WTF? GOP Balks At Honoring Pope Francis Because He “Sound[s] Like Obama”

The Centers for Disease Control may want to get involved soon because the epidemic of Obama Derangement Syndrome is spreading unchecked in the halls of Congress. A draft resolution to honor Pope Francis, authored by Republican Peter King and Democrat John Larson, has been stalled by an acutely myopic band of GOP obstructionists.

Pope Francis

H.Res.440 seeks to recognize Pope Francis for “his humility, his commitment to economic justice and improving the lives of the poor, and his outreach to individuals from all walks of life.” Those surprisingly non-controversial reasons for honoring the new Pontiff has the Tea Party Republican caucus steeping in anger and refusing to join the tribute. According to a GOP source who spoke to The Hill, the alleged reason for their disrespectful non-participation is that…

“Some Republicans believe the pope is ‘sounding like [President] Obama. [The pope] talks about equality — he actually used the term ‘trickle-down economics,’ which is politically charged,’ the GOP official said.”

OMG! The head of the Catholic church has debased Christianity by daring to discuss equality and empathy for the poor. Certainly Jesus would never have done anything like that. And to the extent that President Obama has articulated the same philosophy, the Pope is obviously aligned with his Marxist agenda.

That’s why, of the 221 co-sponsors of the bill (more than enough to insure passage), only 19 are Republicans. But at this point, GOP Speaker John Boehner has refused to bring it up for a vote. The Hill’s source also complained that Francis is “too liberal,” as demonstrated by his distaste for the harmful effects of unbound free markets and his tolerance for civil unions.

To be sure, Pope Francis has shown himself to be a devoted advocate for the disadvantaged of the world. He has made headlines for his willingness to humble himself before those he serves in profound ceremonial gestures like washing the feet of the poor, including women, and embracing the sick. In an official Vatican “Evangelii Gaudium” (The Joy of the Gospel), The Pope went into stark detail about the greater harm of the greed and power associated with world markets and unfettered capitalism. Some of the more illuminating excerpts include…

“Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.”

“In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.”

“In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market.”

“As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.”

No wonder the Republicans view this Pope as the reincarnation of Karl Marx. And this isn’t the first time that Francis has been disparaged with an association to our president. Last December News Corpse reported on a story on Fox News that declared that “Pope Francis is the Catholic Church’s Obama – God help us.” The story warned that the popular new Pope is already headed in the wrong direction and that “just as President Obama has been a disappointment for America, Pope Francis will prove a disaster for the Catholic Church.” That was a rather remarkable insult coming from a network whose roster is heavily dominated by Roman-Catholics.

And that’s not all. Rush Limbaugh said that “If it weren’t for capitalism, I don’t know where the Catholic church would be. This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.” Sarah Palin complained about his “liberal statements.” Glenn Beck, although not referring directly to the Pope, begged his disciples to “run as fast as you can” from any church that uses the words “social justice,” which, of course, are the very words the Pope used.

However, no one should be surprised by the overt hypocrisy that runs rampant through the ranks of America’s right-wing. They have never been particularly pious except when it justifies their political bias. To them Catholic teachings are only meant to be followed so long as they are in harmony with Republican doctrine. And often, they are not. But Pope Francis had something to say about this as well:

“Politics, though often denigrated, remains a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good. […] I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor!. It is vital that government leaders and financial leaders take heed and broaden their horizons, working to ensure that all citizens have dignified work, education and healthcare.”

As far as Republicans are concerned, that was a campaign ad for the Democratic Party.

WTF: Fox News “Psycho” Analyst Uncovers Obama’s World Cup Distraction Conspiracy (Video)

Just when you think that Fox News has stepped in the deepest abyss of bull excrement imaginable, they book their resident “psycho” analyst and member of the Fox News Medical “A” Team, Dr. Keith Ablow, to float the most asinine hogwash ever broadcast on public media.

Keith Ablow

On today’s episode of Outnumbered, Ablow was the guest male among the Fox phalanx of fems assembled to titillate their elderly viewers voyeurs. During a discussion about the World Cup competition in Brazil, where the United States has unexpectedly advanced to the “Knockout” stage, much to the delight of patriotic sports lovers, Ablow had a unique perspective that could only be concocted by an utter ass.

“I’m suspect because, here’s the thing: Why, at a time when there’s so many national issues and international issues of such prominence, I am a little suspicious of yet another bread and circus routine. Let’s roll out the marijuana, pull back the laws and get people even more crazy about yet another entertainment event. This is to distract people. This is like Rome. I can see why Obama would love the World Cup.”

Obviously! The whole World Cup competition is just a scheme by President Obama to misdirect people’s attention from – oh let’s say the lost Benghazi emails to Hillary Clinton’s lesbian Death Panelists. And that doesn’t even begin to explain Ablow’s reference to the marijuana roll out. That one must be under deep cover.

Somehow Obama orchestrated FIFA’s scheduling of the quadrennial games to coincide with whatever scandal is presently infecting Ablow’s brain so that the American people, who usually ignore soccer, won’t notice that FEMA has already begun incarcerating Tea Party leaders and the EPA is deploying new Pentagon technology to increase global temperatures. What a devious plot our Kenyan in the White House has devised.

If Ablow is a member of the Fox News Medical “A” Team, I would hate to ever meet the “B” or “C” teams. He is far and away the most demented cast member of the Fox Comedy Network. He has used his clairvoyant powers to psychoanalyze Obama without ever having examined, or even met him. Ablow is well known for his schizoid rants attacking the President and finding common ground with fellow nutcases like domestic terrorist Ted Kazcynski (I’m not kidding. See Romancing The Unabomber). He actually praised Newt Gingrich for being unfaithful to multiple wives and welcomed the pain of Americans suffering through the recession. If that’s not enough he offered his recipe for building a terrorist that reads more like a recipe for building a Tea Party.

Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

I could go on. No, really I could. Ablow believes that that Obama has contempt for the Supreme Court; that Obama has it in for America; that children must be immunized from the Obama virus; that Obama has a victim mentality; that Obama is the enemy of heroism.

So, does someone have a little case of Obama Derangement Syndrome?

[Update:] This update was made necessary by the awesome segment Stephen Colbert did on Ablow last night. He caught the fruitcake doctor on Fox Business Network with Stuart Varney saying laughably inane things like…

“It’s a little too convenient when we have a president who, I contend, has it in for Americans [which News Corpse covered here], and we elected him because we were fearful at the time [which News Corpse covered here]; we better elect someone who’s not very patriotic because, God, we could have someone attack us for being Americans.”

Responding to Ablow’s marijuana component to the conspiracy, Colbert said that “marijuana is clearly involved here because you’d have to be baked out of your gourd to be that paranoid.” Here’s the whole Colbert segment:

Fox News And Conservatives Have Totally Lost Their Friggin Minds

Obama Derangement Syndrome has spread to infect every cell of the conservative brain. The depth of their sickness has finally become so severe that it negates any hope of recovery.

The “Moonie” Washington Times published an article with the headline: “New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism.” There is nothing new about the rabid right’s delusional assertions that President Obama is a Marxist, socialist, Kenyan, Muslim, Anti-Christ, who is conspiring with communists, Al Qaeda, the New Black Panthers (all four of them), and Sesame Street to subvert democracy, indoctrinate our children, and deflower our women. But this particular incident is rooted so firmly in dementia that it deserves closer attention and merciless ridicule.

The problem cited by the Washington Times, and picked up by Fox Nation and Breitbart among others, is that the word “Forward,” used prominently in a new Obama campaign video (posted below), is inherently wicked and representative of dastardly evildoers seeking to establish a tyrannical, Islamic, atheist, caliphate throughout the world – or something. The article states that…

“The Obama campaign apparently didn’t look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, ‘Forward’ — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism. Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name ‘Forward!'”

So there you have it. By using a word in the English dictionary that means “ahead, onward,” the Obama camp has revealed their commitment to worldwide socialist rebellion. Never mind that the associations cited in the conservative press are a hundred years old, or that the word has been used in innumerable other contexts before and after those associations. For instance, the pinko Ronald Reagan Society at his alma mater, Eureka College, uses the phrase “Reagan Forward.” Even Fox News used it in their on-air promos:

Fox News Forward

Initially, when the Obama video was released, the cry from the right was that the campaign had lifted the slogan from MSNBC which uses the phrase “Lean Forward.” That allegation was carried by conservatives from Fox News contributor Michele Malkin to the New York Post to Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, and others. Apparently that didn’t stir up enough bile among the right-wing faithful, so they had to escalate the attack to suggest this affiliation with ancient enemies.

Ironically, it was Fox News who took great offense to an allegation by John Aravosis of AmericaBlog late last year, that Mitt Romney’s campaign had adopted a slogan previously used by the Ku Klux Klan:

Romney KKK

On several occasions Romney included a phrase in his stump speech that closely resembled one that the KKK used frequently in the 1920s: “Keep America American.” Subsequently there was some debate as to whether Romney actually said “Keep America America,” a small difference of the single letter “n” at the end. The outrage from the right was immediate and fierce. How could those awful liberals insinuate that Romney was a Klan member? Fox News was all over the story with even their top program, The O’Reilly Factor, devoting segments to it.

Of course, nobody ever implied that Romney was a Klan member. They merely noted that his campaign had not sufficiently researched the language that they were making such a prominent part of their strategy. And they made the additional point that, if it were a Democrat whose slogan could be tied to some past perceived ignominy, Republicans would have feasted on the gaffe. Aravosis seems prescient in retrospect for having facetiously said…

“In an era in which it’s apparently okay for Republicans to accuse President Obama of being a socialist, I guess we now need to ask if Mitt Romney is a Ku Klux Klansman. Not whether Romney inadvertently is using the KKK’s number one slogan from the 1920s on the stump, no, the Republicans would say, if this were a Democrat, that clearly the candidate was a closet member of the KKK.”

Now that speculation has been made real by a conservative effort to advance their smear campaign against Obama. And their is nothing facetious about the right’s belief that the President is a socialist. When an anchor on MSNBC reported the story about Romney’s slogan, the right swung back hard in retaliation. MSNBC then issued a quick and thorough apology on the air. And that’s where the comparison ends. The right proudly and obstinately clings to their abhorrent missteps – probably because they aren’t missteps, but deliberate slander.

Conservatives have been making unfounded claims that the President is a socialist since before his inauguration. These were not merely observations about similarities in rhetoric, but outright accusations that they assert as fact. And now they are engaging in the exact same tactic that just last December they condemned as character assassination.

This is about as good an example of the ethical vacancy of the modern right as there will ever be. Their fixation on inventing new methods of tarnishing the President has devolved to condemning him for using the English language. So today the word “forward” is off-limits. Tomorrow will it be “progress” or “justice” or “the” or [fill in the blank].

Seriously…these people have totally lost their friggin minds.

[Update] Fox Business Network joins the club castigating forwardness. Tonight Lou Dobbs jumped in with the added attraction of one of Glenn Beck’s surplus blackboards.

Remember When Conservatives Were Against Unelected Judges And Judicial Activism?

In another brazen exercise in hypocrisy, conservatives have launched a coordinated attack on President Obama for remarks that were entirely reasonable and uncontroversial. The President was asked by a reporter how he would respond if the health care reform bill currently being debated by the Supreme Court were to be ruled unconstitutional. His response said in part…

“I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.”

This has set off a round of panic attacks in right-wing circles as knee-jerk contrarians accuse Obama of undermining the constitution, subverting democracy, and even threatening the Supreme Court. Where any objective person can find the presence of a threat in the President’s remarks is beyond incomprehensible. It’s Obama Derangement Syndrome in action. Conservatives assert that these comments were intended by the President to be a warning for the justices deliberating the case. Never mind that Obama in no way implied that there would be consequences if the justices did not arrive at a particular ruling, only that he was confidant of a favorable outcome. That’s pretty much the position taken by anyone interested in a pending judicial proceeding. And as the President said explicitly, he was just reminding conservatives of their own long-held views on judicial activism.

The Right-Wing Noise Machine has been spinning feverishly to push this issue in order to damage the President and cast him as opposed to constitutional principles. Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove called Obama a thug. Mark Levin said that he declared war on the Court. Fox Nation currently has at least eleven articles on this subject. And Fox News has been running numerous segments including one this morning that featured three former George W. Bush staffers to assert that what Obama said was unprecedented and nothing like anything that Bush ever said (see below).

Among the complaints being hurled by the right-wing, extremist opponents of the administration is that Obama’s use of the phrase “unelected judges” amounts to a form of tyranny and is an affront to judicial independence. But it is Republicans who have been more often associated with that phrase over the years as they brandish it every time a court rules against whatever pet litigation they are pushing – especially when it concerns reproductive rights or gay marriage. For example, here are a few instances when the very people lambasting Obama today used identical language when it served their purposes:

  • Mitt Romney: Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage.
  • Mitt Romney: The ruling in Iowa today is another example of an activist court and unelected judges trying to redefine marriage and disregard the will of the people as expressed through Iowa’s Defense of Marriage Act.
  • Rick Santorum: 7M Californians had their rights stripped away by activist 9th Circuit judges.
  • Newt Gingrich: Court of Appeals overturning CA’s Prop 8 another example of an out of control judiciary. Let’s end judicial supremacy
  • Speaker John Boehner: This latest FISA proposal from House Majority leaders is dead on arrival. It would outsource critical national security decisions to unelected judges and trial lawyers.
  • Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO): Today, the decision of unelected judges to overturn the will of the people of California on the question of same-sex marriage demonstrates the lengths that unelected judges will go to substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people.
  • Sen. Jeff Sessions: This ‘Washington-knows-best’ mentality is evident in all branches of government, but is especially troublesome in the judiciary, where unelected judges have twisted the words of our Constitution to advance their own political, economic, and social agendas.
  • Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL): I’m appalled that unelected judges have irresponsibly decided to legislate from the bench and overturn the will of the people.
  • George W. Bush: This concept of a “living Constitution” gives unelected judges wide latitude in creating new laws and policies without accountability to the people.
  • Thomas Sowell: Unelected judges can cut the voters out of the loop and decree liberal dogma as the law of the land.
  • Laura Ingraham: We don’t want to be micromanaged by some unelected judge or some unelected bureaucrat on the international or national level.
  • Gov. Rick Perry: [The American people are] fed up with unelected judges telling them when and where they can pray or observe the Ten Commandments.
  • Pat Robertson: We are under the tyranny of a nonelected oligarchy. Just think, five unelected men and women who serve for life can change the moral fabric of our nation and take away the protections which our elected legislators have wisely put in place.
  • Robert Bork: We are increasingly governed not by law or elected representatives but by an unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable committee of lawyers applying no will but their own.
  • Sen. Orrin Hatch: A small minority and their judicial activist allies are seeking to usurp the will of the people and impose same-sex marriage on all of the states. Ultimately, the American people, not unelected judges, should decide policy on critical social issues such as this one.
  • Steve Forbes: You have judicial activism, where unelected Supreme Court justices are trying to impose a state income tax.
  • Glenn Beck: Even if you agree that the role of government is to take wealth from one to another, should it be the role of unelected judges and justices that do this?
  • Sen. John McCain: We would nominate judges of a different kind […] And the people of America – voters in both parties whose wishes and convictions are so often disregarded by unelected judges – are entitled to know what those differences are.
  • Justice Antonin Scalia: Value-laden decisions such as that should be made by an entire society … not by nine unelected judges.

If the conservatives quoted above were to be consistent, they would now be pleading with the court not to overturn the health care reform bill that was passed by super-majorities in both houses of congress. Instead, the right is aghast that a Democratic president would deign to remind them of their own principles and is clamoring for a judicial resolution. It has already been demonstrated that Republicans have no problem switching positions once Obama has agreed to them. Cap and trade and insurance mandates were both originally proposed by Republicans, but as soon as Obama announced support for the concepts the GOP reconsidered and insisted they were the socialist ideas of an aspiring dictator.

Now that one of the GOP’s favorite attack lines, judicial activism, has been usurped by the President, conservatives are crawling out of the woodwork to characterize it as an assault on the judiciary. Republicans have always defined judicial activism as the act of judges ruling against them. When judges rule in favor of the conservative position they regard it as following the constitution. So hypocrisy is not a particularly surprising development in this matter. But the degree to which it is demonstrated here may set new records for shamelessness.


Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the University of California Irvine Law School, wrote in his book, “The Conservative Assault on the Constitution” that…

Although there is no precise definition of judicial activism – it often seems to be a label people use for the decisions they don’t like – it seems reasonable to say that a court is activist if it overturns the actions of the democratically elected branches of government and if it overrules precedent. In fact, conservatives, including on the Supreme Court, often have labeled decisions striking down the will of popularly elected legislatures as ‘activist.'”

Activism is in the eye of the beholder, but there is no doubt that conservatives have been at the forefront of scolding courts for ruling against them. Taking that to the extreme is Newt Gingrich who recently told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation that he advocated arresting judges to force them to defend unpopular decisions before Congressional hearings. If that isn’t a threat against the judiciary, what is?

The right has very little problem with violating the constitution when it comes to separation of powers. Just this week a conservative judge on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals gave a Department of Justice attorney an unusual homework assignment. In a case unrelated to the one before the Supreme Court, Judge Jerry Smith wondered whether Obama was suggesting “that it is somehow inappropriate for what he termed ‘unelected’ judges to strike acts of Congress.” Then Smith ordered the attorney to produce a three page letter “stating specifically and in detail in reference to those statements what the authority is of the federal courts in this regard in terms of judicial review. That letter needs to be at least three pages single spaced.”

It is difficult to imagine on what basis this judge has assumed authority to issue such an order. It is a blatantly political and petulant demand that can only be intended to insult and embarrass the DOJ and the President, and has no bearing on the case before him. The President never said that the Supreme Court could not overturn an unconstitutional law. He just said that he didn’t believe that this law was unconstitutional and therefore, in his view, and that of many legal experts, should not be overturned. Judge Smith is a bald-faced partisan and would be more at home on Fox News than on the bench.

The question is, what will Republicans say if the Court upholds the health care reform bill? Would that be an act of judicial tyranny against the will of the people (never mind that the bill was passed by the people’s representatives in congress with super-majorities in both houses)? And how can Republicans continue to rail against Roe v. Wade as the ultimate example of an activist judiciary now that they have established that such a charge is tantamount to tyranny and regarded as a threat?

The answer, of course, is that conservatives will do what they always do: pretend that their prior assertions never existed or don’t apply. They will trudge forward with blindfolds over their eyes and plugs in their ears, unimpeded by anything they said previously, no matter how badly it contradicts what they are saying now. It’s hypocrisy at its best and the Republican way of life.

Fox News Asks: Can the Chevy Volt Help Win the War on Terror?

For the past year or so, Fox News has been mercilessly bashing Chevrolet’s new electric vehicle, the Volt. They have derided it as an unsafe, unpopular, taxpayer-funded boondoggle, that was foisted on the auto industry and the public by President Obama as part of his socialist agenda.

This well-coordinate media assault encompassed conservative television, radio, newspapers, and Internet, and was an unprecedented effort aimed squarely at an American made product. They disparaged the company, the car, and the American workers who produced it. This vilification of the Volt has been most prominently featured on Fox News properties, where it has been the subject of withering criticism, despite the fact that it is also the North American Car of the Year and the European Car of the Year for 2011, the first time a car has won both honors.

This makes this morning’s segment on Fox & Friends, with media consultant Lee Spieckerman, all the more curious. Host Steve Doocy introduced his guest for a segment titled “Can the Chevy Volt Help Win the War on Terror?” by saying that, “It’s a great car that’s gotten a bad rap, all because of President Obama’s record, perhaps.”

Fox News - Volt

For Doocy to suggest that the Volt has gotten a bad rap because of Obama’s record is absurd. It has gotten a bad rap because people like Doocy, and his comrades at Fox, have endeavored to malign the car because President Obama has expressed support for it. It has less to do with Obama’s record than with the Obama Derangement Syndrome that results in right-wingers hating anything that Obama likes. If Doocy wonders where the hostility toward the Volt comes from, he might trying looking at the Fox Nation web site, whose recent headlines illustrate just how committed they are to trashing the Volt and tying it to Obama:

  • Obama’s Chevy Volt Gets ‘Worst Product’ Award
  • Obama’s Chevy Volt Recalled
  • Obama Hikes Failing Chevy Volt Subsidies
  • Obama Still Supporting Chevy Volt
  • Obama’s Favorite Car, Chevy Volt, Under Investigation
  • More Problems For The Chevy Volt
  • Forbes: Maybe It Should Be Called the Chevrolet ‘Vote’
  • GM Suspends Volt Production, Lays Off 1300 Workers
  • Chevy Dealers Reject Volt
  • Each Chevy Volt Costs Taxpayers $250000
  • Newt: ‘You Can’t Put a Gun Rack In a Volt’
  • More Ridiculous Leftist Propaganda: The Chevy Volt Song
  • Chevy Volt Sales Fail
  • Two Chevy Volts Catch Fire in One Week!
  • Chevy Volt is Automotive Version of Solyndra
  • Taxpayers Getting Scammed by Chevy Volt?
  • Gov’t Motors’ Chevy Volt Battery Fire Sparks Probe
  • Sales of Chevy Volt Plummet
  • FAIL: Sweater, Gloves Required When Driving Volt in Cold
  • The Chevy Volt is a Disaster

Hmm. I wonder how the Chevy Volt got such a bad rap.

Nevertheless, this morning Doocy’s tone had changed. He spent the entirety of the segment agreeing with his guest who sought to dispel the myths associated with the Volt. Spieckerman’s enthusiasm sounded like it could have come from an ardent environmentalist, which is why he had to keep qualifying his comments with affirmations of his conservative credentials.

Spieckerman: You know, I’m a Texan. I’m a “drill baby drill” guy. And, unfortunately, I love Fox News and I feel like I’m kind of attacking my own family because I love O’Reilly, I love Neil Cavuto, I love Eric Bolling, but like a lot of my fellow conservatives, they seem to have kind of a fetish for demonizing the Volt. And they’re perpetuating this myth that the Volt was some kind of Obama administration green energy fantasy that was forced on General Motors during the bailout. It had been in development two years before Obama was elected. It had been championed by one of the greatest car executives in American history, Bob Lutz, who is a conservative and a climate change skeptic. So it’s a myth. You know the tax break for buying the Volt was implemented by the Bush administration. That was not something that occurred under the Obama administration.

Spieckerman described the Volt as “an anti-terrorist weapon” because of its potential to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. He pointed out that in ten years we could be saving almost 700 billion barrels of oil a year. He called it the iPhone of the automobile industry. And all the while Doocy was grinning and nodding and even called the Volt “a cool vehicle.”

Something obviously occurred to shift the direction of Fox’s perspective on the Volt. It is a 180 degree turnaround that was sprung without explanation or any acknowledgement of their previous position (“We have always been in love with the Volt.” ~ Paraphrasing Orwell). Perhaps they recognized that bashing American workers was not a particularly good idea in an election year. Perhaps they were worried about whether it might impact GM’s advertising expenditures on Fox. Or maybe it was just an anomaly and they will return to assailing the car and its builders tomorrow.

There is one thing for which we can be certain, if they continue with their new found admiration for the Volt, they will soon be publishing stories about how Obama never liked it and has been working to kill it ever since he came into office. For Fox News, Orwell’s 1984 was not cautionary fiction – it was a handbook.

The Fox Nation Is Suffering Full Blown Obama Derangement Syndrome

In my ongoing series “Fox Nation vs. Reality” I have endeavored to expose some of the more brazen departures from truthful reporting that so often make their way onto the pages of the Fox Nation web site. But today the Fox Nationalists have ventured beyond even their typical separation from the facts by posting as their headline story this sensationalistic declaration: White House ‘Panicked’ Over Gas Prices, President Becoming ‘Incoherent’

Fox Nation

The associated article said nothing about the White House being panicked. It said nothing about the President being incoherent. Despite those words being put in quotes in the headline, they were not referencing any citation by any person. In fact, they were not a part of the story in any respect – not directly, indirectly, insinuated, implied, hypothetical, allegorical, or…well you get the idea. The entire piece consisted of a video of a Fox News report on the presidential campaign, an excerpt of results from a Fox News poll, and one paragraph that briefly abstracted part of the content of the video.

Where the Fox Nation editors got the idea that the president was panicked and incoherent is a mystery. The only explanation is that they are so infected with Obama Derangement Syndrome that they were in the throes of a hallucinatory seizure. Either that or their determination to slander the President is so overpowering that they could not resist the urge to invent derogatory adjectives to attach to his name.

It’s bad enough when the Fox Nationalists post stories with pejorative quotes from the likes of Hannity or Limbaugh as if it were news, but when they don’t even have a source and they still put their insults in quotes, they have crossed a line that could only be acceptable to the most untrustworthy purveyors of schlock journalism – aka Fox News.

Update: The Fox Nationalists edited the article this morning. They swapped out the video for one that consists of a panel discussion with Jonah Goldberg, who made the following statement in response to a question from anchor Bret Baier:

Baier: The president is out almost every other day, it seems, talking about gas prices. Is it a sign that this White House is concerned about this issue? What does it tell us?

Goldberg: I think it tells us they’re in something of a panic over it. We’ve seen his poll numbers drop precipitously. And you can’t prove it, but most people think the gas thing is a major driver of it. And the problem is that he basically beyond doubling down, he’s tripling down on the same stuff he was saying three years ago, and it’s fundamentally incoherent.

So now they have the basis for their quotes – a highly partisan right-winger with an agenda to peddle. However, from the same segment they completely ignored the statements by panelist Kirsten Powers who called it hypocritical:

Powers: This is a real exercise in hypocrisy because when George Bush was being blamed for high prices by Democrats, Republicans were saying the president doesn’t have any control over that and now we have the exact reverse.

Obviously somebody at Fox Nation wasn’t paying attention when they first posted this item. But what’s worse is that the correction includes a clip of Fox’s chief news anchor, citing a Fox News poll, saying that “the majority said the president is to blame for gas prices.” Except that the majority in the Fox poll said exactly the opposite. The majority (52%) said the President is not to blame, and only 40% said that he is. So Fox News compounds their erroneous reporting even as they attempt to correct it.

Fox Nation Exists Solely To Bash Obama

Fox Nation, the Internet community of Fox News, has completed its transition into a nearly 100% Obama Bashing Internet destination. Visit the site at any random time and you are likely to see something like this:

Fox Nation Obama Bashing

That’s 19 separate articles, all from just this morning, disparaging the President. They consume nearly all of the space on the site’s home page. Despite the fact that the Fox Nationalists assert that they aspire to fairness and balance, it is clear that they are engaged in non-stop propaganda to effect the political outcome they desire. It makes a mockery of their claim that…

“The Fox Nation is committed to the core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse, and fair and balanced coverage of the news.”

How brain damaged does one need to be to believe that BS? And if your stomach is strong enough to venture into the community comments, you will be repulsed by a collection of racists and advocates of violence and even assassination.

Obviously the folks at Fox are escalating their campaign of hate. With the election season heating up they are redoubling their efforts to malign the President and every other Democrat. Perhaps their desperation is due to the pathetic field of candidates they are saddled with promoting. They are in the embarrassing position of having to support Tea Bagger Bachmann, Perp Walk Perry, and Corporate Mate Mitt.

What’s more, the conservative/Tea Party wing of the GOP is suffering a dizzying decline in popularity.

“[T]he Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like ‘atheists’ and ‘Muslims.'”

No wonder Fox Nation is ramping up their war effort. They have a steep hill to climb and they are convinced that their only prayer for victory is to smear the enemy and to do so harshly and repeatedly. Steady your nerves – there is going to be much more of this to come. It will include accusations of socialism and treason, as well as naked fear mongering. It will probably backlash against them completely, but it will still be an ugly spectacle.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Obama And The Tea Party

Once again, Fox Nation outright lies in a headline article. The arrogance of the Fox Nationalists is astonishing in that they will brazenly lie even while providing a link to the source data the exposes them as liars.

Fox Nation - Obama and the Tea Party

Here we have Fox Nation headlining that President Obama is more unpopular than the phantom Tea Party. The source is a poll by the New York Times. But if you look at the actual poll results you will find that the truth is exactly the opposite of what the Fox Nationalists are saying. From the Times:

“The public’s opinion of the Tea Party movement has soured in the wake of the debt-ceiling debate. The Tea Party is now viewed unfavorably by 40 percent of the public and favorably by just 20 percent, according to the poll.”

“The president’s overall job approval rating remained relatively stable, with 48 percent approving of the way he handles his job as president and 47 percent disapproving.”

To repeat, 48% approve of Obama while only 20% approve of the Tea Party. That means Obama’s approval is more than twice that of the Tea Party. What’s more, Obama is viewed favorably by slightly more people than view him unfavorably. The Tea Party is viewed unfavorably by twice as many people as view it favorably.

The only way to spin this poll positively for the the Tea Party is to deliberately misconstrue the data by taking into account only the unfavorable numbers as if they existed in a vacuum. The liars at Fox fail to acknowledge that nearly 40% of respondents were undecided or hadn’t heard enough about the Tea Party to have an opinion (more evidence that it is a phantom party). Of the respondents who do have an opinion, they dislike the Tea Party by 2-to-1. If that ratio held as people became more aware of the Tea Party, their unfavorables would shoot up to 66%.

Leave it to Fox to lie to their audience and produce a community characterized by ignorance and wishful thinking. It is this sort of disinformation that creates delusional political factions like the Tea Party in the first place.

[Update 8/17/2011] New polling shows that the Tea Party is even less popular that atheists and Muslims.

Shuckin And Jivin: The Kind Of Obama Fox News Racists Like

Fox Nation - Obama RageIn a featured article today on the Fox Nation, an editorial presents a picture of President Obama that harkens back to an era when African Americans were relegated to tap-dancing, watermelon-eating, entertainers and servants. The article from a Marietta, Georgia, opinion columnist, Melvyn L. Fein, was titled: “Obama’s Rage Starting To Show.”

It’s surprising to read something so overtly racist from a modern, mainstream news source, but leave it to Fox to find it and promote it to a national audience.

The article began with feint praise of Obama as a conciliatory black man, as opposed what Fein called angry “street thugs” like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. But it just got worse from there. Fein initially described Obama in terms that portrayed him as acceptable and unthreatening to whites:

“He was not angry. Far from it, he was affable. With a smile on his face, and a lilt to his voice.”

In other words he was grinning negro, shuckin and Jivin for the folks, and never stirring up trouble like those rabble-rousers who keep clamoring for their “civil” rights.

Fein goes on to assert that all of that was a mask that Obama wore and that “the anger underneath his facade of cordiality has started to show.” As evidence of this hidden anger, Fein cited Obama’s “arrogance” for “summoning” congressional leaders to the White House to discuss the debt ceiling and for the “stipulation” that they bring viable solutions with them. That language would be admired as an expression of leadership in white politicians, but to Fein, with regard to Obama, it was “imperiousness” and “authoritarian.” In Fein’s world it’s unseemly for black men to be seen as issuing orders to white men, even if the black man is the President of the United States.

In an effort to explain what Fein theorized was Obama’s innate rage, he resorted to amateur psychology based on a fictional account of Obama’s past:

“We must remember that Obama was abandoned by his birth father, semi-abandoned by his mother, raised by contentious grandparents, exposed to virulent Indonesian racism before the age of 10 and then subjected to the ignominy of being racially marginalized in Hawaii.

How could anyone escape being irate at such an upbringing? Rage would be the normal human reaction to this sort of abuse.”

In the real world, Obama recalls his upbringing with a mother who loved him dearly and cared for him throughout most of his childhood, interrupted briefly by a period where his loving grandparents stood in for her. He never expressed any experience of racism outside of that that any minority child would encounter in a prejudiced society. Fein’s rantings closely mirror those of Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee, who believe that Obama harbors some sort of Kenyan, Mau Mau, anti-colonialism, inspired by a father he barely knew. Beck even did his own psychoanalysis of Obama that virtually drips with dementia. Here is an excerpt of my take on Beck’s psycho-escapade:

“Beck’s conclusion is that Obama was so traumatized by abandonment issues related to his parents’ absorption in Marxism that Obama, in retaliation, did what any child would under those circumstances — He became a Marxist. It makes perfect sense. What other choice did he have other than to adopt the philosophy of the thing that allegedly tore his family apart? It is a sad, tragic story, isn’t it?

“Perhaps on tomorrow’s show Beck will tell his own sad, tragic story? The one where his mother abandoned him by killing herself. Obama’s mother went away for a while, but she came back and witnessed her son on an historic path to the presidency of the United States of America. For Beck’s mother only death was sufficient to separate her from her demon seed. What kind of scar does that leave on a boy? Well, in Beck’s case it left a scar that led to dropping out of school, to alcoholism, drug abuse, a failed marriage, a career as an AM radio shock jock, and fame as a hate-mongering conspiracy nut who contributes nothing to society but fear and division.

“Contrast that with Obama who, while scarred, worked his way through school, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law, dedicated himself to helping the disenfranchised, taught law at the University of Chicago, entered public service and politics, and went all the way to the White House. So sad – so tragic.”

Fein’s puerile psychoanalysis surmises that Obama’s allegedly troubled past created a false persona wherein, “rather than fight back openly, [Obama] smiled and allowed the insults to roll off his back.” And remember, it’s that Obama that Fein considered to be “gracious” and “intelligent.” As soon as Obama demonstrated any determination to assert the principles in which he believes, and for which he was elected, Obama was transformed into a raving dictator with an inability to love. Fein’s closing paragraph sums up his disturbingly maniacal view:

“[A]s his policies have revealed, our president is more concerned with his own welfare than anyone else’s. This is not a man who loves others. It is a man who is angry at others, including his nation. As alarmingly, it is a man who acts on these impulses.

The rest of us had, therefore, best beware!”

That’s right. Beware, brothers and sisters. Beware the angry black man rampaging across the land with no love in his heart and no knowledge of his “place.” Didn’t y’all like him better before he talked back, when he was carrying your bags and shining your shoes with a big, toothy grin?

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

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

Fox Nation On Obama

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

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