Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Dead GOP Scandal Society

Posted by Mark NC on August 22, 2013 at 4:42 pm. 5 Comments :

Fox News has been engaged in a protracted campaign of manufactured scandal mongering for most of President Obama’s term in office. They have attempted to connect Obama to numerous imagined controversies via innuendo and relentless repetition. But despite their best efforts, Fox, and their accomplices in the Republican Party, have utterly failed to produce evidence of any malfeasance on the part of the White House.

However, that fact has done nothing to impede their obsessive quest to tarnish the Obama presidency. And now Fox Nation has posted a hysterical article that is so brazen in its prejudice that it’s hard to comprehend the level of stupidity required to have produced it.

See Fox Nation vs. Reality for dozens of examples of Fox’s disregard for truth.

It seems impossible to believe that even the Fox News audience could buy into the graphic messaging in this item. But after learning that more Louisiana Republicans blame Obama, rather than George Bush, for the dreadful response to Hurricane Katrina, anything is possible, including the Fox Nationalist’s attempt to draw a line from the criminally corrupt administration of Richard Nixon directly to Bill Clinton and Obama.

The cognitive failure necessary to produce the item above requires some obvious historical omissions. Ronald Reagan’s presidency was marred by scandals that included improper negotiations with the Iranian captors who were holding Americans hostage. Later, his program of selling arms to Iran in order to raise money to assist fascist rebels in Nicaragua resulted in prosecutions and convictions of top aides like Oliver North, now a Fox News host and contributor. Other scandals swept through Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency and his Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The administration of George W. Bush was also awash in scandal. The most horrific, of course, was his deliberate deception regarding weapons of mass destruction as an excuse to invade Iraq. That totally unnecessary war cost the lives of more than 4,000 American soldiers, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. It also cost billions of dollars that Bush purposefully kept off the budget.

Then there was his unlawful firing of U.S. Attorneys for political reasons; and the outing of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative, as revenge against her husband, Amb. Joe Wilson, for not going along with Administration lies; and the aforementioned Hurricane Katrina, wherein Bush’s negligence resulted in horrendous suffering and nearly 2,000 deaths in the Gulf Coast; and warrantless wiretapping; and the near meltdown of the U.S., and world, economy.

The scandals of those administrations that Fox Nation conveniently skipped over were far more serious than anything alleged in the Obama years. They involved numerous fatalities and criminal convictions, none of which have been associated with Obama. Yet somehow the Fox Nationalists managed to post a graphic tarring Clinton and Obama with the stain of Nixon, rather than Nixon’s Republican comrades. I would ask “How stupid do they think their audience is?” But clearly the the answer is pretty goddam stupid. And sadly, they’re probably right.

The Stupid Party: Louisiana Republicans Blame Obama For Katrina

Posted by Mark NC on August 21, 2013 at 4:56 pm. 17 Comments :

In a jaw-dropping display of pitiful ignorance, Republican respondents to a new survey have sunk to lows previously thought unattainable.

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The survey asked: “Who do you think was more responsible for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina: George W.Bush or Barack Obama?” When I first read the question I thought it was a joke. Surely everyone knows that Bush was president during the Katrina debacle and that Obama wasn’t even a candidate for the office. It would be three more years before Obama would be inaugurated. Only a complete idiot would choose Obama in response to that question.

Well, I suppose I shouldn’t underestimate the idiocy of the southern Tea-publican. While 44% said they were not sure who was more responsible, 29% picked Obama. Only 28% chose the correct answer, George W. Bush.

It should be noted that this was a poll of Louisiana Republicans. You know, the Louisiana where New Orleans is. The New Orleans that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and later by Bush. It’s also the Louisiana whose governor, Bobby Jindal, warned his Republican Party not to become the “stupid party.” Apparently they aren’t listening.

There are obviously consequences to aggressively rejecting science and math and fact-based observations of reality. Likewise, there are consequences to opposing education and the funding necessary to implement it effectively. Republicans take pride in dismissing higher education as the folly of snobs and elitists. They advocate policies that severely harm public schools and students. So it comes as no surprise that they wind up embarrassing themselves before the rest of the nation with displays of ignorance that are almost painful to observe. And isn’t a fluke. Take a look at the academic profile of the ten best and worst educated states (per Fox Business):

Fox News Doctor’s Fatal Misdiagnosis Of Bush’s Heart Surgery Wake-Up Call

Posted by Mark NC on August 6, 2013 at 4:30 pm. 6 Comments :

“Former President George W. Bush, 67, underwent a procedure Tuesday morning to have a stent placed in his heart one day after a blockage was discovered in an artery, according to a statement from his office. […] President Bush’s experience is a wake-up call for all of us.”

Indeed it is. That was the response of Dr. Marc Siegel of the Fox News Medical A Team to news that Bush had emergency heart surgery to repair a life-threatening blockage.

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The problem with Siegel’s response, however, is that his idea of a wake-up call is a useless gesture for many Americans. Siegel’s advice to “see your doctor for a physical” is sound on its face. But if you are uninsured, the costs associated with an office visit and the battery of tests required to ascertain your health status are prohibitive.

Siegel noted that Bush underwent a stress test with an EKG and a CT angiogram. Having discovered a coronary artery blockage, he was immediately admitted and scheduled for surgery. Bush, of course, is a former president and member of a wealthy family. How is an average American without insurance supposed to pay for all of that? And after the emergency care, who springs for the pharmaceuticals that would be required for the rest their life?

Bush, his family, and most Americans are grateful that his medical scare was resolved and that he will resume a normal lifestyle. But insofar as his experience was a wake-up call, it was an alarm sounding to address the shameful lack of health care for so many citizens in such a rich nation. ObamaCare is a step toward providing that care, but it is people like Dr. Siegel who are throwing obstacles in the way.

Siegel frequently appears on Fox News to denounce the Affordable Care Act and the President for advocating it. He called the Supreme Court ruling upholding ObamaCare a “disappointment.” He spins phony horror stories about death panels, doctor shortages, and unfounded claims of higher premiums and fewer services. Although, how you get to fewer than zero (as was the case for 45 million pre-ObamaCare citizens), I don’t know.

In Siegel’s world everyone should consider getting regular checkups and preventative care, but it should only be available for those fortunate enough to be able to afford it. In other words. Bush’s experience is a wake-up call to financially secure folks like Bush. But it’s a snooze button for millions of others about whom Siegel doesn’t appear to give a damn.

By Rush Limbaugh’s Logic George Bush Should Be Executed As A War Criminal

Posted by Mark NC on June 8, 2013 at 5:15 pm. 10 Comments :

This is one of those rare moments when we are compelled to thank Rush Limbaugh for settling an argument that liberals have been making for years. Specifically, that Bush has escaped accountability for gross malfeasance in office. Of course, Limbaugh doesn’t know what his remarks portend and would deny it he were told, but we’ll take what we can get. If Obama is guilty of political mischief, Bush’s guilt is of a far more deadly variety.

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On yesterday’s radio broadcast, Limbaugh went full-on Godwin as he tried (for the umpteenth time) to compare the Obama administration to Hitler’s Nazi regime. This time he inserted a brief disclaimer stating that he wasn’t saying Obama was Hitler, then went on to finish his lecture about how Obama is so much like Hitler. The inspiration for this rant came from a former Reagan national security adviser, Herbert Meyer, whom Limbaugh cited as his source for this extended bit of nonsense:

“[W]hether you believe it or not, there is not one document linking Adolf Hitler to the holocaust. Adolf Hitler never put it on paper what he intended to do. There is no smoking gun. And yet what happened? We know that the Nazis engaged in the Holocaust. Herb Meyer’s point was that the people Hitler hired didn’t have to be told. They didn’t have to be given instructions. All they had to do was listen to what Hitler was saying. All they had to do was listen to what his objectives were. And he said the same thing’s happening here with this administration.”

See? Exactly the same thing is happening now as happened with Hitler (minus the millions of corpses). Obama is deploying coded messages to his minions who will carry out the secret assignments that all two million federal employees know via telepathic transmission and, of course, the ObamaPhone.

The problem with this conspiracy blathering is that the central premise is utterly false. There were numerous documented links between Hitler and the tactics used by his regime to exterminate millions of people. The Wannsee Protocols and the doctrine of the “Final Solution” were explicit instructions to engage in mass murder. The Nuremberg Trials also made public documentary evidence of Hitler’s direct participation in the Holocaust. So right off the bat Limbaugh is revealing nothing other than his own ignorance of history, as well as his gross insensitivity to the victims of the Nazi horrors.

More to the point, the notion that Obama is somehow responsible for what has occurred at the IRS because his agenda was being carried out by underlings who just absorbed his intentions through intuition, is ludicrous. Furthermore, Rush’s twisted logic has repercussions that he may not have considered. During the Bush administration there was an abundance of initiatives that were carried out by people under his authority that were unambiguously illegal. U.S. attorneys were fired for their political affiliations. Covert CIA agents were outed in the press. Lies were used to justify military invasions of countries with whom we were not at war. Prisoners of war were tortured in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

At the time, there were no documentary links definitively tying Bush to these activities. There were also no investigations conducted to ascertain the facts. But by Limbaugh’s reasoning, none of that is necessary. Bush is obviously guilty because the perpetrators worked for him and thus were aware of his unspoken approval for what they did. And since some of those actions are war crimes, then according to Limbaugh, Bush should go on trial ala Nuremberg.

Where once there was a requirement that a “smoking gun” be found to seal the guilt of a criminal defendant, Limbaugh has literally said that such evidence is no longer needed. But the lunacy of his legal ramblings went even further:

“You don’t need to link Obama to it. He hired these people. Lois Lerner and everybody at the IRS who’s doing this is doing everything they can to please Obama.”

Limbaugh might have a point except for the fact that Lois Lerner and IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman are both Republicans who were hired by George Bush. There has not been a single person affiliated with this so-called scandal who has been identified as a Democrat or was hired by a Democratic political appointee. The IRS line workers are either career employees or were hired by the GOP managers at the tax-exempt organizations division (i.e. Lerner).

So if Limbaugh wants to blame everything that happens at the IRS (or the DoJ, or the State Department, or Benghazi, or Sandy Hook, or the JFK assassination) on Obama, then I say we send Bush to the Hague. What do you say, Rush?

Obama’s IRS Probes Tax-Exempt Status Of Abortion Doctor’s Benghazi Tea Party

Posted by Mark NC on May 14, 2013 at 2:42 pm. 7 Comments :

The media has been in a virtual orgasmic frenzy for the past 24 hours as reports come out about troubling behavior by government agencies. Make no mistake, what appears to have been done by individuals in the IRS and the Justice Department is of enormous concern to Americans who are justifiably suspicious of the potential for abuse of government power. There is good reason to be outraged by recent events and it is clear that there is such outrage from across the political spectrum.

An equal amount of outrage must also be directed at the idiotic people at the IRS who thought that what they were doing was helpful to progressive affairs. Not only does that sort of behavior contradict the most basic principles of liberalism, the high risk of discovery and subsequent scandal ought to have brought anyone whose common sense had lapsed straight back to reality. The damage done by this stupidity could not have been more successfully achieved if it were a deliberate plot by GOP plants in the agencies.

That is why the exasperation expressed by Jon Stewart last night (video below) was so appropriate. By committing some obviously nefarious acts of abuse, these miscreants have also made it harder to advance the rational and necessary legislative initiatives aimed at restoring jobs and economic growth, fixing the immigration system, implementing healthcare, battling terrorism, etc. It was bad enough when all we had to deal with was obsessively obstructionist Tea-publicans in congress, but now, as Stewart put it so well…

“This has, in one seismic moment, shifted the burden of proof from the tin-foil behatted to the government.”

Indeed. Now, along with wingnuts like Michelle Bachmann, Louis Gohmert, and Ted Cruz, we have every psychotic from Alex Jones to Glenn Beck to Ted Nugent insisting that they were right all along when they said that Obama was a reptilian space alien sent here to breed. Never mind that their delusions are just as schizoid today as they were yesterday, they are basking in the limelight created by a few low-level dumb-asses who have nothing to do with the bigger agenda our nation needs to pursue.

Not to be left out, Fox News is all over these wannabe scandals. They are interviewing Darrell Issa about the AP phone records without disclosing that Issa voted against the bill that would have made such seizures unlawful. They hosted Dick Cheney on Sean Hannity’s program to say that Benghazi is “one of the worst incidents, frankly, that I can recall in my career.” And remember, his career encompasses Nazi concentration camps and nuclear bombings in Japan, as well as those for which he bears some personal responsibility, like 9/11.

Some news outlets have made the effort to demonstrate that these sort of IRS transgressions were not invented last week. During the Bush administration there were abuses like these on multiple occasions. Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon has enumerated a few: The IRS threatened to revoke the tax-exempt status of the All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena following an anti-war sermon; The IRS audited the NAACP after its chairman criticized President Bush; The IRS audited and threatened to revoke Greenpeace’s tax-exempt status.

As for Fox News, they also did a report on the over-reaching of past presidents. And look at who they identified as violators:

Fox managed to find two Democratic presidents (Kennedy and Clinton), who were never found to have done anything unlawful or even unethical via the IRS, and matched them up with one of histories most flagrant criminals (Nixon) whose abuse of IRS power is well documented and even recorded on tape. And somehow, George W. Bush, despite the cases noted above, was left out of Fox’s report entirely. Fair and What the Fuck?

Later in the day, Fox moved on to the story about Bloomberg News snooping on the users of their financial terminals. What could be more unsettling than the prospect of a powerful media institution secretly monitoring your private Internet and telecommunications activities?

Perhaps it might be a private media institution secretly hacking into the phones of thousands of individuals, including politicians, celebrities, and even a murdered schoolgirl. That, of course, is what Rupert Murdoch’s enterprise has admitted doing, but was never covered with the enthusiasm as Fox is now covering the story about their competitor, Bloomberg.

So for the foreseeable future, American news viewers are going to be bombarded with a flurry of sensationalistic stories bursting with speculation and hyperbole. We are already seeing reports that crunch together some of these affairs into conspiracies that assume a role by President Obama that no one has yet proven exists. Fox’s Neil Cavuto devoted a segment of his program to imply that the malfeasance in the IRS’s tax-exempt division will somehow spill over to the group that audits elements of ObamaCare, although they are not even remotely affiliated. The upshot of this conspiracy dementia is that if anyone in any agency does something untoward, then everyone in every agency is guilty.

What’s truly unfortunate is that the investigations into the failings that led to these abuses at the IRS and elsewhere, investigations that are warranted and could be beneficial, will undoubtedly distract both the media and the political class from working to resolve the many serious issues our nation is facing. So instead of creating jobs, protecting and educating children, addressing immigration, or pursuing terrorists, we will be inundated with ever more stories about Benghazi, the IRS, and Jodie Arias-style crime dramas.

If and when we get back to more substantive matters that affect the lives of real people, the scent of scandal will linger and further hamper progress. Consequently, without efficient and effective management of recent events, the nation may have to accept a period of stagnation, which is not what we need right now. And those jerkwads at the IRS are largely responsible for screwing over every citizen who had hoped that the country could move forward just a little bit. I hope they (figuratively) fry.

Fox News Hosts Join The ‘Blame America’ Firsters

Posted by Mark NC on April 20, 2013 at 11:41 am. 6 Comments :

Shortly after the attacks on 9/11, a stunned nation struggled to explain how such noxious hatred could have formed and congealed into the heinous plot that took the lives of so many innocent people. In a statement that still ranks amongst the most feeble-minded insults to America’s intelligence, George W. Bush proclaimed that “they hate us for our freedom.”

As observers who were less dim-witted than the inarticulate, persistently mediocre, dynastic runt who occupied the White House began to weigh in on the post-9/11 analysis, there were reasoned commentaries that outlined how the foreign policy of the United States could have contributed to the response taken by the Al Qaeda extremists. Many nationalistic Arabs and Islamic zealots resented our meddling in their affairs. However, when the thoughtful experts who offered these insights came forward, they were quickly castigated for what daft conservatives called “blaming America.” Any suggestion that our own actions might have set off the radical fringe groups in the Middle East was tantamount to treason.

Cut to April 2013. The aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing predictably inflamed the same small-minded wingnuts who fell for Bush’s tripe and they are now resorting to a “blame America” pose of their own. With a president whom they regard as illegitimate, unqualified, and unfamiliar with their brand of white, Christian pseudo-patriotism, it is suddenly acceptable to assign responsibility for a terrorist act to the government they simultaneously love and hate.

Yesterday on his radio program, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade explicitly laid the blame for the the Boston tragedy on the steps of the White House:

“[Y]ou talk to these radicals in the Middle East and they say, ‘America, don’t get involved, leave us alone.’ So like it or not, this president has left them alone. And guess what happens? Now the IEDs are blowing up in our streets. So what are we supposed to learn from that?”

Setting aside the fact that Kilmeade offered no evidence of Obama having “left alone” any Middle East nation, or otherwise abandoning our interests in the region, his remarks plainly assert that the events of the past week in Boston were the fault of America’s behavior, rather than that of the perpetrators. In late 2001, that would have been considered blasphemy. In addition, Kilmeade is presuming that there is a jihadist component to the marathon bombing for which there is currently no proof.

Not to be left out, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly penned an op-ed that espoused the familiar and disturbing notion that “Freedom puts all of us at risk.” This might have been a perfectly reasonable articulation of the view that a free people are necessarily exposed to risks due to limitations on the part of government to interfere with their private lives. But that is not what O’Reilly meant. At the end of the same paragraph he disparagingly referred to the “security be damned” “zealots” who protest privacy invasions like warrantless wiretapping, “stop and frisk,” and deadly drone missions that too often result in the loss of innocent lives. So O’Reilly clearly does regard freedom as a dispensable impediment to security.

The rest of O’Reilly’s article is a laughable defense of his absurd statement that the Boston marathon bombing was not a tragedy by some imaginary definition he concocted. He doubles down on that theme by asserting that the desire of fanatics who want to kill us “is not tragic; it is real.” And he concludes by demanding that Obama “bring a sense of urgency to terrorism.” How Obama should behave differently, and where the lack of urgency is, O’Reilly never bothers to explain.

Both of these Fox News mouthpieces are advancing the notion that the harm done to America is of its own making. And unlike the rational perspectives put forth by informed analysts after 9/11, O’Reilly and Kilmeade are unable to support their positions which are nothing more than diatribes aimed at an administration they detest. What is certain is that their conservative brethren will fail to condemn them for blaming America, as they did when others were accused of the same offense. Apparently blaming America is just fine if it’s done by right-wingers who can’t form a coherent argument, and it’s aimed at a Democratic president they blame for everything else anyway.

On The 10th Anniversary Of The Invasion Of Iraq Fox News Wants “Credit” For George W. Bush

Posted by Mark NC on March 19, 2013 at 11:35 am. 4 Comments :

A lot has happened in the ten years that have transpired since George W. Bush and Dick Cheney orchestrated an unlawful assault, based on lies, on the nation and people of Iraq. More than four thousand American soldiers have died. Tens of thousands more have been disabled physically and psychologically. And hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians were killed. All of this was accomplished for a mere two trillion dollars courtesy of the American people.

So how does Fox News commemorate the solemn anniversary of the day that Bush commenced a campaign of mass murder against a nation that had done us no harm? By sending reporter James Rosen to the White House to beg for “credit” to be given to the Bush administration for their unfounded aggression and incompetence.

[For more examples of Fox Nation deceit, get the ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality.]

Rosen: Just to follow up on the discussion of the Iraq War, none of us wants to plunge ourselves into counterfactual histories about “what if” and so all we have is the record of what did occur and when you stand here and tell us that Iraq today now has the option for a chance for a much better future than the past, that is only a matter of factual history only possible because President Bush decided to launch this war and send all these heroic service men and women into this mission. And so if credit is due to the service men and women, it seems to me that — a matter of logic that some credit must also be due to President Bush and his advisers and that on this occasion, do you not see it that way?

Rosen is regarded by Fox defenders as one of the network’s legitimate journalists, in contrast to the right-wing mouthpieces (O’Reilly, Hannity, Cavuto, Doocy, etc.) who host the network’s more overtly biased programs. However, this question illustrates how Fox infects their allegedly “straight reporting” with partisanship even as they pretend to be fair and balanced. Beseeching the White House press secretary to lay praise on a former political foe is not an appropriate role for a professional journalist. It is closer to the services provided by a public relations rep.

What’s more, Rosen’s assertion that it’s a “matter of logic” that Bush be given credit is not remotely logical. Rosen is soliciting credit for Bush’s decision to go to war based on the outcome produced by the military. But those are two different things. Bush’s decision making was flawed and dishonest, and it is not redeemed simply because our side won. That only means that we have an effective military, not that the decision to use them in this matter was wise or praiseworthy. Press Secretary Jay Carney touches on these distinctions in his response, but later appears to humor Rosen in an attempt to move the briefing along.

Carney: James I would simply take up your first proposition that engaging in counterfactuals about what might have happened had we not gone to war in search of Weapons of Mass Destruction that didn’t exist, what would’ve happened? […] It is impossible to know obviously what course would’ve occurred in Iraq had the inspections regime continued had different choices been made.

Rosen: But it sounds to me listening to you that for what you call the “welcome development” of Saddam Hussein being gone, you are unwilling to accord President George W. Bush even a single iota of credit for that development.

Carney: I’m happy to do that, James. I think the focus on doing that is unique here, in this briefing. There is no question that Saddam Hussein was removed from power thanks to the military efforts of U.S. armed forced and they were sent Iraq by President Bush. So, obviously, there is a causal relationship and to the extent that credit is due, credit is due to him for that. That does not change I think assessments made by this President as a candidate or by many others on this day – 10 years after – about the judgments made to go to war on Iraq, to invade the country.

I am also happy to give Bush credit. He is entitled to every bit of credit for having committed atrocities and war crimes. He deserves credit for the slaughter of the innocent and the brave and for the grief of the survivors. The credit is all his for brazenly lying to the American people and the world about weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. He has earned the credit for bankrupting our nation with drastic tax cuts for the rich during a time of war, the first time in history that has occurred. And all he has to show for it is a hollow sense of pride in having rid the world of Saddam Hussein, which makes this a two trillion dollar assassination contract on an aging, third-rate dictator.

Just as Rosen said, the tragic consequences of this regrettable misadventure were “only possible because President Bush decided to launch this war.” So congratulations Mr. Bush. The credit is all yours. And wasn’t it thoughtful of Fox News to ensure that the honor for all the turmoil and death you produced was rightfully placed at your feet?

BIZARRO ALERT: Fox News Editorial Says “Obama Has Continued Bush’s Failed Policies”

Posted by Mark NC on October 19, 2012 at 9:25 am. 4 Comments :

For anyone looking for signs that Fox News is running out of effective attacks to level at President Obama, the evidence just became abundantly clear that they are near to depleting their reservoir of smears. An editorial on their web site has just deployed the ultimate insult imaginable: Obama Has Continued Bush’s Failed Policies.

Ouch. That was brutal and totally uncalled for. Accusing Obama of doing anything remotely similar to Bush is not only cruel, it is delusional. Tea Party leader Phil Kerpen, the author of the editorial, cites as evidence that Obama is following in Bush’s footsteps the fact that he installed Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary and reappointed Ben Bernanke chairman of the Federal Reserve. The fact that almost every economic policy enacted by the Obama administration is the polar opposite of Bush’s seems to have escaped Kerpen.

It was Bush who ushered in across-the-board tax cuts that have been one of the most prominent contributors to the deficit. It was Bush who piled on spending for defense driven by two wars that he kept off the books. It was Bush who deregulated Wall Street leading to an unprecedented financial calamity. It was Bush who presided over policies that rewarded corporations for outsourcing jobs. Those are the failed policies for which the Bush administration will forever be remembered. And since Obama has opposed all of them, it’s hard to see what Kerpen is getting at in his feverish rant.

Kerpen is correct, however, in describing Bush’s policies as having failed. Even today, the vast majority of the nation’s outstanding debt is the result of the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the economy. It’s good to see that Fox News is finally acknowledging that it was Bush who was responsible for the mess we are in today. That’s one of the reasons that Fox, and the rest of the right-wing media, have all but scrubbed Bush from their reporting. And since the right is now connecting Obama to the Bush debacle, they have to put to rest their complaints about Democrats blaming Bush.

However, a big point that Fox and Kerpen have ignored is that there is someone who actually is advocating a continuation of the failed Bush policies: Mitt Romney. He is pushing for even more across-the-board tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy and will balloon the debt. He seems to support military interventions in every country with whom we have some conflict (i.e. Iran, Syria, North Korea). He wants to accelerate deregulation for businesses and has promised to reverse every regulation that Obama enacted on day one if he is elected. And his record of having profited personally from eliminating American jobs and sending them to China is well documented.

Despite this universal acclimation of the Bush agenda, Romney has utterly excised Bush from his campaign. Romney has not appeared in public with Bush; has not celebrated his endorsement; has not deployed him as a surrogate. And while Bush himself is being treated, deservedly, as a pariah, Romney has stacked his campaign with former officials from the Bush administration. It is uncommon, to say the least, for the past president of a candidate’s party to be so brazenly cast aside, even as he espouses the same economic program.

Yet somehow Kerpen managed to close his article by arguing that Romney represents change and saying that “It’s time to try something different.” That’s a conclusion that can only be explained by the onset of dementia. A Romney administration would be a carbon copy of the Bush years. And now Fox News has helpfully agreed that the Bush years were a disaster. So in a way, that’s an endorsement of Obama. Well, except for the fact that the editorial gets the facts all wrong and reverses the roles of Obama and Romney as Bush’s successor. But other than that…

Karl Rove’s Super Amazing Political Funtime Analysis Happy Hour

Posted by Mark NC on June 14, 2012 at 4:10 pm. 2 Comments :

The man who used to be known as Bush’s Brain may have spent too much time with America’s foremost remedial president. Karl Rove seems to have leaked a significant amount of grey matter as evidenced by this stunningly inept observation about President Obama and the economy:

“It is fine for him to try and blame it on President Bush or a Japanese tsunami or on ATM, but it makes him look weak, and the American people are not that dumb! […] Let him keep doing that because the American people see that as a weak leader. That’s not somebody who’s in charge. That’s somebody who’s making excuses. And we do not like to elect people President of the United States who are excuse makers. We want a president to be big and bold.”

Romney - Not Stupid Got that? America wants a big, bold, non-excuse maker. And blaming Bush for the wrecked economy won’t work because the American people aren’t stupid. That’s a mantra that Romney also likes to chant. In fact, he made it into a campaign slogan. This may be the first time a candidate has ever had to go to such lengths to remind his followers that they aren’t idiots. But that argument becomes more difficult to defend when polling shows what the American people really think. A new Gallup poll says that…

“Americans continue to place more blame for the nation’s economic problems on George W. Bush than on Barack Obama, even though Bush left office more than three years ago.”

The poll shows that two-thirds of respondents (68%) still blame Bush for the state of the economy. That includes about half of the polled Republicans who also continue to hold Rove’s former boss accountable. Consequently, Obama should not be shy about hanging this economic albatross around Romney’s neck. The Romney campaign has already affirmed that their policy agenda is “Bush on steroids.”

Ironically, I have to agree with Rove about a couple of things. First, he appears to be right that the American people are not dumb. They know exactly who is responsible for where we are today and they are not likely to to want to return to the policies that got us here. Secondly, Rove’s advice that Obama continue to blame Bush is pretty sound based on the mood of the electorate.

The problem for Rove is that he’s right for all the wrong reasons. He doesn’t understand where the American people are, and he wouldn’t agree with them if he did. He’s just trying to rehabilitate his own shattered reputation because, as the political architect of the Bush administration, he’s just as responsible for the financial hole we are in as Bush is.

It’s about time that the right quit yakking about Democrats looking backwards to blame Bush. Obama is not reaching backwards to assign responsibility for current conditions to the past president. He is forecasting the future consequences of repeating those mistakes. It is the Republicans who are bringing the Bush era back to the table by proposing nothing but what the Bush administration did. They are offering nothing new in the way of solutions. In fact, the only initiative they will articulate out loud is to preserve the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy. So the Obama administration has no choice but to rebut those proposals. That is not an attack on Bush. It is an attack on the current crop of Republicans who are parroting Bush.

And if it weren’t bad enough that Americans blame Rove and Bush for our current economic problems, they also blame Republicans in congress today for deliberately sabotaging the recovery in order to make Obama look bad. So not only are they dredging up the old Bush era policies that already failed so decisively, they are obstructing Obama’s new solutions from being enacted.

Since the day that Obama was inaugurated, the GOP has explicitly stated that their top priority is to make Obama a one-term president. That’s not a governing agenda. That’s the purest and most cynical form of self-serving, political gamesmanship imaginable.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Bashing Bush

Posted by Mark NC on May 23, 2012 at 8:54 pm. 3 Comments :

Fox Nation can now add hypersensitivity to its list of psychoses. In their coverage of President Obama’s speech today at the Air Force Academy, the Fox Nationalists spotted an insult aimed at Obama’s predecessor, hidden deeply in the President’s remarks. Can you spot it?

President Obama told Air Force Academy cadets Wednesday America was stronger and more respected around the world than ever before despite impending cuts to the nation’s armed forces. The president delivered the commencement address to over 1,000 graduates at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. “Around the world there is a new feeling about America,” he told cadets. “There is a new confidence in our leadership.

“Today I think we can say with pride that America is stronger and safer and more respected in the world,” Obama added. He noted the class of 2012 would be the first to “graduate into a world where no Americans are fighting in Iraq and where Usama bin Laden is no longer a threat to our country.”

~ From Fox Nation via the New York Post (hence the snippy reference to “impending cuts”).

So Obama delivers a speech that celebrates the graduating class of the Air Force Academy with a stirring affirmation of America’s greatness. It was a speech that spoke explicitly of American exceptionalism (which right-wingers like to pretend Obama never mentions) and the durability of our governing philosophy and our spirit. It was a speech that every president has given, at one time or another, that pays tribute to an America that is always better than it was, with hope and confidence that it will be better yet in the future.

And in that positive, forward looking message, the Fox Nationalists found an insult to George W. Bush. In case you missed it, let me spell it out. The ultra-irritable little hotheads at Fox think that any proclamation of evolving goodness is a curse directed at what came before. That would mean that any president who has the temerity to suggest that our nation ever improves – that we have the ability to learn and grow – is mercilessly offending his predecessors.

That’s an attitude that defines conservatism. They are intrinsically averse to progress, hence their aversion to progressives. They hate it so much that they can’t even stand the thought that America might find ways to refine and enhance its abundant gifts. To them we must wallow in the sameness of whatever status quo we find ourselves in. Or worse, we must revert to prior eras for which conservatives have blind reverence. And it doesn’t matter to them if that past includes abhorrent intolerances that we have thankfully outgrown.

Whatever you do, do not aspire for more than those who came before you. Because, according to the Fox martinets of virtue, that would be an insult to your predecessors. Stay the same as you are forever. Progress is sin.

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