The ObamaCare Success Story: Even Republican Enrollees Are Overwhelmingly Satisfied (InfoGraphic)

Posted by Mark NC on July 10, 2014 at 3:13 pm. 6 Comments :

It has been four months since the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) closed, and the most reliable numbers to date are being released. A new survey by The Commonwealth Fund (pdf) reveals that the program has surpassed all estimates of success and is broadly viewed favorably by the American people. Here are some of the highlights of the survey (InfoGraphic below):

With 9.5 million fewer uninsured adults, the uninsured rate for those 19-64 decline from 20% to 15%.
The uninsured rate for young adults 19 to 34 declined from 28% to 18%, more than any other age group.
In the 25 states (and D.C.) that expanded their Medicaid programs, the uninsured rate for low-income adults declined from 28% to 17% (Texas and Florida – neither of which expanded Medicaid – have the highest uninsured rates).
More than half of adults with new coverage said their plan included all or some of the doctors they wanted.
More than three of five adults who selected a private plan or enrolled in medicaid were uninsured prior to gaining coverage.
Two-thirds of those who found a primary care doctor got an appointment within two weeks.
More than three-quarters of adults with new coverage said they were very or somewhat satisfied with it (Including 74% of Republicans, 82% of Independents, and 84% of Democrats.

The fact that so many Americans have benefited from this health insurance initiative is in itself good news. But what should make this front page news is that Republicans enrolled in ObamaCare are just as happy with it as independents and Democrats. This illustrates how far afield the Tea Party Republican political miscreants in Washington have strayed from their own alleged constituents. They are impostors holding the reins of power thanks to a minority of extremists in the party who bother to vote. And if rank and file Republicans ever get motivated to show up at the polls, people like Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann will be lucky to get speaking engagements at trailer-park bible study meetings.

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After enduring the GOP spending four years throwing every mud-soaked brick they could find at ObamaCare, the people have risen above the scare tactics and lies. They rejected the talk of death panels and socialism and economic catastrophe. They saw through the dozens of attempts to repeal the law or challenge it in the courts. And now that they have had a chance to assess it personally, they find that it satisfactorily meets their needs, particularly those who couldn’t get coverage before due to preexisting conditions or financial hardship.

Don’t expect any of this to be reported on Fox News or by any other right-wing media garbage spewer. These are credible results from a respected foundation. They deal with facts and a devotion to representing reality (which, as we know, has a well-known liberal bias). Those are principles that conservative media tries desperately to avoid. If information cannot be used by the right to tarnish the President or progressive causes, it is either ignored or disparaged.

But despite the herculean effort put forth by Fox News, the Koch brothers, and the GOP establishment, the people have made up their own minds. Now if we can just get them to show up at the polls in November and vote for their own best interests, we may be able to roll back the tide of Dark Agist theocons who have infiltrated the halls of our democracy.

Impeachment Fever: America Rejected Sarah Palin, Now She Rejects America

Posted by Mark NC on July 8, 2014 at 5:16 pm. 5 Comments :

The “Quitta From Wasilla” is making headlines again by displaying symptoms of acute Obama Derangement Syndrome. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP nominee for Vice-President, who was soundly rejected by American voters, is now calling for the impeachment of President Obama (again), who was elected twice with significant majorities.

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Palin’s panicky challenge to the Psycho Chicken Littles she commands from the parapets of her Facebook page cites the standard menu of wingnut atrocities that Tea Party dimwits cling to so fiercely (i.e. fundamental transformation, American exceptionalism, etc.). What her unhinged freak-out failed to provide were any actual legal justifications for impeachment. You know…high crimes, misdemeanors, jaywalking, anything remotely deserving of removal from office. With a completely empty basket of goodies, Palin launched her tirade saying that …

“Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president. His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, ‘no mas.'”

That’s a nice touch. In that one opening sentence Palin likened President Obama to a wife beater with America as his victim; she pandered to the Latino immigrants she so often disparages by demonstrating her trifling command of the Spanish language, which she and her disciples insist must never be spoken within U.S. borders; and she lied about the President’s record on immigration, which has reduced unlawful entries and increased deportations.

From there Palin portrays the perilous journey of immigrants as a leisure trip wherein the brown hordes will “kick off their shoes and come on in.” It’s just like a big pool party in her view. But even worse, she completely fails to grasp the needs and desires of the American people by misrepresenting their priorities and the consequent duties of the President.

“There is no end in sight as our president prioritizes parties over doing the job he was hired by voters to do. Securing our borders is obviously fundamental here […] communities become unrecognizable and bankrupted due to Obama’s flood of illegal immigration.”

There is a bountiful cache of supid in that paragraph. First of all, what she calls “Obama’s flood of illegal immigration” was put in motion by George W. Bush’s signature on an anti-child trafficking bill in 2008, that requires the government to provide minor immigrants with legal representation and safe and secure housing while awaiting resolution of their status. And Palin did not, and can not, cite an example of a community that is unrecognizable, save for the one she can see from her house in Alaska.

More to the point, Palin’s assertion that immigration is job one for the President ignores the fact that most polls on the priorities of the American people actually put jobs as job one (20%). Immigration, while a serious matter that needs to be addressed, is not particularly high on the list of things Americans want their government to work on. In fact it is often near the bottom of that list (3%).

It is pathetic that people like Palin are making monsters out of children who find themselves in an untenable position. They are alone and frightened by the prospect of being returned to countries where they live in danger and poverty. And now they are further terrorized by insensitive Americans who scream at them and threaten them and put up barricades to prevent them from reaching safe harbor. It’s atrocious behavior that is embarrassing to the majority of Americans who reject such hatefulness.

Palin concludes her rant with a generalized lashing out that offers no substance or reason – just hostility and spittle-inflected animus toward the man that America elected twice and summarily threw her in the political gutter.

“It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment. The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored. If after all this he’s not impeachable, then no one is.”

Palin, like many of her comrades on the irrational right, have no idea what impeachment means or how it is invoked. She failed to provide even a single example of a valid impeachable offense, even though she says that there are many of them. And her hysterical overreach is in harmony with the conservative pseudo-patriots who are salivating at the prospect of winning a majority in the Senate this November so they can pursue their anti-democratic agenda and oust the man that they pledged, from the moment he was inaugurated, to destroy.

For this reason it is imperative that Democrats break out of their traditional mid-term complacency and actually get out and vote this year. If they don’t, they can expect with near certainty that Republicans will try to impeachment Obama. And with that will come all the attendant political soap operas and antagonisms that the nation really doesn’t need as there are numerous other issues to address without having to poison the atmosphere with a politically driven show trial. If after all this Democrats don’t vote in record numbers, they will wake up the day after the election with two year long migraine.

Crybaby McDaniel Caught Lying About Black Votes

Posted by Mark NC on June 27, 2014 at 12:59 pm. 7 Comments :

Last week’s Republican primary in Mississippi has stirred a frenzied response from Tea Party wackos who are convinced that the nomination was stolen by brigades of law-breaking African-Americans (is there any other kind to the right?). Loser Chris McDaniel has still refused to concede the race to incumbent Thad Cochran.

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McDaniel appeared on Fox News last night with ardent support Sean Hannity. He told Hannity of his suspicions of massive electoral foul play, although he offered no evidence. McDaniel said that…

“We’re looking into the issue of whether or not people who participated in the June the 3rd Democratic primary crossed over into the Republican primary this Tuesday night. And we’ve already found more than a thousand examples of that in one county alone.”

This morning Pete Perry, the Republican Party Chairman of Hinds County, to which McDaniel was referring, issued a statement refuting the unfounded charges. In the statement Perry included an example of just how far removed McDaniel is from reality.

“As a committee, we are still in the process of going through the election results before they can be certified, but this morning we can discuss some of the specific examples that were raised yesterday.

“As an example in Precinct 14, the Fondren Presbyterian Church precinct, the numbers cited by the McDaniel campaign yesterday included 192 ‘illegal votes’ – people that they claimed had voted in the Democrat primary on June 3rd but then voted in the Republican run-off. That is impossible. According to the certified results of the June 3rd Democrat primary, there were only 37 total Democrat primary voters at that particular precinct.”

So McDaniel claimed that there were 192 illegal Democratic votes in a precinct that had only 37 Democratic votes total. That’s a pretty good indication that McDaniel’s complaints are pile of certified rubbish. He is just an egomaniacal sore loser who is certain that a secret cabal of Republicans and Democrats are conspiring against his holy Teabagger crusade. When all that actually happened is that voters acted lawfully to choose a candidate that is not McDaniel, and Cochran was smart enough to employ all legal measures to achieve his victory.

Oddly enough, I agree with McDaniel’s opposition to Democrats selecting Republican candidates, and vice versa. This is only possible due to the enactment of open primaries where people from any party are permitted to vote regardless of their registration. This was never a good idea because political party candidates should only be selected by members of their own parties. Why on earth should a Democrat get to choose who the GOP puts up for office? However, the open primary movement was a creation of right-wingers who saw it as a method of unseating entrenched Democratic incumbents. For instance, in California in 2010, open primaries were enacted via an initiative that was put on the ballot by a Republican state senator and supported by GOP governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Now that this hare-brained concept has come back to bite them in the ass, the Tea Party is furious at what a perversion of democracy their idea actually is. So what do they do in response? Do they retract their support for open primaries and commence a campaign to end them? Of course not. They claim that black criminals have perverted the electoral process and steps must be taken to invalidate their votes. That should help the GOP’s outreach to minority constituents as much as flying a Confederate flag at their campaign rallies will.

The upside of this affair is that the Democratic senate candidate in Mississippi, Travis Childers, just saw his chances of winning in a deep red state increase substantially. McDaniel’s delusional supporters are so upset at Cochran that many of them are already declaring that they will not vote for him in November. Some are even talking about a write-in candidacy for McDaniel, or launching a third Party campaign, which Sarah Palin has been hinting at. When this is all over, the Democrats may have to send McDaniel a thank you card.

GOP vs. Tea: Snookered By Neocon Zealots On Talk Radio, Fox News, And Elsewhere

Posted by Mark NC on June 23, 2014 at 7:37 pm. 2 Comments :

The primary race for the Republican senate nomination in Mississippi has taken some sharp turns on the road to Crazy Town. This is a race that has seen a blogger associated with one candidate, Chris McDaniel, sneak into a nursing home to surreptitiously take photos of the ailing wife of his opponent, Thad Cochran. Some other McDaniel operatives managed to get themselves locked inside a courtroom on election night with that precinct’s ballots. As for Cochran, he told an amused audience that he grew up in Mississippi having fun doing “all kinds of indecent things with animals.”

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So who would have thought that on the eve of the election runoff, one of the most coherent analyses of modern politics would emerge from the daughter of one these candidates? Kate Cochran posted her impressions of the race on her Facebook page a couple of days ago, and if more Republicans had the insight that she demonstrates here in support of her father’s struggling campaign, democracy would take a huge leap forward. Here are some excerpts beginning with the an apt appraisal of the media.

“I think that Mississippians are being snookered by neocon zealots on talk radio, Fox News, and elsewhere.”

Clearly Kate is paying attention. Fox News, and a confederacy of wingnut pundits, have led the Tea Party parade to replace “establishment” Republicans with ignoramuses who robotically spout pre-chewed Teabaggerisms. It is something for which the GOP should feel profoundly embarrassed. She goes on…

“The New Right values extremism, obstructionism, partisanship, and–frankly–ignorance. I am disappointed to realize that the New Right seems to want to walk hand-in-hand with the horrible strain of anti-intellectualism that sees universities as vocational schools and vilifies anyone expert in a field as somehow not living in the ‘real world’ or representative of ‘real people.'”

Anti-intellectualism is a hallmark of the New Right. They ridicule graduates of Harvard and Yale as being unable to relate to “regular” folk. But the whole notion of wanting someone “regular” to assume the responsibilities of shaping the future of our nation is unfathomably idiotic. Would these dimwits also want a yokel to perform their heart surgery? The point of electing a representative is to have the best possible person in a position to make the hard decisions. Kate gets this right when she notes that McDaniel’s supporters value him for his lack.

“Lack of experience (he is not a ‘career politician.’) Lack of wisdom (he relies solely on Jesus, the Constitution, and ‘common’ sense–combined in the veneer of ‘goodness’). Lack of judgment (he vows to refuse federal monies and to try to impede legislation). […] I see these ‘qualities’ as a disingenuous pose, engineered to appeal to the very worst in our electorate.”

Indeed. If all voters are looking for is affirmation of their biblical fears and shallow interpretations of constitutional principles that border on another form of worship, then the Tea Party is their ideal political savior. But like religion, the Tea Party is focused mostly on imminent disaster and destruction. The economy is collapsing; morality and family are under attack; freedom is slipping away; and the devil is ushering in a communist/Muslim millennium of torment. They have no solutions, only harbingers of doom. Kate closes with this personal perspective:

“I find his campaign appalling on intellectual, moral, and idealist levels. The fact that Mississippi voters are even considering his candidacy saddens me more than I can say. Mississippi used to be recognized as the most backward, prejudiced, ignorant holdback in our nation, hands down. This sea change makes me very afraid that we might deserve that mantle.”

What’s really sad is that it takes this sort of political smack in the head for many Republicans to grasp just how dangerous and ignorant the Tea Party and its disciples are. It’s encouraging that Kate has come around, and her articulate passion is moving and profound. But the sort of experience that inspired it is not likely to be shared by many others. Consequently, America will continue to be saddled with this mindless cult of stooges who unknowingly help cloistered billionaires to shape a world that keeps them oppressed. At least for a while.

GOPee Yew: What The Media Isn’t Telling You About Obama’s Poll Numbers

Posted by Mark NC on June 18, 2014 at 2:48 pm. 5 Comments :

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (pdf) has some decidedly bad news for President Obama. The American people, according to this survey, are losing patience with the President and expressing it with low opinions of his job performance, foreign policy, and leadership. It is a distinct concern for him as his administration heads into its final two years.

That said, the news isn’t all bad. But far be it for the media to put the results in context so that people get a balanced perspective of the nation’s mood. In addition to the floundering numbers, there are some areas that ought to produce some optimism for the President and those aligned with his policies. First among them is the fact that, while Obama’s numbers are nothing to write home about, his political rivals are doing so much worse that may want to run away from home.

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Both the President and his party are putting the Republicans to shame. He is 30% more popular than the Republican Party, and nearly 50% more popular than the laughably inane Tea Party. If his presidency is over, as some right-wing pundits are gleefully claiming, what does that mean for conservatives?

And that’s not all. When asked which party they prefer to control Congress, respondents chose Democrats over Republicans by 45% to 43%. The poll also reports that progressive positions on prominent issues are far more popular than those of conservatives. For instance, respondents support the Common Core education initiative 59/31. They believe that immigration helps rather than hurts the nation 47/42. They advocate action on climate change 61/37. They approve of Obama’s recent move to set strict carbon dioxide emission limits 67/29.

Clearly the electorate is in a bad mood, and they are taking it out, with justification, on their representatives. But when directly asked about solutions to the problems that affect them most, they consistently respond with agreement for the liberal agenda.

So why doesn’t the press report that? This is the so-called “liberal” media we’re talking about. Apparently they are not as driven by partisanship as right-wingers would have you believe with all of their childish carping. More likely the media is driven by ratings and revenue. In that regard, conflict and drama have always been a bigger draw than harmony. It’s the same reason that local news features murders and car chases, rather than more uplifting stories.

Obama has some work to do to counteract the effect of the relentlessly negative coverage he receives. Even the arrest of a suspect in the Benghazi attack drew absurd criticisms from Fox News and other wingnut media. But in the interim, it is important to look below the surface to see the whole story. And what this survey is telling us is that if Democrats run on progressive policies they are more likely to achieve success at the polls later this year and in 2016.

How The Media Got EVERYTHING Wrong About Cantor’s Primary Defeat

Posted by Mark NC on June 14, 2014 at 1:51 pm. 6 Comments :

Last week a tsunami of shock washed over the Washington press corps as the second highest Republican in congress was swept overboard in a primary race against an unknown Tea Party opponent. Eric Cantor’s embarrassing loss has sparked debate as to how such a powerful GOP leader could have been caught looking. Unfortunately, the media contribution to the debate is rife with speculation and error.

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First off all, the characterization of Cantor’s opponent, Dave Brat, as an outsider who sprung from the grassroots to slay Goliath is a reflection of the shallowness of the research conducted by the mainstream media. Thom Hartmann went deeper and discovered that Brat was on the radar of the billionaire Koch brothers long before he launched his allegedly underdog campaign. Koch-affiliated financiers endowed Randolph-Macon College with half a million dollars to seat the Ayn Rand disciple as a trickle-down economics professor. Then, when the campaign commenced, radio talk show hosts like Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin took the baton and fervently promoted Brat’s candidacy. Ingraham and Levin are just a couple of the radio talkers who are sponsored by Koch front groups like Americans for Prosperity.

This brings us to the second point. The media repeatedly cast a spotlight on the campaign spending differential between Cantor and Brat. Cantor raised more than $5,000,000 compared to Brat’s $200,000. Many reporters latched onto the amusing anecdote that Cantor spent more on steak dinners than Brat spent in total. However, what they failed to take into consideration was the value of the airtime contributed by the likes of Ingraham, Levin, Beck, Limbaugh, Fox News, et al. It could cost a couple of hundred dollars for a thirty second spot on a high performing radio program. Extrapolate that to twenty or thirty minutes of direct advocacy by the the program’s host every day for a month or two and you could easily have exceeded Cantor’s budget for broadcast advertising.

Adding in the value of the donated airtime rips apart the third fallacy peddled in the press – that Brat’s low cost campaign disproves the contention that money makes the difference in elections. This is a target that has been in the sights of conservatives since the Citizen’s United debacle in the Supreme Court. The rush to exonerate wealthy donors of having any untoward impact on electoral outcomes was head-spinning. Every right-wing pundit with a microphone hailed the demise of the theory that cash-laden campaigns had an unfair advantage. In truth, Brat’s campaign was far richer than acknowledged due to the media support detailed above. But even if there were no other factors, a win by a single candidate in one race surely doesn’t negate the fact that in 99.99% of other races the better financed candidate prevails. If the right is so convinced that Brat’s showing proves that money doesn’t matter, I dare any of them to announce that they are halting their fundraising and capping their spending at $200,000.

Fourth: Tea Party supporters were quick to jump on Brat’s win as evidence of a Tea Party resurgence. In just about every other race this cycle, the Tea Party challenger lost to an establishment incumbent. With Brat’s resounding victory, they claim to have regained their mojo. But the only way they can make that argument is if they forget that they lost just about every other race this cycle.

Finally, the Washington set is dead certain that Brat’s triumph was due to his stance against immigration. After all, he did feature it in his campaign ads and it was a point of departure between him and Cantor. Unfortunately for those who seem to have a desperate yearning for that to be true, polling on the day of the election proved otherwise. Public Policy Polling released the survey showing that “72 percent of registered voters in Cantor’s district polled on Tuesday said they either ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ support immigration reform.” And the anti-immigration forces conveniently ignore the fact that on the same day Sen. Lindsey Graham, an establishment, pro-immigration candidate, from an even more conservative state, handily dispatched a slew of Tea Partiers. More likely, the problem for Cantor was that he mustered only a 43% job performance approval, just a couple points off of his losing election results.

So Dave Brat won a peculiar contest in Virginia where he had hidden support from billionaires and an opponent who was widely disliked. Then he disappears and refuses to speak to the voters he hopes will be his constituents. It’s been three days and he hasn’t held a post election press conference. And yet the press continues to misrepresent the realities that produced the results of this election. It’s a state of affairs that proves that Cantor wasn’t the only loser last week. The voters and others who rely on the media to provide useful information and analysis also lost. But they should be used to that by now.

Fox News Is STILL Killing The Republican Party

Posted by Mark NC on June 12, 2014 at 4:30 pm. 15 Comments :

Once again, an academic study of the American electorate has found that “Fox News Republicans are the most uninformed.” This new survey was conducted by the Brookings Institution along with the Public Religion Research Institute. What’s different about this study is that it does not merely pit Republicans against Democrats and Independents. It distinguishes between Republicans who regularly watch Fox News and those who don’t. And the conclusions reveal that Fox News Republicans are even more uninformed and extreme in their views than their non-fox viewing comrades in the same party.

What this tells us is that Fox News is polluting the Republicans who tune in to the network with reporting and commentary that is biased, misleading, and downright false. The ideological corruption is evident in some basic political differences between the Foxies and the Foxless. For instance, the DREAM Act was drafted to permit undocumented residents who came to the U.S. as children, and either completed college or served in the military, to obtain temporary residency status and eventually apply for citizenship. This bill is supported by a 62% majority of Foxless Republicans, but only 42% of GOP Foxies. Likewise, the campaign to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour is supported by a majority of 56% of the Foxless, but only 33% of the Foxies. In both cases the Foxless Republicans are more closely aligned with the electorate at large. It is the Foxies who hold the extremist position on the fringes of the far right.

The study asks the question: Does Fox News cause ignorance, or do ignorant viewers prefer Fox News? The answer is not particularly clear cut and is likely a combination of the two. However, the real problems for the GOP come into the equation when the party tries to evaluate the opinions of their constituents as represented by the folks at Fox News. It’s clear that the Fox version of Republican views are far removed from reality. The study notes that party strategists may think that the Foxy…

“…represents the center of the GOP. Under that mindset, presidential candidates should adopt a policy platform that appeals to the average Fox News viewer. But that’s a mistake when the average Fox News member is an extreme conservative. […] This makes the Fox News echo chamber a hazard for the party. It creates extreme candidates under the guise that they are electable.”

The notion that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party is one that News Corpse examined five years ago in an article titled “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” Some excerpts show that the results of the new Brookings/PRRI study somewhat belatedly affirm my own conclusions:

There is a case to be made that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party. In fact, it may be the worst thing to happen to Republicans in decades. That may seem counter-intuitive when discussing Fox News, the acknowledged public relations division of the Republican Party. Fox has populated its air with right-wing mouthpieces and brazenly partisan advocates for a conservative Republican agenda. They read GOP press releases on the air verbatim as if they were the product of original research. They provide a forum where Republican politicians and pundits can peddle their views unchallenged. So how is this harmful to Republicans?

Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). […] The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum.

By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds.

Recent events have borne out the worst of these considerations. Shortly after Fox News heralded the Deadbeat Rancher, Cliven Bundy, as a hero for confronting law enforcement officers with armed militia, three people, including two police officers, were murdered in Las Vegas, by a pair of Tea Party Terrorists. The perpetrators were the spitting image of the Fox News profile for conservative activists who virulently opposed what Fox told them was a rogue government that was devolving into a godless abyss of socialist deception and tyranny.

In addition, Fox News has stridently pursued a political agenda that seems to be intent on alienating the most critical voter demographic groups, including African-Americans, Latinos, women, and youth. And lately they even added their most loyal viewers to that list. The median age of the Fox News audience is 69 years old. That’s six years older than the median for their competition at CNN and MSNBC. And yet, Fox is embarking on an anti-Hillary Clinton crusade that is largely based on her age. That surely won’t go over well with the seniors tuning in to Fox.

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So with Fox continuing to feature the fringiest characters they can find, and academic studies certifying the damage that this strategy will cause to their purported allies in the GOP, the closing paragraph of my 2009 article is as relevant today as it was then:

The mission of Fox News from its inception was to be more than just a voice of opposition to Democrats. It was to utterly crush the left end of the political spectrum leaving only a teetering right wing with no counter balance. Yet, despite the torrid embrace between Republicans and Fox News, it is apparent that Fox is the source of a sort of friendly fire that is decimating the GOP by exalting its most outlandish and unpopular players. And since Republicans have not been particularly popular anyway lately, the anchor being thrown to them by Fox can’t be all that helpful – – – Except to Democrats.

Fox News Has Ceased Coverage Of Las Vegas Tea Party Cop Killers

Posted by Mark NC on June 10, 2014 at 11:31 am. 7 Comments :

After only one day Fox News has already eliminated coverage of the Tea Party Cop Killers in Las Vegas who went on a murderous rampage Sunday. On Monday, Fox’s primetime programs (Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, and Sean Hannity) were silent on the subject except for four sentences on Kelly’s show.

On Tuesday morning’s edition of Fox & Friends, the curvy couch potatoes failed to mention Jerad Miller and his wife Amanda. Later, on Happening Now, Fox ignored the story entirely. Outnumbered also declined to report on the Millers, despite having guest co-host “doctor” Keith Ablow who has psychoanalyzed every criminal, politician, and other public figure this century (without ever examining, or even meeting, any of them).

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Fox has replaced the Sunday massacre with older stories about the Bergdahl prisoner swap, the Veterans Administration, and Hillary Clinton’s book release and presidential aspirations. The producers and editors at Fox News have never been shy about reporting acts of alleged terrorism, even before any evidence has emerged. But for this story they have refused to even refer to the crime as terrorism. There are some obvious reasons why Fox would skew their reporting and ultimately remove this story from their news coverage. And all of them represent biases that are a long-standing part of what can be called the Fox News Creed.

First of all, the perpetrators are not who Fox’s racist producers typically profile as terrorists. Rather than being brown-skinned, Muslim, foreigners, the Millers are white Christians from Indiana. So not only would it run counter to Fox’s philosophy to implicate the Millers in terrorism, it would offend their 90% white, right-wing audience.

Secondly, the issue raises concerns about access to dangerous firearms. The NRA constituency at Fox is loathe to focus on such events that make the public uncomfortable with the wild west society that is favored by the gun fetishists and right-wingers who program and watch the network. Fox avoids or downplays most stories about gun violence, but jumps on any report that they can frame as an Obama attempt to repeal the Second Amendment.

Thirdly, Fox is well known for promoting some of the very same political ideologies as the Millers. They have featured guests who advocate secession from the United States, as well as armed resistance to federal law and authorities. An example of that is the recent Cliven Bundy affair where Jerad Miller just happened to show up threatening to use “the language of violence” against representatives of the Bureau of Land Management. Fox has also hyped Republican leaders, like Texas governor Rick Perry, who have made public statements that come just short of declaring secession.

Finally, the Millers’ association with Tea Party groups is something that Fox will work vigorously to excise from the public discourse. The Millers were supporters of the biggest Koch brothers-bankrolled Tea Party organizations (Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks), and openly espoused their anti-government views. It was only a matter of time before people who came to rallies with signs that said “We Came Unarmed – THIS TIME,” would keep their promise of violence. Of course, Fox News also supports the same groups and views, and has been instrumental in creating and promoting the Tea Party. In fact, there would be no Tea Party without Fox News. Consequently, Fox is not going to risk alienating such a critical part of their audience.

[Breaking] Further analysis of Fox’s coverage of the Tea Party Cop Killers was interrupted as this article was being written by the breaking news of yet another school shooting, this time in Oregon. This is the sort of tragedy that Fox can latch onto (briefly) because it lacks the political context of the Millers’ case. And the sensationalism of a breaking story is something that Fox will happily exploit.

In the meantime, Fox is probably glad to have something to report other than Sunday’s domestic terrorism in Las Vegas. The last thing they want is to have to acknowledge the relationship between the Millers and the the various enterprises that Fox News has endorsed and encouraged so feverishly. The Fox News Creed is one that was embraced by the Millers and, sadly, by many other viewers who Fox has worked so hard to deceive. And now they are reaping their reward in blood.

[Update:] As Fox returned to news other than the Oregon school shooting they continued to evade the Tea Party Cop Killers. The stories they have run so far on programs by Shepard Smith and Neil Cavuto on were on immigration, Sgt. Bergdahl, the IRS with an interview of Darrell Issa (Slimeball-CA), and extended, free campaign ads/interviews of Republicans Rick Snyder (governor of Michigan) and Ed Gillespie (senate candidate in Virginia). Following those programs, The Five was almost all Hillary Clinton, and Special Report with Bret Baier led with Bergdahl and then segued to bashing Clinton. It’s easy to see their editorial prejudices, but there was nothing (i.e. bupkis) on the Las Vegas Tea Party massacre.

Racist Tea Party Revolutionaries Kill Cops In Las Vegas: Why Won’t The Media Call It Terrorism?

Posted by Mark NC on June 9, 2014 at 5:50 pm. 15 Comments :

The media has set a precedent for itself in past events that involved tragic political hostilities and murder. Most famously, the conservative press has spent the last two years complaining about whether President Obama called the attacks in Benghazi terrorism. Of course, there is video showing him doing just that the next day in the White House rose garden, but that didn’t put an end to the ludicrous speculation and smears.

Additionally, there were murderous rampages in Frankfort, Germany, Ft. Hood, TX, Boston, MA, and even the Boko Haram kidnappings in Nigeria. All of these cases got right-wingers riled up insisting that they immediately be regarded as terrorism and called such by the nation’s press, politicians, and pundits. A few examples included:

Glenn Beck: Why are we still not calling it terrorism?
Rush Limbaugh: He just will not say it. He will not say it’s terrorism. Who knows why?
Neil Cavuto: Why is it so hard to call them terrorists?
Andy Levy: I think they’re that stupid if they’re refusing to call them terrorists anymore.
Catherine Herridge: After he shouted ‘God is great’ the administration did not call it terrorism.
Sean Hannity (Karl Rove ad): Obama and his administration wouldn’t call it terrorism for 14 days.
Chris Wallace: How do you explain, then, the continued refusal to call it terrorism?

Which brings us to Jerad Miller and his wife Amanda. These two nut cases were deeply involved in anti-American activities and openly expressed radical beliefs based on conspiracy theories and Fox News lies. They recently spent time in the desert threatening federal agents with deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy. Their Facebook page is plastered with violent rants advocating the overthrow of the government and imminent bloodshed. A glance at the people and organizations that they “liked” on Facebook is highly instructive. It includes three of the biggest Tea Party groups, all bankrolled by the Koch brothers. Also, there are three organizations that are run by current Fox News guests and contributors.

Obviously Fox News can’t call the Millers terrorists because that would mean they are calling a hefty chunk of their most loyal viewers terrorists. And for many others in the Fox audience it would be offensive to apply a term that they reserve for brown-skinned people from foreign lands, to a white, married, Christian couple from Nevada via Indiana.

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But you still have to wonder why the rest of the media is suddenly so averse to using the word terrorism. If there were ever an appropriate time to employ the label, it is now. The Millers made their intentions crystal clear. They reportedly shouted that “This is the start of the revolution,” as they commenced their crime spree. They draped their victims in the Gadsden flag, a banner of the Tea Party movement. Their motives were purely to incite terror in furtherance of their seditionist agenda. Similar behavior by Nidal Hasan and the Tsarnaev brothers was referred to as terrorism from the outset. So I’ll ask again – Why won’t the media call it terrorism?

[Update:] And Fox News ceased covering these Tea Party cop killers after just one day.

Poor Glenn Beck Gets Burned Defending Criminal Tea Party Creeps

Posted by Mark NC on May 23, 2014 at 4:21 am. 3 Comments :

Let this be a lesson for you, Glenn Beck. The next time you go out on limb to defend the Tea Party from having any complicity with wrongdoing, remember who you are defending. After all, the Tea Party is a phony “grassroots” creation of the Koch brothers that is populated by bigots and birthers and an array of far-right fringe conspiracy wackoids. Of course, there are certainly some Tea Partiers that are simply misguided dupes, but the ratio of dupes to nuts makes it precarious to risk vouching for them.

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In this episode of Beck’s Lament, Clayton Kelly, a conservative blogger in Mississippi, was arrested for photographing the wife Sen. Thad Cochran who is a resident of a hospice and suffers from acute dementia. This was an utterly reprehensible invasion of privacy and one of the most revolting political dirty tricks conceivable. It is no wonder that Cochran’s primary opponent, Chris McDaniel, condemned the act and denied having any knowledge of it or the perpetrator.

However, when McDaniel was interviewed on Beck’s radio program, Beck complained about reports that associated Kelly with the Tea Party. Beck insisted that there was no connection between them and that the allegation was a scurrilous creation of the media. Beck’s co-host set up the defense by stating flatly that…

“This is not a Tea Party group. This is a nut job conspiracy theorist that has nothing to do with the Tea Party or the McDaniel campaign in any way.”

To which Beck adamantly responded…

“…and everything to do with the usual suspect that’s not gonna be named, that everybody knows. But the usual suspect – that’s what these people do.

Oh Glenn, go ahead and name him because, despite your proclamation, not everybody knows what you’re talking about (in fact, some of us hardly ever do). Sure we can guess, but we’ll need help narrowing it down from President Obama, Karl Rove, and Alex Jones. And we could probably also throw in George Soros and Cass Sunstein. And given the severity of your paranoid delusions, it may be someone else entirely.

Then Beck took up his defense of the Tea Party in earnest.

“I want at least this network to make it very clear. That was not the Tea Party. But the mainstream media will make it look like the Tea Party. I warn you. Get away from the Malcolm X voices of this movement. I warn you. Get away from them.”

Let’s set aside the incongruous references to Malcolm X. In Beck’s cartoon brain that could mean anything. The real problem is Beck’s resolute insistence that the Tea Party is the victim of a vicious smear campaign by conspirators in the media. That’s a typical retort by knee-jerk partisans who rush to absolve the objects of their affection from any culpability for misbehavior. But in this case it backfired brutally because, as reported by the Wall Street Journal…

“The latest twist in the story is the arrest of Mark Mayfield, the vice chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party and a campaign supporter of state Sen. Chris McDaniel, Mr. Cochran’s primary challenger. Mr. Mayfield, according to his Facebook page, has volunteered for the McDaniel campaign and was a co-host for a McDaniel campaign fundraiser.”

Mayfield was charged with conspiracy with respect to the attempt to unlawfully photograph Cochran’s wife. His official capacity with the Mississippi Tea Party, as well as other local branches, destroys Beck’s feverish defense. What’s more, Mayfield was also identified as having a connection to the McDaniel campaign, a relationship that McDaniel later had trouble explaining away.

So virtually everything that Beck said about both McDaniel and the Tea Party has been proven to be false. Of course, that’s a state of affairs with which Beck must be familiar by now.

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