the most extreme, far-right positions of the GOP and to denounce compromise and cooperation. That stubbornness has resulted in unprecedented gridlock in Washington and decline in support for the Republican Party to historic lows. The Tea-publican bonds are tightly wrapped and they cannot pretend they were never an item. The GOP web site even featured a page explicitly aligning themselves with “Tea Bagging” (which is interesting because they now consider the term derogatory).

So, no…the Tea Party is not dead. It was never alive. And its place in the GOP is as firm as ever despite their failure to acknowledge it. Bachmann’s defunct caucus is a joke and the infighting between the GOP establishment and their Tea Party wing is just more fertile material for humor. Karl Rove and Sarah Palin are at each others throats. RNC chair Reince Priebus and Rush Limbaugh are feuding fiercely. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell faces a Tea-publican primary challenger. And John Boehner is being ostracized from within his own ranks.

Aah yes, these are good times.

CPAC So Far: The Conservative Miscreant Conference Doesn’t Disappoint

Posted by Mark NC on March 15, 2013 at 1:22 pm. 5 Comments :

In the first two days of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the right-wingnut contingent was out in force and was not holding back on their animus and denial. They still believe that the reasons for their losing are related to poor messaging, not poor messages. So even with the highest rated cable news network blasting their propaganda 24/7, and polls showing that the American people overwhelmingly prefer the solutions advanced by Democrats, Republicans continue to cling to ideas that have been soundly rejected by voters.

That is, of course, good news for Democrats and President Obama. The more that rightist stars shine their light on absurdities and overt hatred, the more people will be repulsed and gravitate toward the left. Some examples of the tone-deaf rhetoric emanating from the CPAC ballrooms include these utterances from their heroes:

Donald Trump is very unhappy that the social safety net, that he and the right would love to see unravel, cannot be loosened without sacrificing votes:

Allen West, the guy who says there are 70 card-carrying communists in congress, also thinks that his battle against his ideological opponents on the left is analogous to fighting terrorists.

And Marco Rubio doesn’t want to be perceived as a bigot just because he holds bigoted views:

It is that sort of demented rancor expressed by these GOP Tea-holics that is keeping the party from corralling any support, particularly from minorities and young voters. Yet after throwing such temper tantrums, whose only purpose is to malign their perceived enemies, they persist in the delusion that their policy prescription is fine and it’s just their media, and in some cases their candidate selection, that is flawed.

No matter what they say about their presentation of conservatism, they had a fair shot with “severely conservative” Mitt Romney, and they lost. They had the most powerful name in media at their back, and they lost. The 2012 election pitted Obama against a right-wing onslaught that hit every plank in the far-right platform, and they lost badly. [Note: Although MSNBC and CNN both aired Romney’s CPAC speech live, Fox News ignored it entirely]

CPAC is doing precisely what it was intended to do: Spotlight the cream of the rightist crop. They cannot whine about deficient messaging when this is the all-star roster they themselves put on the field. The only problem that conservatives have is that their ideas are stuck in an archaic past, and they didn’t even work then. When they realize that and begin to adopt sensible policies that the American people favor, they might win back some support. But as things stand today, they are stubbornly holding fast to outdated and unpopular schemes designed to benefit the rich. And judging from the performances at CPAC, they don’t plan to change their grating tune.

Rand Paul’s Tea-publican Hero-Worship And The Vacancy Of The Stupid Party

Posted by Mark NC on March 9, 2013 at 1:05 pm. 14 Comments :

This past week saw an unusual amount of media attention focused on a singularly non-newsworthy event. The big story of the week involved a United States senator who droned on interminably without ever saying anything of much substance. That’s about as significant a news item as a plane landing safely in clear weather. In fact, it’s pretty much what every senator does every day.

However, for some reason, Rand Paul’s soliloquy has captured the attention of the press and an adoring congregation of conservative true-believers. The beatific praise that Paul has garnered exceeds that of nearly every other right-wing idol competing for the limelight. Here is some of what is being said about him since his solo outing:

Sen. Rand Paul: Filibuster was victory and blow for freedom
Rand Paul’s shot heard ’round the world
Rand Paul’s Filibuster: ‘A Stroke of Political Genius’
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky performed a national service
Rand Paul’s ‘Epic’ Filibuster
New leader of the GOP: Rand Paul
Rand Paul, a civil liberties hero
Rand Paul’s Filibuster Proves He is the Future of the Republican Party
Rand Paul’s filibuster was ‘completely awesome’
The Rand Paul Moment Has Arrived
Rand Paul filibuster energizes Tea Party against GOP establishment
The World Stands With Rand Paul For Nearly 13 Hours
Rand Paul a ‘constitutional hero’ for Brennan filibuster

That’s a lot of glory for the dubious achievement of not shutting one’s mouth for thirteen hours. The filibuster was premised on a fallacy having to do with paranoid fears of President Obama advocating a drone strike program in America. There has never been any suggestion of that and when PolitiFact checked into the validity of the charge they rated it false.

Nevertheless, Paul persisted in his quixotic endeavor for a purpose that cannot be fathomed. He succeeded only in tying up the senate for a couple of days when there are numerous other critical matters to be resolved. And the specific matter that he was holding up, the nomination of John Brennan as CIA Director, was completed just a few hours after Paul’s filibuster ended with a successful confirmation.

The underlying issue of military drones is a serious matter and deserves discussion. In fact, there are probably areas in which the left and right will agree with regard to their use and abuse. But Paul’s stunt did nothing to further that discussion. To the contrary, it inhibited it because no conversation other than his monologue could take place while he held the floor.

What is not particularly surprising is the affection sent his way for this carnival side show. The GOP is famous for showering plaudits on their most inane spokespersons. They create heroes out of nitwits with nothing to offer but bluster and venom. During the Republican primaries last year there were fleeting leads for questionable characters like Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Donald Trump, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich. They all had temporary moments in the sun when they were regarded as the second coming of conservatism. And they all receded back into relative obscurity after the sunlight exposed their all too apparent shortcomings.

The same sort of ephemeral adulation was offered to one-time objects of idolatry like Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, and Bobby Jindal. They too have lost some or all of their luster. But they represent exactly the same values that are now propping up Rand Paul. Values that have the shallowest basis for admiration. It is nonsense like “death panels,” and birth certificates, and legitimate rape, and electrified border fences, and denial of climate change and evolution, and prohibitions against gay marriage and reproductive choice, that has driven the GOP to its lowest levels of support in decades. It is why Gov. Jindal has castigated his Republican colleagues saying that they have to stop being the “Stupid Party.”

That’s a tall order for a party that has made ignorance a plank in their platform. For that reason it is hard to imagine that Paul’s celebrity will last any longer than any of the other briefly revered rightists. Either a newer, more stridently conservative contestant will supersede him, or he will say or do something that will turn the applause into jeers. And it doesn’t take much, as Gov. Christie learned when he toured the hurricane damage in New Jersey with the President. As a tactical gesture, Obama could deep six Paul’s presidential aspirations by simply proposing legislation that prohibits the use of drones in the U.S. against citizens who are not engaged in combat or treasonous activities. As soon as Paul endorses anything supported by this president his hopes for higher office will be dashed for ever.

As bad as this environment is for Republicans seeking to attain relevance, it is equally disturbing that the media is so easily seduced by the most trivial actions. Paul’s stint as rodeo clown produced nothing he can brag about. He delayed more important matters, ran his mouth off, and preened for press photos. At least Jimmy Stewart’s “Mr. Smith” kept going until he was in near physical collapse. Paul, on the other hand, only quit because his bladder gave out. That’s not a particularly dramatic ending for the historians who will be composing the account of this episode. Just imagine if Patrick Henry was immortalized for having bravely demanded, “Give me liberty or let me pee.”

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Night Of The Living Tea Party

Posted by Mark NC on March 6, 2013 at 12:23 pm. NO Comments :

Get your copy of the ebook
Fox Nation vs. Reality
today. Only $2.99 at Amazon.

These right-wing dead-enders will simply never learn. After having deluded themselves into believing that President Obama’s reelection was dead in the water, that Mitt Romney was a shoe-in to take up residency in the White House, and that all the polls were the work of corrupt partisans bent on deceiving the electorate, you would think that they would have joined the rest of America in the real world. You would be wholly and hysterically wrong.

An article posted on Fox Nation declares wildly, and without rational support, that “The Tea Party Still Lives.” In one respect it is an encouraging development in that they must at least recognize that the far-right fringe of the GOP has been on life support for quite some time. However, this new diagnosis is based on the same sort of pathological denial as the claims that Obama’s presidency was terminal. The poll cited by the Fox Nationalists was commissioned by the Tea Party itself and the depth of the survey’s inquiry was astonishingly shallow.

For instance, the primary claim by the Tea Party pollsters is that “A plurality of Americans support ‘Tea Party principles.'” The principles they are boasting about include “free markets,” and “personal responsibility.” That’s a pretty vague set of principles that are held by most Americans regardless of party. Having established absolutely nothing with that inquiry, they proceed to juxtapose those results with what they consider to be the principles of everyone else: “higher taxes,” and “more spending.” At this point it should be fairly obvious that there is no credibility whatsoever in this poll.

It is interesting to note that, despite the dramatically biased construction of this poll, it could not even deliver a majority in favor of the skewed choices presented to the respondents. Only 48% said they agree with the “Tea Party principles” as described. What’s more, the actual poll results were not published on either Fox Nation or the site of their source, the ultra-conservative Washington Free Beacon. What do you suppose are they afraid of?

When credible pollsters have asked people whether they support the President’s positions on specific issues such as the budget, immigration, climate change, and gun safety, the results invariably favor Obama. And when pollsters inquire as to the level of support for the Tea Party, the results are pitifully low.

Nevertheless, the Tea Party continues to wallow in denial with fabricated polling and delusions of grandeur that defy reason. And even after being made fools of by partisan media that led them into the pits of pipe-dream propaganda, they continue to put their faith in media con artists like Fox News. Which, by the way, is all the better for Democrats and progressives who still live in the real world.

Fox News Runs Smoke Screen For The Tea-bacco Party

Posted by Mark NC on February 17, 2013 at 10:00 am. 1 Comments :

A recent study was conducted by the University of California at San Francisco that uncovered a connection between the astroturf Tea Party movement and wealthy lobbyists for Big Tobacco. The study documented how tobacco interests formed an organization called Citizens for a Sound Economy in 2002 and later split it into the Tea Party organizers FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity.

Tea-bacco Unable to dispute the facts exposed by the study, Fox News published an article attacking the funding which came from the National Cancer Institute, a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health. The Fox headline blared “Taxpayer dollars used to fund study attempting to link Tea Party to tobacco lobby.”

The entire premise of the article was a transparent defense of the Tea Party, which Fox also helped to create. In fact, without their relentless promotion and free airtime there would have been no Tea Party at all. But having no case to make against the findings of the study, Fox went after a peripheral issue in an attempt to change the subject to the funding source. What they failed to realize is that university studies frequently receive grants from government agencies, particularly those that research public health.

The UCSF study was in no way designed to attack the Tea Party. It was looking into the manner in which the tobacco industry advanced their mission to market their deadly products. It just so happened that the Tea Party connection was unveiled during the course of the study. That connection should not surprise anyone considering that the Tea Party’s first major protest activity was centered on blocking public health care, something the tobacco lobby has opposed for decades because it educated consumers about the dangers of smoking.

The faux outrage now being expressed by Fox does nothing to counter the findings in the study. What it does is chastise institutions who engage in research that benefits the public. By attacking the funding sources Fox is advocating a form of academic censorship and trampling on the free expression of the researchers. It’s rather ironic in that the Tea Party rightists often rail about the interference of big government, but in this incident they are eager to allow the government to dictate to independent institutions what they are, and are not, permitted to study.

If Fox were a legitimate news enterprise they might have chosen to run a story about the merits and/or flaws of the study rather than try to discredit it with snide insinuations that raise phony suspicions about the funding. But since they are Fox they typically chose to trash whatever it is that they regard as contrary to their conservative prejudices, even if their argument makes no sense and contradicts their own principles.

Memo To Media: Don’t Cover The Phony Tea Party Response To The State Of The Union

Posted by Mark NC on February 10, 2013 at 10:19 am. 5 Comments :

It was announced last week that GOP Sen. Rand Paul will be giving the “official” Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. In previous years it was Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann (who CNN carried live).

There hasn’t been any indication yet of whether the media will carry Paul’s response live, but it should be noted that to do so would be a total farce. There is no such thing as the Tea Party. It is simply a fringe wing of the Republican Party. Rand Paul is, of course, a Republican. He represents the views of the rest of his party, as well as those of the person giving the official GOP response to the President, Marco Rubio (who is also a Tea Partier).

What this means is that the GOP is trying to get two bites of the post-SOTU apple. The media should not fall for this ruse. Paul was even quoted on CNN as saying that his remarks would not be competing with Rubio’s and would just be “extra.” Therefore, coverage of his comments would only serve to double up the opposition to Obama’s speech.

The Tea Party has recently sunk to new lows in support from the American people. Their caucus in congress is much smaller than that of the Democrats Progressive Caucus (Tea Party, 49; Progressive, 71), despite having more Republicans in the House.

If the media is intent on giving undeserved attention to the Tea Party, fairness would require them to give equal time to a progressive response. Perhaps they could invite Bernie Sanders to respond to the President. He would surely articulate a message that differs from the administration in greater measure than Paul would differ from Rubio. Or maybe they could call on Carolyn Maloney, whose advocacy of reforms for gun safety would be a timely subject.

In any case, it would be unethical for the media to grant an unpopular fringe group the opportunity to propagandize the nation when they already have an official spokesman in Rubio. And if they did so without balancing the coverage by presenting a progressive response it would affirm their right-wing bias. Will the media act unethically? Well, it aint like they haven’t before.

GOP Sleaze Meister Roger Stone Rears His Repulsive Head In Defense Of The Tea Party

Posted by Mark NC on February 7, 2013 at 2:50 pm. 1 Comments :

With the GOP in a historic internal battle between the forces of the hard-right establishment (Karl Rove & Co.) and the confederacy of right-wing dunces (the Tea Party), an old warrior has made an appearance on the battlefield.

Roger Stone is a veteran Republican operative who cut his teeth in the nastiest campaigns of Richard Nixon. More recently he founded a group to oppose Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign in 2008, that he called “Citizens United Not Timid,” or C.U.N.T. So it is not particularly surprising that Stone would resurface in order to take the side of the Tea Party in their war against Rove. Nor is it surprising that Stone would find the most disgusting way to articulate his support for the inexorable Teabaggers. He told TPM Livewire that…

“These are the storm troops of the Republican Party. Don’t offend them.”

Hmm. I wonder how the Tea Party would respond to being compared to Germany’s special forces who advanced the art of brutality. With friends like Stone who needs enemas?

The Tea Party is not the only new friend that Stone has made. Keith Ablow, the Fox News “Psycho Analyst,” was recently mulling a bid for the senate seat vacated by John Kerry. A couple of days ago he decided against entering the race and made this statement:

Ablow: As I made clear, with the sprint to the Special Election in June, a primary fight was not in my blood. I have conferred with my chief advisor Roger Stone, who agreed with my assessment of a primary as an unwise choice for me.

So Ablow has revealed that he has chosen for himself a chief advisor who calls Clinton a “cunt” and the Tea Party “Storm Troopers.” That’s a curious selection considering that Ablow regards himself as an exemplar of morality. Perhaps it was Stone who advised Ablow to praise Newt Gingrich for his serial infidelity, or to engage in diagnoses of public figures whom he had not examined, in violation of the ethics codes of the American Psychiatric Association.

Ablow has been a relentlessly repugnant presence on Fox News with his offensive misrepresentations of other people’s motivations. He further disgraced himself by coauthoring a book with Glenn Beck. But now that we know who has been behind the scenes giving him advice, it all makes much more sense. Ablow and Stone were made for each other, and if they weren’t both homophobic bigots we might see them one day tie the knot.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: 10 Flagrant Falsehoods From The Fox News Community Site

Posted by Mark NC on November 29, 2012 at 10:08 am. 5 Comments :

[This article was previously published on Alternet and contains a few excerpts from my new eBook, Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault On Truth. The book contains more than fifty additional examples of Fox’s dishonesty.]

When Fox News debuted sixteen years ago, it was crafted from scratch to be a partisan outlet for right-wing propaganda and a platform for advancing a conservative agenda. Its founder, Rupert Murdoch, was already an internationally known purveyor of right-slanted newspapers and broadcasters. Complimenting Fox’s television presence is its Internet community web site, Fox Nation. The statement of purpose posted on the Fox Nation web site says that it is “committed to the core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse, and fair and balanced coverage of the news.” However, a cursory glance at the site reveals that they have fallen wide of their stated purpose by several light years.

Fox Nation is layered thickly with far-right extremist diatribes and links to disreputable articles plucked from the Internet’s fringes. And the notion that civil discourse can take place on Fox Nation is quickly dispelled by reading their user forums with their frequent use of the “N” word and juvenile references to the President as “Odumbo” and the First Lady as “Moo-chelle.” These sorts of comments are not anomalies. Fox Nation is deliberately catering to this caliber of audience who revel in overt racist and hostile dialogue. This is not the conventional, freewheeling online chatter that is found on comment boards and is particularly unusual for a site sponsored by a major national news network.

Not much is known about the operations of Fox Nation. Unlike other news enterprises that identify their principle staff, Fox Nation treats their publishers, editors, etc., as if they were covert agents of espionage. There is no masthead or bylines or any other indication of who is responsible for the repugnant content posted daily on the web page. Requests for this information from Fox corporate communications officers went unanswered. And given the dishonesty, unprofessionalism, ignorance, and immaturity of the tone and substance on the site, perhaps it is their intention to remain anonymous in order to avoid the shame that would come with an association to such puerile trash.

Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch was a harsh critic of Google News, calling them “parasites,” because he said they steal his content by posting headlines and short blurbs and linking to the source articles. But that’s pretty hypocritical because it’s exactly what Fox Nation does. There is almost no original content, and what they harvest from other sources is often planted on affiliated sites like those of Fox News contributors Tucker Carlson, Michele Malkin, and Dick Morris.

What follows are ten excerpts from my ebook, Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault On Truth. The book chronicles more than fifty flagrantly dishonest reports by the Fox Nationalist team of faux journalists. These are not mere differences of opinion or discussions that might have varying degrees of perspective. They are obvious, provable, outright lies, and they are manifestations of a disconnect with the real world.

1) Human Carbon Emissions Could Put OFF a Lethal New Ice Age
According to the Fox Nationalists, the perpetrators of Global Warming are actually rescuing the planet from a frigid doom. They quote Cambridge University research published in the journal Nature Geoscience. The only problem with their conclusion is that the scientist they reference in the article, Luke Skinner, has a completely different conclusion. He says that he anticipated this response amongst climate crisis deniers and said that they are…

“…missing the point, because where we’re going is not maintaining our currently warm climate but heating it much further, and adding CO2 to a warm climate is very different from adding it to a cold climate.

“The rate of change with CO2 is basically unprecedented, and there are huge consequences if we can’t cope with that.”

Skinner told the BBC that the results of the study point to the sensitivity of the climate system to “quite small changes in CO2, let alone the huge changes that we’ve been responsible for over the last 200 years.” Of course, none of that is included in the Fox Nation article. They deliberately neglect the obvious point that by the time the presumed ice age begins, in 1,500 years, global warming, if unchecked, would have already put half the planet’s current land mass under water. But these facts do not sway Fox from cherry-picking out-of-context soundbites to mislead their audience.

2) College Mate: Obama Was An Ardent Marxist-Leninist
In this episode Fox Nation posted as their featured headline story an article with the title: College Mate: Obama Was an ‘Ardent’ ‘Marxist-Leninist.’ In order to fabricate this wholly dishonest smear, Fox sunk to re-posting a column written by conservative bomb-thrower Selwyn Duke. Duke’s article was originally published by The New American, the periodical of the extremist and notoriously fascistic John Birch Society.

In the article, Duke relied entirely on the testimony of John Drew, a man who has been pushing his dubious and uncorroborated account of a college relationship with Obama for years. He claims that Obama was a close friend and confidant. The truth is he only met Obama casually a handful of times at gatherings with many others present. He never attended college with Obama because the future President didn’t enter Occidental College until after Drew had graduated.

It’s painfully clear to anyone paying attention that Drew is attempting to exploit his brief encounters with Obama to exalt himself, disseminate his rightist propaganda, and earn a few bucks in the process. Now, after years of plodding through radical right-wing rags and Internet backwater rabble, Drew and Duke have succeeded in getting Fox Nation to sling their stale mud.

3) Obama Selling Amnesty For $465
The issue of immigration is one that the Fox Nationalists relish in demagoguing. They publish numerous stories that are openly racist, as has been thoroughly documented. This is just such a story that was designed to inflame prejudice with its utterly dishonest skewing of the facts. The headline composed by Fox Nation is wholly untrue. Not only is amnesty not a part of the administration’s program, nothing in it is for sale.

In truth, President Obama directed the Department of Homeland Security to exercise prosecutorial discretion so that innocent children who were brought to this country by undocumented parents are not unduly punished while a more comprehensive solution is negotiated with Congress. The program does not provide amnesty. The fee to apply for this program is intended to offset costs, but can be waived on a case by case basis for applicants unable to pay.

None of those facts stopped Fox from deliberately misrepresenting the matter in a way that leads their audience to presume that the administration is peddling citizenship to foreigners who come here to steal our jobs. It appears that Fox picked up the story from the juveniles at Breitbart News where John Nolte published an article that implied that Obama’s goal is to mint new voters. Never mind that the immigrants partaking of this program will not have voting rights because they will not be citizens.

4) Americans Not Buying Buffett Rule
The Buffett Rule that Americans are not buying refers to his remarks that wealthy folks like him should not be paying lower tax rates than average folks like his secretary. So all that the Fox Nationalists had to do to validate their headline was produce the results of a poll that shows that a majority of respondents do not believe that raising taxes on millionaires will do any good. And since, in this case, they are relying on the results of a poll conducted by Fox News, they should be able to support whatever preconceived myth they want to invent.

However, the very first paragraph of their own story states that “more voters think raising taxes on wealthy Americans will help (40 percent) rather than hurt the economy (24 percent).” And the margin of difference (16%) isn’t even close. Yet somehow the headline atop the article overtly refutes the facts in their own survey. Are these people even trying anymore? They must really think their readers are idiots. And since they must know their audience better than anyone else, I will defer to their assessment.

5) NBC News Hires Anchor Who Pledged to Not Criticize Obama About Anything
In this episode of Fox Nation’s departure from reality, the Fox Nationalists jumped on remarks by Al Sharpton suggesting that he intends to refrain from ever criticizing President Obama. But that isn’t what he said.

Sharpton: “What I don’t want to see is because he is black we act like he’s not the real president – he ought to be leading the black cause or the labor cause. He’s the President. To minimize who he is, I think, is an insult to the achievement of having him there.”

So this was not about Sharpton never criticizing Obama, just not constraining Obama to being merely the president of black Americans as opposed to all Americans. Fox, on the other hand, should acknowledge that their whole business model rests on not criticizing Republicans and conservatives. In a specific example you have Dick Morris, who has been on the Fox payroll for years, and pledged never to criticize Mitt Romney:

“I decided a couple of – a month or two ago to stop dumping on Mitt Romney, for example … Not because I approve of Romneycare, not because I approve of his flip-flops, flip on abortion, but because I may have to be one of those who carries this guy for a couple of months when he’s running against Obama and I don’t want to make my own task harder.”

Morris fulfilled that promise by becoming one of Romney’s most ardent cheerleaders. Just days before Obama won with a commanding Electoral College victory, Morris told Fox News that a Romney landslide was a virtual certainty.

6) Elizabeth Warren Praises Communist China
In response to an ad by Massachusetts senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, the Fox Nationalists have not only lied, but exposed their latent unpatriotic tendencies as well. To state bluntly that “Elizabeth Warren Praises Communist China” is a thoroughly manufactured falsehood. She never did anything remotely of the kind. What she did was advocate for the importance of America remaining competitive on an international basis and not permit China to take the lead. Here is what she said:

“We’ve got bridges and roads in need of repair, and thousands of people in need of work. Why aren’t we rebuilding America? Our competitors are putting people to work, building the future. China invests 9 percent of its GDP in infrastructure. America, we’re at just 2.4 percent. We can do better. We can build a foundation for a strong new economy and get people in Massachusetts to work right now.”

The Fox Nationalists have a decidedly shallow grasp of world affairs. They think that lamenting America falling behind on matters critical to international competitiveness is the same as praising a political system of government. Were these same conservatives outraged when Reagan, and other cold warriors, argued that the U.S. was falling behind the Soviet Union militarily and, therefore, they were praising Russia’s communism?

For Fox News, and its conservative benefactors, to criticize Warren for these comments is akin to advocating for America to succumb to foreign competitors. In effect, it’s conservatives who are acceding to China’s superiority – not the other way around.

7) Stocks Tumble Worldwide After Obama Speech
The implication of this headline is that Obama’s speech had something to do with a stock market decline. However, the very first paragraph of the Bloomberg News article Fox cites specifically states that the decline is due to…

“…escalating concern about Greece’s debt crisis and speculation congress won’t pass President Obama’s plan to boost the economy.“

In other words, the markets favor Obama’s plan and want it to be implemented. So a more honest headline would have read “Stocks Tumble Worldwide Due To Republican Obstructionism.” But then again, if you’re looking for a more honest headline then you probably wouldn’t be reading Fox Nation in the first place.

8) Guess Who Tried To Break Into Southwest Cockpit?
Notice that in this headline the Fox Nationalists explicitly describes Ali Reza Shahsavari as trying to break into the cockpit of a Southwest Airlines plane. But anyone who read a little further down would have seen that the article unambiguously contradicts the headline saying “Initially, authorities said the man had tried to break into the cockpit but Amarillo Aviation Director Patrick Rhodes later said that he was ‘not trying to break into the cockpit, but was unruly and had confronted the cabin crew.'”

The headline was wholly the creation of Fox News. The story itself was sourced to the Associated Press, whose article got the headline right: “Southwest flight makes emergency landing in Texas.” So what we have here is Fox deliberately falsifying the headline in order to make a derogatory insinuation about a man of Iranian descent who just happens to be an American citizen born in Mississippi. The article states that there is no indication of terrorism and additional reporting describe the incident as an episode of mental illness triggered by an argument with another passenger. The only conclusion is that Fox saw a brown man with Middle-Eastern features and decided to invent an international terrorism incident where none existed by appending a provocative question to the story that contradicted the article’s content.

9) Man Linked to ‘Occupy’ Protest Charged With Attempted Assassination of Obama
The Fox News Channel ran a story with this same deceptive theme. They hosted Michelle Malkin to engage in a discussion that was deliberately designed to smear the Occupiers. During the segment they displayed a picture of the suspect, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, with a caption that said: “‘Occupy’ Shooter.” There was no question mark or other qualifying notation to indicate that this was merely speculation on the part of Fox News.

For the record, the only link between this guy and the Occupy movement is the one invented by Fox. The Washington police have stated unequivocally that they have no evidence that he was affiliated in any way with the protesters. Reports that he may have tried to hide in the crowds at the Occupy DC site should not surprise anyone. Any densely populated location would attract somebody trying to elude law enforcement. A football game or an Alzheimer’s Walkathon would serve the same purpose.

What little is known about Ortega-Hernandez would likely lead objective analysts to suspect him of being a Teabagger. He is said to be anti-government, hates President Obama, and has a history of mental illness. That’s a profile that would fit perfectly for say … Glenn Beck.

10) Poll: Majority Blame Obama For Bad Economy
There have been numerous polls asking respondents to say who they hold responsible for the state of the American economy. In every one of them George W. Bush ranks at or near the top, with Congress and Wall Street following close behind. Usually President Obama is not the target of most of the blame.

Leave it to Fox News to come up with a poll that contradicts the others. And it should come as no surprise that the poll they’ve latched onto is the work of Rasmussen’s Pulse Opinion Research. However, even with a fixed pollster, and a rabidly partisan news outlet, Fox still finds it necessary to outright lie about the poll’s results.

In Rasmussen’s poll 34% said that Obama is the most to blame for the slow economic recovery. Most elementary school graduates know that that is not a majority. What’s more, if you add the responses of those who said that it was either Congress, Wall Street, or George W. Bush, it comes to a clear majority of 61% saying that Obama is not to blame. The Fox Nationalists must take great comfort in the knowledge that their audience is too incurious to actually look into anything themselves.

Bonus #11) Obama More Unpopular Than Tea Party
Here we have Fox Nation with a headline that is diametrically opposed to the actual results of a poll. From the New York 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 Tea Party is to deliberately misconstrue the data by taking into account only the unfavorable numbers as if they existed in a vacuum. Leave it to Fox to lie to their audience and produce a community characterized by ignorance and wishful thinking.

These are just a few examples of the veracity-challenged deceptions that appear everyday on Fox Nation. In the ebook, Fox Nation vs. Reality, there are dozens more examples of the documented, deliberate dishonesty that is the hallmark of Fox News. It’s a handy reference for rebutting those crazy uncles who keep sending you conspiracy theory chain letters and berating you for having missed Hannity last night.

Fox Nation is an integral part of the Fox News family and a critical component of their mission to deceive the general public and reinforce the partisan tunnel-blindness of their glassy-eyed disciples. This makes it all the more necessary to shine a light on their cynical mauling of truthfulness in media. Mark Twain said that “Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” And the fabulists at Fox have imagination in abundance as evidenced by all the tales they make up on their web site. So the more they seek to deceive, the more the rest of us need to be prepared to rebut and confront them. As difficult as that task may seem, we can take heart in Stephen Colbert’s observation that “Reality has a well known liberal bias.” Which explains why it is so at odds with what Fox represents.

Romney, Nugent, Trump, Et Al: A News Corpse Retrospective Of The 2012 Campaign In Words And Pictures

Posted by Mark NC on November 7, 2012 at 3:39 pm. 2 Comments :

I can’t remember an election season that I was ever so glad was over. The magnitude of malice and mentally defective diatribes was monumental. And that was just from Donald Trump.

In case you missed it, Trump was so apoplectic after the election was called for President Obama, he vented on vehemently on Twitter. The coward has since deleted those but the evidence remains:

Trump: “He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!”

Except that President Obama won the popular vote by two million votes, as well as an electoral vote landslide (303-206. 332 if Florida goes to Obama where he is presently leading) But it isn’t bad enough that Trump’s facts are wrong, his inciting a revolution because he doesn’t like the results of a democratic election is disgusting, and anti-American. What’s more, he doesn’t grasp that if there were a revolution, it is likely that he would be among the first against the wall.

Then there’s Ted Nugent, the Motor City Douchebag, who went on a Twitter-spree that affirms the shaky nature of his psychological condition. He’s “crying tears of blood” for an America filled with “subhuman varmints” that “just voted for economic & spiritual suicide.”

Nugent: Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters hav a president to destroy America

Nugent has boarded the Histrionic Express, which already boasts Trump, Glenn Beck, Clint Eastwood, John Sununu, and other like-mindless zombies as passengers. They are hurtling toward an obliviousness that is nurtured by the Fox News bubble-sphere that only reports what they think their politically comatose audience can withstand.

It’s a methodology that results in the Republican Party bowing to its Tea Party masters so that seats once regarded as certain are lost. In 2010, the GOP lost an opportunity to take over the senate, but for weak tea candidates like Christine O’Donnell (DE), Joe Miller (AK), Ken Buck (CO), Linda McMahon (CT), Carly Fiorina (CA), Sharron Angle (NV), and Carl Paladino (NY). This year the same thing occurred with losers in races the GOP could have won: Richard Mourdock (IN), Todd Akin (MO), Linda McMahon (CT), Scott Brown (MA), and Josh Mandel (OH). And the House saw its share of defeats as well: David Rivera (FL), Joe Walsh (IL), Chip Cravaack (MN), Frank Guinta (NH), Denny Rehberg (MT), and my personal favorite loser, Allen West (FL). Michele Bachmann held on by a slivery 500 votes.

What follows are a few of my favorite political graphics of the season. I hope you enjoyed this adventure and my accompanying illustrations. It isn’t over. There is still much to done and the rightist media led by Fox News will certainly be redoubling their efforts to deceive the nation’s voters. So we must stay alert and engaged – starting now.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: